1. Always start with what you know.
Look around your home. You may be sitting on a treasure trove of family history. What objects or research have you inherited from other relatives? What family stories did you hear growing up? You’ll need to validate family lore, but information passed down from generation to generation can guide your research.
2. Move backward in time.
Start with the most recent family members (you and your parents), then carefully document each generation as you work backward in time, one ancestor at a time. Intense research needs to be built on a solid foundation—even if you’re studying ancestors you’ve met in person.
This will keep you from making rash jumps in your family history or false assumptions about your family’s lineage. While it’s exciting to think you might be related to someone famous, you can’t start with that famous person and work your way down the family tree. Instead, climb your family tree from the bottom up, you being the tree trunk, sturdy limb by sturdy limb.
3. Make a plan.
For efficient, methodical research, sit down and consider your goals. Rather than jumping down a random research rabbit hole, consider what questions about your ancestry you’d most like to answer.
4. Ask for help.
You certainly don’t have all the answers to your most pressing questions, and you’re no less of a genealogist for asking others for assistance. By tapping into a network of family members and other genealogists, you can uncover new information and resources that you’d never have access to alone.
If you’ve hit a dead end, consider hiring a professional specializing in that research area. The Association of Professional Genealogists and Legacy Tree Genealogists each maintain databases of experts who might have the right know-how to scale your highest brick wall.
5. Study social history.
Your ancestor’s birth and death dates are just the tip of the iceberg. Try to understand your ancestor’s life and times. What were their towns and communities like? What dangers did they face? What social, economic, religious, or political forces impacted the decisions they made? Understanding these factors will help you put your ancestor’s life in context and help you better connect with the generations that came before you.
Also, study how borders changed over time, as jurisdictional changes will affect where your ancestors’ records are held today.
6. Research your ancestors’ networks.
Study your ancestor’s “clusters” (social networks, such as friends and neighbors) and “collateral relatives,” such as your non-direct-line relatives, your ancestor’s siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles.
7. Seek original records.
Whether paper or digital, indexes don’t always tell the whole story; spelling mistakes and transcription errors can make a mess of even the most precise keyword search, so you’ll sometimes need to turn to record images even to find your ancestor. Many online records collections include images of the original record, or you can request documents from an archive for a nominal fee.
8. Evaluate your sources.
Not all resources are created equal. The date and manner in which a record was created can drastically affect the reliability of the information in it.
9. Watch for data errors and impossibilities.
We’ve already mentioned index mistakes, but other, less obvious errors can damage your family tree. As you work, make sure the data you find makes sense. Were parents born before their children?
10. Use records as stepping stones.
Critically examine your ancestors’ records to find clues to other documents in which they may appear. Census records, for example, can contain multiple breadcrumbs that lead to other resources:
Country of origin (passenger lists)
Date of naturalization (passenger lists, declarations of intent, certificates of naturalization)
Military service (draft cards, service records, pension documents)
Number of years married (marriage banns, marriage certificates)
Occupation (occupational records)
And, of course, your ancestor’s stated age in a census record gives you a clue about birth year, as does birthplace.
11. Expand your definition of “records.”
We spend a good deal of time discussing census records and birth, marriage, and death certificates. Still, your ancestors may have been recorded in a variety of less frequently used documents.
12. Develop a consistent filing system.
As you accumulate files, records, and other data over the years, it can be easy to feel like you’re drowning in stuff. By adopting a standard filing system, you can bring order to all that family history chaos and find your files quicker and more efficiently.
13. Cite everything.
Though time-consuming, source citations lend more credibility to your research. They don’t have to be overly complicated, but they should contain enough information about a source that you or another researcher can easily trace the data back to its source.
14. Back it up.
The evolution of digital tech doesn’t mean your documents are safer than they used to be. If anything, your hard-earned research is even more at risk now from file formats becoming outdated and hard drives crashing—in addition to the fires, floods, and other natural disasters that also threaten your physical papers.
15. Store heirlooms and documents safely.
No amount of scanning can digitize treasured heirlooms—Grandpa’s watch, your mother’s wedding dress, or a beloved childhood toy. These items require special care to minimize age-related damage. You want to keep heirlooms, papers, and other keepsakes in a dry, climate-controlled room, away from direct sunlight, and stored using acid-free boxes and paper.
16. Share your stories.
You’re not just finding names and dates in your research but also uncovering stories. Find ways of sharing these stories with loved ones, who might be drawn in by their ancestors’ trials and tribulations in a way they never would be by data alone.
17. Keep learning.
You may be out of school, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop learning! Read books on researching in your ancestor’s area, and take advantage of online education opportunities.
18. Embrace new tools.
Where would genealogy be today if we hadn’t adopted the tools ushered in by the internet revolution? Online family trees, DNA testing, and social media are all developments that have changed family history research forever, but they have also disrupted “business as usual” for genealogists.
Keep an open mind toward new resources for researching and sharing your ancestry as they become available. While not all will stick, new genealogy tech can dramatically cut your research time and make saving and sharing your findings easier.
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