Discovering Your Family History

Have you ever wanted to know your family history, but didn’t know how to start? Many of us have been told family stories of being related to royalty or legendary heroes, but we don’t have any proven lineage to show whether it’s true or not. To discover and prove such lineage, we have to trace our family history, the practice of which is known as genealogy. Discovering your family heritage can be a fun and rewarding hobby. As you learn more about your ancestors, you learn about yourself along the way.

Gather the Facts

You can go only one way when doing family tree’s and that is backwards. That means you start with yourself.

You will need a pedigree chart and a research form to get started. You can download copies here:

• Free pedigree chart.
• Free research form
• More useful charts

Print copies of the forms out, and enter all of the information you know about yourself, your parents, your grandparents, etc. You might call relatives to verify information you are unsure of. Find out where your family has lived during their lifetime, if they know where their parents lived, etc. The more details you can provide the easier your search will be.

Full Name: Is important because many times in records, first and middle name may be initialized, i.e. JW Smith. Also, children are often named after their ancestors, so a full name may lead to clues to ancestry. Be aware of any nicknames the family members may have gone by also, because they are sometimes used in records. Another thing to keep in mind while searching for surnames is that names were sometimes misspelled. Think of and write down several common spelling variants of the name.

Date and Place of birth/death (country name): With this information we know some locations to check for census records. You most definitely will not find your John Smith searching all U.S. Records, but you just might if you know he lived in Williamson County, Texas in 1920. Knowing a birth/death date lets us know approximately how old the person would have been when verifying data on discovered records.

Marriage date and Place (County): If you know the date of marriage and the location, you can write the courthouse and obtain the marriage record. For marriages pre-1900 you can sometimes find these records for free on the Internet, such as at Genwed.