🌳Start Your Family History: A Beginner's Guide

Write down names, approximate dates, places and relationships from your own documents. Ask relatives open questions about addresses, occupations and family moves; record who supplied each memory and when.

Photograph certificates, letters and labeled photographs with permission. Transcribe their wording before interpreting it. Mark a remembered date as approximate rather than giving an uncertain event a precise day.

Use the FamilySearch guide for the place where an event happened to learn which office or archive holds the records. For U.S. federal sources, the National Archives introduces census, immigration, naturalization, military and land research.

Compare the original document, where available, with the index. Check relatives, addresses and occupations as well as the name. Another person’s tree can suggest a lead, but follow its sources before adding a relationship. Some images require an account, an archive visit or a fee.

Record the collection title, record holder, reference, page or image number and date accessed. Log unsuccessful searches too, including the spellings and date ranges you tried.

When sources disagree, keep both statements and their references. Look for another independent record rather than changing a date to make a tree fit. Move back one generation only when the relationship is supported, and share uncertainty alongside your conclusions.