Finding your Ancestors

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The first step is to ‘have a chat with family members, see maybe parents or grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc, just to find out if you can gain any clues, any named dates, to give you a bit of grounding.’ You might not even be aware of just how much your living relatives know, so set aside time to chat to them and ask about specifics to do with dates and places from their childhoods, and the maiden names of female family members. Maiden names are often lost in time, making whole branches on family trees invisible to modern researchers, so this can be a crucial thing to look into.

Equally important, your living relatives may have a treasure trove of documentation that will be invaluable, like birth certificates of distant relations and old journals filled with dates and details on places and events relevant to your family. Also, newspaper clippings and photographs that could contain clues on when and where people were born and raised, and lots of juicy trivia. 

Even if you don’t hit this kind of documentation jackpot, even the vaguest pieces of information you glean from your living relatives and their possessions can lay a great foundation for further research. Your next step should be building your family tree. By registering online for a family tree charting service or simply download a family tree chart... you’ll be able to quickly start putting together your family tree. You can input the information you have so far, creating the first branches of your family tree reaching back from you and your siblings to your parents and grandparents. Then, you can dive into FamilySearch library of documentation sources (free). The site provides free access to literally millions of pieces of data gleaned from across the globe, including census records, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, immigration records, military records and more.

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FamilySearch.org is a great resource for building your family tree. It's free and easy to use. To get started, you'll need to create a free account on the website. Once you have an account, you can start adding information about your family. FamilySearch recommends starting with the first four generations (parents, grandparents, great grandparents). FamilySearch has a massive database of family names, history and documentation.

FamilySearch protects the privacy of living people, so nobody else can see what you enter about yourself or other living family members. Once you add a deceased relative to the tree, FamilySearch will try to connect you to any information it has about that person in its database. If it finds a match, FamilySearch can auto-populate information, saving you a lot of time! It is highly recommended that you prove your ancestors with 'vital documents (birth, marriage, divorce, death). 

(1) Family Tree • FamilySearch. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/overview

(2) How to Start a Family Tree on FamilySearch • FamilySearch. https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/how-to-start-a-family-tree.

(3) Getting started building your family tree • FamilySearch. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Getting_started_building_your_family_tree

(4) The World’s Largest Online Family Tree - FamilySearch. https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/online-family-tree

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Open a free account on Ancestry.com and copy the info (your parents and ancestors) from your FamilySearch tree to your new Ancestrycom tree.

Ancestrycom will offer possible ancestors (via 'HINTS') for your tree! The only way to know for sure after you 'Accept' your ancestor suggestion; confirm with vital documents. 

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FAMILY TREE CHARTS

Family Group Sheet 

Download 4 generation printable family tree chart

Download 6/7 generation Spreadsheet form, family tree chart