Getting Started with Genealogy
We’ve all seen these family trees before. Some may not be nearly as grandiose, while others have tied into royalty. Where will yours lead? If you’ve made the decision that you are ready to find out what your past might say about you now, fortunately the first step isn’t contacting a genealogist; your first step is to collect information about yourself. In order to get to a starting point in going backward through time, you need to have information about yourself and your not so distant past.
- Grab yourself a piece of paper and pen
- Write down what you know about yourself (which is hopefully a lot); you want to take note of your full name and dates and locations of your birth and marriage (if applicable)
- Have you moved around a lot? If so it can become useful to take note of the places you’ve lived
- Now do the same for your immediate family: spouse, children, parents, siblings; go as far as you can, even if you don’t know everything, you want to get everything you do know down on a solid surface
- Once you’ve gotten down all of the information that you know, branch out and start asking other members of your family
This may take some time, but in the end it will be worth it. A solid foundation is necessary for a solid start in tracking down your family story.
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