10 Tips to Trace Your Ancestry for Beginners

You know more than you think you know. If you are ready to dive in and trace your ancestry, here are 10 tips to get started. They are quick, easy and don’t cost anything.

Genealogy Terms to Know

Save yourself time, frustration and missed opportunities. Take the time to learn some basic genealogy terms that you’ll be coming across when you start researching your family tree. You don’t want to miss one single thing that might give you your next clue.

Here are a few basic terms worth knowing:

Direct ancestors: direct ancestors are your direct line, the people you are genetically related to. From you to your parents to grandparents to great grandparents, to great-great grandparents…
Collateral/ indirect ancestors: These are everyone else. The uncles, aunts, cousins, spouses. They are not directly related to but they are related through marriage and/ or birth.
Descendants: descendants are the children of… you are a descendant of your great grandmother, your child is a descendant of you.
Vital Records: vital records are the records that can prove an event, such as birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates. These are the desired records. But keep in mind that many states did not require formal records like these until 1900, give or take a few years.
Probate records: probate records are created after a persons death. They are court records and are used to determine the distribution of a deceased person estate.
Testate/ Intestate: with regard to probate, if a person died without a will in place they died ‘intestate’ and the courts will decide the estate. If they died with a legal will in place they died ‘testate’ and the courts simply have to ensure their wishes are carried out.
GEDCOM: a GEDCOM is a file format used in exchanging data between software programs. Some software, like Family Tree Maker and Rootsmagic do this automatically. I used GEDCOMS to upload my family tree to other sites so I do not have to recreate a 6000 person tree manually.
Land Grants: A land grant is the first sale of piece of property from the government to an individual or entity.
Land Deeds: After that initial sale, subsequent transfers from person to person are called land deeds.
Genealogical relatives: These are the people we have found through records.
Genetic relatives: These are the people that are DNA matches, or our connection to our DNA match.

Start with yourself and work backwards

When we get started building our family tree, we usually begin with ourselves. Then we add our parents. Then we would add their parents, our grandparents. We work backwards generation by generation using what we know and what our living relatives know. We’ll eventually get to distant ancestors that we can’t fill in the blanks on the family tree chart, and then, our genealogy work will begin.

Write down what you already know

My best advice is to start with what you know. Literally take a sheet of paper or open up a Word document and make a page for direct descendants. Write what you know.

Full names including nick names
Birth dates and places of birth
Spouses and dates of marriages, places of marriages
Childrens names, birth dates, places of birth, spouses, etc…
Make note of where they lived, addresses or the county if you don’t know
Occupations, military service, memberships, nothing is insignificant
Death dates, places of death, where they are buried
Any memories that pop into your mind. Did they love Snoopy? Were they romance novel readers? Did they crochet? Have a green thumb? Was he a good mechanic?

This will become the foundation that you’ll start confirming and building on. You’re going to be surprised how much you know!

Interview oldest relatives right away

Our older relatives are holding a valuable information about life before us. They hold stories and memories they have nothing to do with and would love a chance to share them with someone genuinely interested. If we let them, they will have a huge role in helping us begin our genealogy research. Our own family history begins with them.

They may be able to share memories about things we will never know until we spend hours researching. We could spend weeks looking for details of where an ancestor lived, but once asked they might be able to tell you all about the ancestral home and the farm name of great great grandpas ranch. What a huge help that can be.

Take the papers you started in the last step and flip back and forth is needed but record the information they share with you in a place that will be easy to refer back to. This sounds trivial but believe me, keep the notes on the paper for the person you are discussing. I now use Goodnotes5 on my iPad with my Apple pencil. I can write everything down and search my writing later as I add it into my rather large database I’m building.

Ask family members for copies of documents, photos & letters

We are all guilty of letting important documents, letters and photos, just slip through our fingers. Reach out to relatives and ask if they have anything that might help you in your research. Don’t be shy, be specific. Something they may consider unimportant could be a goldmine for us. Some of the things to ask for could be:

Birth record or certificate
Church records for baptism, christening, weddings, funerals
Copies of military records, especially DD214’s.
Marriage licenses
Old newspaper clippings- there is a reason they were kept
Death records or certificates
Old photos and albums

Take a portable scanner or use a scanner app on your phone. But make sure you record everything they have, even if you are not sure what it means yet. Shared images and documents can break down brick walls in your research.

I came across a box from my grandfathers funeral. It had the guest book, greeting cards and all the cards from flowers that were sent as well as notes my grandmother made during that time. I was a couple years into trying to find out about my Uncle Fred so I went back to that box of cards because I was sure he would have attended or at least sent something when his brother died. Sure enough, there was a card signed Fred & Babe Hartley. It broke through a brick wall I had been banging on for years.

Organize documents and digital files

You’ll thank me later. Once you get this train rolling, it is hard to stop and regroup. It’s amazing how quickly you will accrue things. Create a system. I am working to put everything I have in digital format so I scan everything. We are from the generation where pictures from the early 1900’s are starting to disintegrate. So I scan them and they will be forever preserved digitally. You will want to come up with a naming convention that works for you. I name all my digital files like this:
LAST NAME, First name, Middle initial; birth year – death year; type of file; date of file

This works for me. When I open a folder on my computer the files are in order by my ancestors names, then their birthdate. If they had 5 land patents they would all be grouped together and sorted by date of record.

If you are all about the paper, I get it. Take time to get organized early with folders, binders or genealogy software. Whatever works best for the way your mind thinks, that is what is the right way. Having a system to keep copies of documents and other historical records will save time and frustration.

Create a timeline for your ancestors

So you have the beginnings of some of your ancestors stories. Now it’s time to start considering what research you need to do to find the answers you are seeking. I do my timelines in Excel so i can sort by date, or name or even place if I need to. Other people use timeline software. And others grab their pen and paper. However you do it is fine.

Creating a timeline with what you know about them. By putting their information in chronological order you will begin to see gaps in their lifetime. It also begins to add context to our ancestors lives. We see where they were, when they were there and we can begin researching times and places to really learn about what they were living through.

Search for the records you need

Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. By now you should have a list of records that you need. You want to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Find out if the records existed, where they were stored and how to find them. Keeping with the theme of FREE, I always suggest going to the FamilySearch wiki and learning about what records were available in a certain place, or time. There are several ways to search the wiki. If I know my great grandfather was born in Barry County Missouri in 1865, I would pull up the US, then Missouri, then Barry County. Take some time to get familiar with this free tool. Almost every research session starts with me opening this page.

Join genealogical groups and societies

Genealogy can feel like a solo sport which is exactly why I love it. But we can’t forget how good it feels to connect with people that have the same interest. Joining a genealogical society or the local historical society will put us in touch with people that may also be researching the same areas, surnames or even the same people. Genealogical societies also offer classes for further learning, access to local records and possibly not so local records, access to computer programs or online memberships on their computers and an environment of camaraderie and support.

Document and share, share, share

Sharing is caring! This lends itself to my strongest belief. We all die twice: first when our souls depart our earthly bodies, and second when our names are uttered for the last time. My whole reason for doing my genealogy, helping others do theirs and taking on clients to do theirs, is because I want us to keep our ancestors alive. Their stories mattered.

Preserve your photos, documents and records.
Organize it so someone could make sense of it if they had to.
Write it out. Put it online. Create trees. Video or audio record stories.
Find ways to involve the younger generations.
And share, share, share with your family.

In closing,
Genealogy can be as much or as little as you want it to be. If you are all in, good. If you only have fleeting minutes to work on it, good. The point being, you’re doing it. It matters. It is a gift we are giving to our grandchildren and great grandchildren. Generations from now, our descendants will not know the hurt or loss in our lives, they will only know what we leave them with. Make them feel proud of who they are and where they came from.

Find them. Keep them. Share their stories.

Until next time,
~ Mary K

10 Tips to Trace Your Ancestry for Beginners