Research Family Tree - The Easy Way To Get Started...

What better place to start to discover who your ancestors were and what your roots are than right with yourself! Although the task may seem daunting at first, all it requires is a little time and effort. Learning a little about your family will help you get started in laying a foundation for an accurate family tree.

And it's really quite easy to start gathering information about your family at this stage. Older relatives and family members are a great resource for this information. So talk to as many of them as possible. It should be fairly easy to ascertain the names of your grandparents(first generation), great grandparents(2nd generation) and your great, great, grandparents(3rd generation) etc.

Go as far back as your relative can in recalling the names of your ancestors. Don't forget to get maiden names and children's names. These will help fill in the blanks of the family tree. Remember, you want to go as far into the past as you can with your family tree structure. The value of children's names lies in the fact that some census papers will include children living in the household at the time of the census. Children's names can serve to corroborate the identity of the individual your looking up, making sure they belong to you family.

In addition to names, try to secure places where relatives may have lived, as well as dates. Any photographs in addition to documents can serve for your research. Be on the lookout for such papers as birth and death certificates as they are a primary source of information. Look out for hidden information on pictures. On the reverse side of a picture you may find a date or names of places such as a town etc. In some cases hints can be found in the pictures themselves. Consider, for example, if you locate a photo of your relative going to visit the Statue of Liberty and the year on the back of the picture is 1937 this provides a frame of reference from which you can calculate other dates such as when they first arrived in the USA. Once you've exhausted all the information you can get from your older relatives, it's time to move on to other types of information sources.

Without a doubt, online web sites furnish a tremendous opportunity to gather family history information. Online membership sites can be a real help in researching information regarding your family history. These sites, at times, provide exclusive access to important documents. These Genealogy web sites often give you access to such documents as marriage, birth and death certificates in addition to military and criminal records.

The information that will form the basis of your family tree is so important that it is probably better to use a paid Genealogy site than a free one. The information you gather should serve for throughout several generations to come.

By: Tony Nelson

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Want to learn more about researching and constructing your own unique family tree? Expert and Author Tony Nelson invites you to access his Free 10-Part Mini Course and discover step-by-step how to unearth the history of your ancesters even if you've never learned genealogy before. Also for more great articles on how to Research Family Tree Click this link.