International Association of Amateur Genealogists (IAAGEN)

As time progresses I will be adding a significant number of tips and suggestions for doing your research. These thirty plus suggestions will help get you started. I welcome comments and feedback on this posting.

So, here we go!

1. Have fun! The word amateur means someone who loves whatever it is they do.
2. Start today. Many relatives with information of the past die before we get the information that they know. We often regret not having asked the “important” questions of our elders before they die.
3. Start at Home. You are the beginning of your genealogy ancestry. Write down you name, your siblings names, and your mother’s and your father’s names. You will build on this.
4. Keep information on Pedigree and Family Group Charts. You will never be able to organize your information without a systematic method. Pedigree charts provide a direct line ancestry leading from you to your parents to your grandparents to your great grandparents, ect. Family group sheets provide basic information on an individual family. This includes information on the parents, and all the children of that family. If there is more than one spouse, use a separate family group sheet for each family.
5. Write down what you already know. You already know the basic information on your parents (or you can get it from them) and probably know at least the names of your grandparents. Put down all the information you know. You will fill in the missing information as you continue your search.
6. Ask Relatives for Information. Much of the missing information can be gathered by interviewing your living ancestors. They can provide their vital information and much of the information about their other family members.
7. Interview Collateral Relatives. These are the relatives not in your direct line of descent. This includes uncles, aunts, granduncles, grandaunts, and their spouses. Each one may remember something that the others may not. Remember, each person has had their own distinct experience in this family “relationship”.
8. Put down the vital information for everyone in your family as you go. This includes full name; da, month, year, and place of birth; day, month, year, and place of marriage; full information on spouse (when & where they were married); day, month, year and place of death, and information on every child of all marriages.
9. Start to collect vital records from day one. Get copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates. This will help you to document the connections between each generation. The birth certificate usually has the parent’s names. Likewise, the death certificates usually have the name of the parents.
10. Don’t be in a hurry. Remember to have fun while you build your documentation. The only time one should hurry is to get information from relatives who may not be around much longer.
11. Keep a Personal Diary. Even if you only summarize once a week the most important things happening in your life, this will provide an insight to you and to future generation of what daily life has been like for you.
12. Keep a Research Diary. You need to keep up with what you have done, when you did it, and what you learned from the activity. This is particularly important when researching written documents. Over time you will forget what sources you consulted when and what you learned if you don’t keep a research diary. This also keeps you from repeating research on previously researched documents.
13. Create a File and Note Taking System. As you continue building your ancestry and getting more and more information, you will soon find that you cannot remember what information you have on certain individuals and where it is at. A system for filing notes will prevent this.
14. Use a Genealogy Software Program if you have a computer. These are generally very reasonably priced, and can provide of the most economical and thorough methods of organizing you data.
15. Always Research from Present to Past. Do not try to start by finding a person with your surname several generations back and attempting to link this person to you and your family. This is a common mistake, particularly when the person you are attempting to relate to is a famous person. Do your parents first, their parents next, etc. This is the only way to be sure of the relationship.
16. Use the Internet. In recent years, an enormous amount of genealogical data has been placed on the internet and is increasing very rapidly. Many library sources are now searchable by every word in the documents.
17. Don’t Believe Everything You See on the Internet. There are many errors that can creep into your research by using other’s data, but this can be overcome by your own careful documentation of facts. Sometimes you are able to expand your family by many generations by finding research done by a distant cousin who may be related to you through a common ancestor five or more generations back.
18. Check Already Completed Genealogies. Many families have already been researched by collateral relatives, often connected to you 5, 6, or 7 generations in the past. This is a particularly good research technique once you have gotten 4 to 5 generations of your ancestry completed.
19. Back up your Research Data. If you have everything in written form, make copies and store them somewhere away from your home. If you have your data on the computer, make back up disks and keep them separate from your computer.
20. Store your data in several locations. You may wish to give copies of your data to other relatives who are interested in genealogy and family history so that fire or other natural catastrophe will not destroy the only source of data you have. Placing your family tree on internet sites is a good way to always have a back up as of the date you place it on the internet. You can update your uploads from time to time so as to have the most recent copy of your data.
21. If your data is on a computer genealogy program, back up the program frequently. You can do this by using the program back up command of the particular program you are using.
22. Create Regular Gedcom Files. This type of file can be created with your computer genealogy program and can be used in most, if not all, other genealogy programs. It is a convenient way to send data to others researching the same family lines. I store my Gedcom files on a separate external hard drive. Doing this periodically (each Gedcom file with a separate name and date) provides a restore point as of a certain date should you have a problem occur with your data.
23. Explore your local library’s genealogical and local history section. Local libraries always emphasize most their own area’s local history. You may find family histories, newspaper articles with obituaries, wedding announcements, and personal stories. The local librarian can be a treasure trove of information.
24. Join your local genealogy and family history society. Besides collecting information on local families, most of these have developed collections of related materials available to their members. This may include censuses of local cemetery listings and other relevant research materials.
25. Join the local genealogy society in the town, county, or state in which your ancestor lived. After joining a county society in Ohio where my ancestors had once lived, I came across a relative that had descended from the sister of my great, great grandmothers. I contacted her and was able to fill in many areas of information about the family which I did not have, including several more generations of relatives.
26. Get acquainted with your local LDS (Mormon) Family History Center. The Mormons have the greatest collection of genealogical records in the world stored at their headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. Titles can be searched on the LDS website and at the local Family History Centers. Microfilm copies can be ordered to be studied at the local Centers.
27. Begin to search the U.S. Census records. Begin with the most recent census in which a relative can be found and work backwards. The most recent is 1930. Names can be researched in several locations to see if the family member is indexed. You can go through the records at your local library, but the best way is to use a research group that provides the name search and a copy of the image for a fee (for example: Ancestry.Com). The first census of 1790 is somewhat limited and most of the 1890 census records have been destroyed, but other decades are represented well up to and including the 1930 U.S. Census.
28. Check to see if you have relatives in any of the lineage societies. These include Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, Royalty Lineages, First Families of a Certain County or State, etc. In order to become a member of one of these societies, a person must carefullly document step by step his or her ancestry back to the original qualifying person. Finding a relative in one of these societies can extend your lineage and/or confirm with documentation what you already believed to be the case.
29. Gather copies of as many family pictures and documents as you can. People tend to throw a lot of things away when they move or when someone in the family dies So, get copies as soon as you can before these events occur and destroy part of your family’s past.
30. Learn how to preserve family pictures and documents. There are several good articles and books dedicated to preserving pictures and other family treasures. Don’t accidently destroy what you are trying the hardest to preserve.
31. Never do anything to an original document that can not be reversed. Never laminate, glue, paste, staple, or tape original documents. If you wish to use such techniqus, first make a copy of the original document and use the copy. Many copies that can be made at office supply locations like Office Max, Office Depot, and Staples are of very high quality.
32. Search for old correspondence between your ancestors and close friends and relatives. You must remember that prior to the 1940’s and 1950’s, letter writing was still the most common means of communication between family members. Family news and the latest pictures were frequent topics of communication in these letters. Many couples even kept copies of their courtship letters. Only in the last decade have we had the convenience of email and other electronic means of communication.
33. Record or videotape interviews with relatives where possible. Nothing is more compelling than to have a parent’s or grandparent’s story told in their own voice; and in the case of videotapes, their own facial expressions as they tell it.
34. Start to compile your own story. Everyone has at least one book inside of him or her. Start to record your own life events. List the places you’ve lived, the schools you’ve attended , the career moves you have made, etc. Your children and grandchildren will appreciate your efforts in years to come.