Introduction to Genealogy

What is Genealogy and Why do it?

Genealogy is one of the world’s three most popular hobbies. Millions of people from all over the world are continuously engaged in some form of family research. The fascination usually stems from the simple question, where did I come from? Other times it may be someone's physical attributes such as their red hair or blue eyes that engages them. Some people have even become intrigued with genealogy after visiting their ancestor's homeland and wondering what life must have been like for them during their period of life. Or perhaps it's the box of heirlooms or old photographs that eventually got passed down to them.

Whatever it was, that simple curiosity quickly grew into an obsession. Forget shopping or gambling - climbing your family tree is much more addictive, so don't say you haven't been warned!

Genealogy is often also referred to as family history, although these terms may be used distinctly: the former being the basic study of who is related to whom; the latter involving more "fleshing out" of the lives and personal histories of the individuals involved.

The process of genealogy involves the collection of the names of relatives, both living and deceased, and establishing the relationships among them based on primary, secondary and/or circumstantial evidence or documentation, thus building up a cohesive family tree.

Preliminary Planning

The first step is to develop a plan as to where you'll document your research. Your options include a plain old filing cabinet filled with family group sheets, or genealogy software like Family Tree Maker. For a free and easy alternative, we recommend a collaborative website like our own Geni.com.

Make sure that the web service you choose is secure, private and offers all the features included in commercial genealogy software. In order to backup your research and load it into other applications, you should also make sure that the website includes GEDCOM import and export. In addition to being free and easy to use, good genealogy websites turn genealogy into a collaborative effort, making it easier for the beginner genealogist to build a substantial base of knowledge quickly. Furthermore, as you research and find more information you'll already have your content in a medium that allows sharing with your family in a visually appealing manner.

Getting Started

What do you already know?

Rather than hitting the archives or even interviewing relatives, the traditional suggestion is to start by sitting down and entering what you know about yourself and your family. With technology and the internet today, it is far easier to enter this information directly into your family tree website as you think of it or come across it.

Some basic information you should definitely include is:

• Date of birth
  
• Place of birth
• Parents’ names
• Your location (city, state/province, country)

A good web application will automatically walk you through a Profile completeness process that will help refresh your memory and remind you what content you still need to add.

After you have a good base developed which describes who you are, you should move on to your closest relatives. Some may include:

• Parents
• Children
• Siblings

From there continue moving outward to further relationships until you have exhausted your knowledge base. Some further relationships may include:

• Grandparents
• Aunts and Uncles
• Cousins
• Inlaws
  

Stay organized and work on one branch of the family at a time.

Inviting relatives to contribute

After building your tree and entering all the information you know, invite your family to participate in your project! You should invite your family to join your online family tree so they can contribute what they know. Typically, family members become more interested and are more willing to add additional content if you provide the initial basis, which you did in the previous steps.

In addition to expanding your family tree in new directions and sharing your common heritage, inviting family members to participate will turn a historical project into a social one. The Internet has the potential of using the family relations you have mapped to spark an active online social network, private to your family. Through the sharing of photos, videos and stories, distant relatives can stay in touch and find out what's happening in each others lives.

A good web application should offer an abundance of features that you and your family members can use to further your genealogy research. Here are some of the major ones on Geni:

• Family Tree - Display relationships graphically
• Profile - A biographical sketch of each person in tree
  

• Timeline - Create and display events to create a more complete history of your relatives' lives
  
• Photos and Videos - Upload and share media with your family
  
• Calendar - Display birthdays, anniversaries, and events
• Database of surnames - Search for common ancestors
• Discussions - Start or participate in a discussion with family members you have invited
  
• GEDCOM Import and Export - Import and export existing data from other genealogy programs
  

Interviewing relatives

Now that you have invited your family members and they have participated you will have a good idea as to what content is still missing. There are various reasons why content may be missing. Often, the family member either doesn't have a computer or internet access. If this is the case then it will be up to you to extract the information from the family member with the missing information, through other mediums, and then document it on Geni.  The best way to do this is through interviewing them. We suggest you start with the eldest living relatives first and work your way down the Tree to the youngest.

The goal when interviewing relatives is to learn who they are, what they're like, as well as acquire as many leads to further your research as you can. This can be done through various mediums of communication. The most preferred form of communication for interviewing is in person 1 on 1 while recording with a video camera. However, this is not always feasible so here are some other forms of communication that can be used:

• Write a letter
• Phone call
• Send Voice Recorder with list of questions

One important thing to keep in mind is that the more structure you can provide initially the better the results. Some relatives are good at expounding and elaborating upon questions but others need to be asked a series of similar questions before you'll get the full picture. Below you will find a list of questions that you can reference when interviewing your relatives. Also, if you want a more comprehensive list of questions you can view them here.

About the person

• What is your full name?
• Did you have a nickname?
• When and where were you born?

About childhood

• What is your earliest childhood memory?
• What was your favorite thing to do for fun (movies, beach, etc.)?
• What was school like for you as a child? What were your best and worst subjects? Where did you attend grade school? High school? College?

About the childhood surroundings

• What was the house (apartment, farm, etc.) like? How many rooms? Bathrooms? Did it have electricity? Indoor plumbing? Telephones?
• Who was the oldest relative you remember as a child? What do you remember about them?
• Were there other family members in the area? Who?

About youth

• What were your favorite songs and music?
• Do you remember any fads from your youth? Popular hairstyles? Clothes?
• Did you have a religion growing up? What church, if any, did you attend?

About the youth surroundings

• Describe the personalities of your family members.
• How were holidays (birthdays, Christmas, etc.) celebrated in your family? Did your family have special traditions?
  
• What world events had the most impact on your while you were growing up? Did any of them personally affect your family?

About adulthood

• What was your profession and how did you choose it?
• If you could have had any other profession what would it have been? Why wasn’t it your first choice?
• Did you travel abroad? To where? For how long?

Becoming a parent

• What is the full name of your spouse? Siblings? Parents?
• What was your proudest moment as a parent?
• What did your family enjoy doing together?

About family heritage/legacy

• What stories have come down to you about your parents?
• Are there any physical characteristics that run in your family?
• Are there any special heirlooms, photos, bibles, or other memorabilia that have been passed down in your family?

For the more comprehensive list of Interview Questions you can refer to this Knol

Research

What to look for

It is surprisingly easy to find records of genealogical interest online, many of them in free databases. The following are among the most common records you can find to discover your ancestry:

• Vital records: Birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates.
  
• Census records: A list of all members of a household, often including information like age and occupation.
  
• Church records: In many cases, religious institutions were the ones keeping track of vital information. So, you might be able to find a baptism record where a birth record is missing.
• Immigration records, ship manifests and passports: If your ancestor has entered or left the country at some point, chances are there is some record of it.
  
• Newspapers: Articles and obituaries about family members can often be discovered in newspaper archives.
  

Where to find records

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is known for their vast collection of genealogical records, kept on over 2 million microfilm and microfiche rolls at their Family History Library in Salt Lake City and over 4000 family history centers scattered throughout the United States and worldwide. For a small shipping fee, you can have any microfilm held at the Family History Library delivered to a family history center near you where you will be able to photocopy it.

However, in order to request a microfilm, you first need to know which of the 2 million rolls contains information about your ancestors! Luckily, there are several for-profit as well as non-profit organizations dedicated to indexing the records. Indexing is done by a team of people experienced with reading handwriting who go through the records and enter the information into a searchable database. This allows anyone with access to the database to find relevant records simply by typing a name into an input box on a website.

The first place to start your search, especially if your ancestors lived in an English-speaking country, is  the  LDS-operated site FamilySearch.org. Records on FamilySearch are indexed by volunteers, allowing the database to remain entirely free. There are many permutations of name, surname, location, date, etc. for you to try. Some tips for searching:

• Try searching for a particular ancestor by entering a name and surname, narrowing the search down by date and location if there are too many results.
• Try search by surname and location. If your surname is rare, you might find records of people to whom you are likely to be related.
• Keep in mind that finding a record of someone with the same name and surname as your ancestor does not mean that you have the correct person. There are many John Smiths in the United States! Make sure that the dates, locations and names of family members match.
• If you don't know when and where your ancestors lived, this should be the first information you should seek out. Census records are the best places to find it, since they list all members of a household and not just a single individual.
• In your results, you will see not only indexed records but also matches within family trees submitted by members (the Ancestral File). These results are not primary sources, but they are very valuable since they include entire family trees rather than detatched family units.

For more information about finding people online, please refer to Andrew Czernek's knol.

Genetic genealogy

Ordering a test

Finding a common ancestor

Discovering genetic history

Useful links

• People search - "Doing a search for people on the Internet is not difficult and you needn’t pay a service like Intellius or KnowX. This article details search techniques with links to dozens of public databases that will yield more information than any online service could ever assemble."
• GEDCOM - "...an acronym for Genealogy Data Communication and is the standard format genealogists use for saving and transferring genealogical data."
• Genealogy interview questions - "This is a collaborative list of questions that you can ask your relatives when interviewing them for genealogy purposes. After you receive answers for these questions you will have a very good basis as to who your relative is."
• Genealogy - Another genealogy knol focusing on a more old fashioned approach. If you prefer to work offline, this is a great place to start.
  
• List of genealogy knols - "A directory of genealogy and family history articles on Knol."

• Geni.com - a free and easy way to collaboratively build a family tree online. Add your relatives, create profiles and timelines for them, and invite your family to contribute!

• FamilySearch.org - a free searchable database run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where you can find historical records about your relatives.
  
• JewishGen.org - a volunteer-run organization dedicated to indexing Jewish records specifically. If you have Jewish ancestors, this is a great place to search for them.
  
• FootNote.com - a searchable database of documents indexed by staff and volunteers. Some documents are free while others require subscription.
  
• Ancestry.com - a very large searchable collection of records online. It requires an annual subscription for most services, but has many records that can't be found elsewhere. Members have access to scanned versions of original documents.

• GenForum - serves genealogy forums for locations and surnames.
• 101 Best Websites in Genealogy - a great list of links by Family Tree magazine.
  

• Dear Myrtle - a popular blog and podcast "providing practical, down-to-earth advice for family historians since 1995"
• Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter - another great source for genealogy news.
• Roots Television - online videos about genealogy and family history.