How to Start My Family History Research-
Determine Where To Start
Family History Research – Determine Where To Start!
At the end of the last lesson, you would have had a semi-completed Pedigree Chart.
Kindly open it up now so we can take a look at it!
When you have it open in front of you, what we are looking for is blank areas in the chart that indicate what we do not know or, more importantly, what is not 100% accurate!
Hopefully, you have only placed the information into the pedigree chart that you have verified by official documentation. If not please remove that information from your chart.
Remember, as family historians, we do not accept any data unless it has authentic sources and has been proven to be correct. This saves you possibly months, if not years, of research later on.
Just imagine your anguish and frustration, if you discover you have been researching a family line that later on you found out was not related to you, in any way, all because you placed an uncorroborated or unsourced addition to your tree.
So, from our chart we now know we need to find the following:
- Our parent’s marriage date,
- Our mother’s birth and possibly death date,
- Joe Bloe’s Birth Date,
- Joe Bloe and Alice White’s Marriage Date,
- Alice White’s Death Date,
- Jesse Black’s Birth, Marriage and Death Date,
and then finally, from this particular chart.
- Jessie Black’s wife’s Name, Birth, and Death Date,
Now go through your own chart in the same manner and write down all the information that is currently blank and requires you to undertake further research.
In the next lesson, we will look at how you can go about finding out what information may already exist, and how you can use it to start filling in some of the blanks.