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.