Getting Started
First, get a genealogy program like Roots Magic to record your findings. Starting with yourself and moving backwards generation by generation, try to answer these questions:
Who was this
person’s parents and why do I think so?
Who did this person
marry and why do I think so?
Who were this
person’s children and why do I think so?
Exact dates are nice to have but not
necessary. If I don’t have a date for a
marriage, I assume they were married before their first child was born. If I don’t have a birth date, I assume that
males were at least age 21 and females age 18 before they married. While this can vary somewhat, it puts you in
the right decade for evaluating the reasonableness of your research.
Source Data
It is important to answer the question “why
do I think so?” with references to source material. The quality of your sources determines the
potential accuracy of your research. It
often takes more than one source to adequately establish the answer to one of
these questions. For example, before a
marriage takes place, both families are probably residing in the vicinity so
not only do you need a marriage record but proof that the family lived in the
area at the time.
Family Search (free) and Ancestry (paid) are great resources for data but be aware of the that not all source data is equally reliable.
Sources can be classified as primary, secondary and
questionable. Most people can document the first few generations of their family with primary sources.
Primary sources while they
can contain inaccuracies are often the most reliable information. In a perfect world, we would document our
genealogy with primary sources such as:
Birth, marriage
& death Certificates
Census
Wills, probates,
etc.
Land records -
deeds, leases, etc.
Bible records
Pension records
Secondary sources are less accurate and subject to errors of memory or clerical
mistakes. Some of these include:
Transcriptions, extracts, and abstracts
Bible entries
predating date of bible
Events recorded at
a later time
Historical
narratives
Cemetery Markers
Diaries &
Letters
Questionable sources are those that give you a clue to
where to look but should be confirmed with primary & secondary
sources. These include:
Family Histories
Family Stories
Family Genealogies
In the beginning, I must have made
all the mistakes that someone new to genealogy can make and that are too
numerous to list here. Finally, I
settled into this simple but adequate approach for establishing a paper trail of my ancestors.
~ Becky ~
Copyright © Beckins LLC 2013-2014
