How to Get Started

A lot of people are interested in genealogy but do not know how to trace their family tree.  Here is a simple method that anyone with a computer and internet access can use in order to put the pieces together.

Basic Steps

1. Create a pedigree chart for yourself based upon what you remember about your family
2. Talk to family members and relatives to see what they know
3. Go on www.ancestry.com and www.familysearch.org to add as much information as you can find about your ancestors
4. Locate your immigrant ancestor if possible and find the village or place of origin
5. Go back to www.familysearch.org, type the name of that location into the “Place name” or “Keyword” section in order to see what records have been digitized for that location.
6. See what records have been digitized.  If you can’t view them at home, then view them at your local LDS Family History Library or LDS Affiliate Library (most likely a local public library).  Use those records, most likely church records, to recreate your family tree going from baptism record to marriage of parents to baptism of parents to marriage of grandparents and so on back in time.
7. Learn as much as you can about that location.  Index the records if you have the time to.  Find out as much as you can about what still exists.
8. Travel to that country or hire a local in that country to go to the archives and find records such as land and property records that may not have been digitized by LDS.
9. Index the area to find missing links and overcome brick wall ancestors

Indexing

You can also index records on your own and submit them to genealogy websites.  Geneteka is a great place to start indexing. I have contributed over 40000 names to this website.  I urge all genealogists to actively index and contribute to this body of knowledge because it will help all of us to find our ancestry. It is up to us to key the information that had been written down over the centuries into the computer to make this knowledge accessible to all.