Geneaolgy

I love working and learning about my ancestors. I have learned a lot over the years and I am still learning more today. I want to take some time to share some things with you, when I can, to help you along your path of family history research.

In the beginning...you have to know that record keeping is very important. Keeping track of events today will help those who seek in the future. I have said that I keep a family history journal which saves special information about births, wedding, deaths, and other important events in my family. This is good for the future but it can be a little more difficult with things of the past. Records of family have been kept since the beginning of time, we can see the genealogy from Jesus Christ through Adam in the scriptures. So if the Bible shows that keeping this record is important then maybe we should do the same.

The best place to begin your research is to record the things that you already know. There are free programs available to save on your computer or online. There are programs that you can pay for and save on your computer or online. And then there are manual forms that you can fill out and save in your files. I do a little bit of several of these things. 

I like hard copies because I feel the product of my hard work. But I also save that information on an external hard drive for save keeping. I also save it on either CD's or SD cards and save them in a safe for extra precaution. If you have a fire or flood and your hard copy records get destroyed you have the other stored in a fireproof safe so they can be restored.

Write down all the information you know about you, your parents, and siblings, then your grandparents on both sides plus their children and more if you know. There are two forms that can help with this information. One is the pedigree chart which shows the family line from generation to generation. The second is a family group sheet where you can see yourself as the child in a family and when you are married with your own family shows you as the parent. Those two forms are crucial to the success in doing your family history.

So this week find these forms and fill in all you know so that you can see what you are still missing and need to do research on. Next time we can talk about what the next step can be to finding the missing info.

Free Family History Forms