Top Ten Tips to Start Your Family Tree

Today, I’m sharing my top ten tips to start your family tree. People often ask me for my recommendation on what genealogy website(s) to use to start a family tree. And my answer is none…not when you are just starting out.

Over the years, I’ve made a lot of mistakes (and judging from comments on genealogy Facebook groups and the fact that the popular program, the Genealogy Do-Over exists, I’m not alone).

Genealogy tends to be an addicting past-time. Many people start with a mild curiosity, but quickly begin spending hours a week researching. The day may come when you find yourself wanting to share your research with someone or join a lineage society. You’ll be glad you avoided making similar mistakes.

There are many genealogy websites, like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, MyHeritage.com, and FindMyPast.com. All of these can be valuable, but not until you know how to use them.

In my humble opinion, hints on these popular websites are too easy a temptation. Not that you should have to reinvent the wheel, but following the tips below will keep you from becoming a “happy clicker” who ends up with a tree full of misinformation.

So read on to learn the tips to start your family tree, the best way!

Top 10 Tips For starting a family tree

1. Identify why you want to document your family tree.

Some people are starting completely from scratch and simply want to know who were their ancestors. Others may want to find out if a family legend is true or join a lineage society. Others may well know who their ancestors were, but they want to find living relatives to learn about hereditary medical issues or continue a family reunion. Knowing your “why” will allow you to prioritize your work and determine where to start.

2. Start with who you know: yourself.

Collect your own birth certificate, marriage certificate, and document anything else you can get your hands on. Record dates and location of baptism, education, etc. Someday a descendant may come upon this information and be so grateful! Do the same for each person you research. Move backward (or sideways or downward, depending on your why) only when you have sufficient documentation to firmly establish identity. Reach out to grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Often there is a keep of the “family history.” Find that person. He or she may have documents and answers to questions that will save you hours’ worth of research. A note of caution which will be explored further: even though this person may be very knowledgable, trust but verify. And don’t assume anything.

3. Develop a Research Question.

Sometimes this is done intuitively, but as your research gets more advanced, formulating a specific research question helps you focus.

For instance, it is usually not necessary to write a formal question, like “What was the name of my father?” But a question like, “What was the name of the father of David Clark, who died in Beaver County, Pennsylvania in 1846?” clearly identifies what you want to know and about whom. This will help you determine what types of records and where they might be located to answer that question. It also helps you from going down a rabbit hole (online or at a repository).

This is probably the most important tip to start your family tree and one I wish I knew a long time ago. It is so easy to get excited distracted by additional information. There is nothing wrong with having multiple research questions at one time. But if you are using a computer to document your research or a notebook, have a document or page in a notebook dedicated to one specific question. This will save you from having a jumble of information that isn’t helpful in the long run.

4. Record where you got every bit of information.

My first major research trip was to the DAR Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2005. I only had a few hours, so I took pictures on a very low-resolution camera of anything that may be pertinent and thought I’d sort it out later. Unfortunately, that terrible habit persisted for several more years. I eventually figured out that I: a) never got around to sorting out my research in a timely manner; b) had trouble remembering what source my grainy pictures came from once they inevitably got out of order; c) found myself making lists of things I needed to redo on my next trip to that repository. By the way, it’s been over fifteen years and I still haven’t made it back to the DAR Library.

Technology has changed, which has helped a lot. But more importantly, so has my approach. Today, when I visit a repository, I write as I go. Whether it is on my laptop or in a notebook, I write the citation and analyze the document then and there. I still often take photos or scan the record, if allowed. But when I consult my notes, I know where it came from.

This can be an especially difficult discipline if you traveled a far distance to a repository with limited hours and lots of information. You want to get through as much as possible. But if you get home and you can’t be certain which page or folder or book it came from, it won’t make much of a difference. Without knowing your sources, the other tips to start your family tree won’t mean as much.

5. Learn to cite your sources.

This is the one that probably causes the most angst, but have no fear! At the most basic level, a citation is meant to allow someone else (or yourself if you are revisiting past research) to evaluate a source’s credibility and easily locate the record. The citation needs to include the following: Who (the author, creator, or editor), What (the title of the book, article, database, etc.), Where (the location a book was published or website where the information was found), When (the book was published, article written, website accessed), and Wherein (the specific page, column, etc. on which you found your information).

Speaking of citations, I’ll add a quick note here that if you are serious about genealogy, at some point you will likely write some sort of research report or family history to share with someone else. Genealogy uses the Chicago Manual of Style, humanities style. Lineage Societies may have their own specific instructions for how to cite a source, but, for the most part, you won’t go wrong following the CMOS.

There are plenty of items that provide evidence that aren’t a straightforward book or article. This could be an old photo, a tax receipt, or a crazy quilt with initials and dates. For items like these, Evidence Explained, by Elizabeth Shown Mills is invaluable.

Don’t worry about perfection. Even professional genealogical publications, like the National Genealogy Society Quarterly, have professional editors to assist genealogists with proper citations. Just be sure that you are recording all of the necessary details to find your way back to the source. And, you can always use Zotero to assist you along the way.

6. Don’t assume anything.

I have multiple examples of how this can set you back. Always follow the paper trail and work out conflicts. Don’t assume a record is “right” or “wrong” based on what you thought you knew. Keep an open mind.

7. Educate yourself.

I mean this in two ways: genealogy education and historical education. I would argue it is impossible to do genealogy research without doing historical research. It is very important to understand the context in which records exist. It is also important to know what records “should” exist for a particular time and place. It will save you a lot of time at the county courthouse searching for a record that occurred ten years before the county’s formation.

This goes hand-in-hand with no. 9. Your ancestor who lived in one location for thirty years in PA during the late 1700s and early 1800s may have records in three different counties. Taking the time to educate yourself about the history of the area, the religion, the occupation, or the cultural sect, will give you a much broader understanding of the times and your ancestor.

Also, take the time to study genealogy itself. Podcasts, webinars, Facebook groups, blogs, books, and classes are available, all of which will make you a better researcher.

8. Conduct “reasonably exhaustive” research.

This is the first standard for the Board of Certified Genealogists, and there is no magic formula to know when reasonably exhaustive research has been conducted. But if you find one census record for a person with the name you are researching, that is not reasonably exhaustive to determine if that record is for your ancestor. If you know a record exists, but haven’t been to view it, you haven’t done reasonably exhaustive research. If you found a database or a derivative source, but haven’t viewed the cited original source, then you haven’t completed reasonably exhaustive research. If you have a birth certificate, marriage license, and deed that all corroborate and there is no conflicting evidence, you have likely conducted reasonably exhaustive research.

9. Accept that you may not find your answer or that your answer may change

Of my tips to start your family tree, this one may be the most difficult to implement. You may ask a research question that takes years to answer. Or, you may never find your answer. This is why documentation is so important. I have answered research questions that were brick walls to a generation before me. I may leave research that helps a future generation kick down another brick wall.

I am comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” I would much rather not jump to a conclusion and leave a spot on the family tree empty than mislead someone else. It is fine to have a working hypothesis but make sure anyone who may be using your research (like an online tree) is clear about that.

Along the same vein, be willing to adjust your tree based on new findings. Maybe a new document will come to light or DNA evidence makes you realize something you thought was true, isn’t.

Don’t give up. Keep an open mind. If you find yourself dreaming (or not sleeping) because of your research, take a break. And of course, don’t hesitate to collaborate.

10. Collaborate

As you start researching, you will meet other people who are also researching the same people. I have contacted people via letter or email from old letters I found in a vertical family folder at a repository. I contacted DNA matches and owners of online family trees. I’ve made great friends/cousins through this process. You never know who will hold a document that will be the missing key to your research.

A note of advice: when contacting someone to collaborate, I appreciate it when someone contacts me with their specific research question. For example, I get messages from 5th-8th DNA contacts asking me how we’re related. We have numerous surname matches and they know little about their family tree Unfortunately, “how we’re related” is not a question I can simply answer.

If I contact someone, I introduce myself and ask my specific research question. For example, I’ll let them know that I’m trying to identify the name of the father of David Clark, who died in 1846 in Beaver Co., PA, and I see descendants of his in their family tree. If I get a question like this, I am far more likely to spend the time responding with any and all information I have on the subject. I’ve had responses to similar questions that didn’t provide anything to answer my question, but the contact provided additional information on the wife’s family or put me in touch with someone who could help.

Now, you’re ready to start your family tree.

These tips for starting your family tree are all based on my mistakes, which I hope you can avoid. I hope you’ll share what other tips to start your family tree you’d recommend in the comments below (or share mistakes you’ve made…I have a whole post planned to write about mine!).

Once you are at least in the process of completing these steps, you may want to consider hosting your family tree online, at a site like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org, or by using genealogy software. Be sure to check out my tips for using Ancestry.com, or check out my Are We Related page, where you can access my public family tree.

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