What is genealogy? Defined by Wikipedia, genealogy is “the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages.”
Why should I get into genealogy? There are many reasons! Genealogy is a great hobby for those interested in their family,history,and many other topics. It can teach you more about yourself.
Where do I start? It may seem overwhelming at first, but don’t worry; it’s not as hard as it seems. The best place to start is to see if anyone in your family has done any research themselves. Many families have at least one member who has a small family tree or a stash of helpful records. Once you have determined if you have any resources to give you a head start or not, you must make another choice. Where do you go from here? Will you focus on a certain branch of the family tree? Or will you go for a more general approach and try to tackle multiple branches? This way is more complicated, and I would recommend not taking this route unless you are experienced.
What should I look for? Official documents are your best bet, as they are the most accurate, and courthouses and local libraries are likely to keep copies. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, draft cards, etc. are very useful as they contain birth dates, death dates, places of residence, and other useful information. Don’t be afraid to ask family members as well. If you have relatives who were alive during the lives of your great-grandparents or other family members, they may have information you did not know about.
By this point, it’s very likely you’ve been gathering a lot of information or maybe even started your own family tree. It’s very important to keep this information organized. Depending on how you’d like to conduct your research, there are many different methods. If you’d prefer to stick to pen and paper documents, I would suggest a good binder and multiple folders that are clearly marked and neatly kept. For those of you who wish to take your work digital, there are several free and paid resources that can help.
Free
Familysearch
Family search
A great tool for both creating and maintaining a family tree, it provides free digitized records of your family and may show you a family tree created by others, saving you a lot of work.
Pros
Free
Gives access to various records across many sites.
Collaborative
Cons
There is no way to lock a tree, which allows for vandalism.
Some people may have false relatives on the tree
Gramps (FOSS)
Gramps
A Linux native program useful for offline family tree management, according to the website, is “a free software project and community. We strive to produce a genealogy program that is both intuitive for hobbyists and feature-complete for professional genealogists. It is a community project, created, developed, and governed by genealogists.”
Pros
FOSS
Can be used offline.
Support for multiple trees
Cons
Outdated interface
Can be confusing for first-time users.
Find a grave
https://www.findagrave.com/
A index of thousands of cemeteries and millions of graves
Pros
Free
Easy to use
Community transcribing system
Cons
Graves may have incorrect information which requires the profile managers to accept edits
Wikitree
https://www.wikitree.com/
A place for genealogists to collaborate
Pros
Free forever
Easy to use and work with others
Claims to be extremely private
Cons
Site design may make navigate difficult for some
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PAID
Ancestry.com
One of the largest paid genealogy services Ancestry has thousands of paid records.
Pros
Lots of records
Cons
pricey
Newspapers.com
https://www.newspapers.com/
A archive of thousands of newspapers
Pros
Lots of papers from many places
Has free days
Cons
Pricey
Index system may not provide exact match for searches
This is nowhere near a complete list, and suggestions and more will be added soon.
