How to Start My Family History Research:
Start With Yourself!
Start With Yourself!
Family History Research: Start With Yourself! Write down everything you know about your family.
This can include, but not be limited to:
- Yourself,
- Your Partner,
- Your Children,
- Your Parents,
- Your Siblings,
- Your Aunts and Uncles,
- Your Cousins, and
- Your Grandparents.
The type of information you may wish to gather at this stage may include:
- Names,
- Birth dates,
- Marriage Dates,
- Death Dates,
- Occupations,
- Home Addresses,
- Event Locations, and
- Family Stories.
Exactly how much information you wish to collect, is entirely up to you.
You may not utilise it all at the moment, but you may find it valuable in your future research endeavours, especially if you get stuck and need to use it to find an alternative way forward.
Some Quick Tips:
- When collecting this information, start with the known, yourself, and work
backwards, - Stick with the facts and the information that you know to be true … and
- Disregard rumour, here-say and family stories or legends
- Remember that you are just starting out and that you do not need to find every little piece of information at this point in time. You are just building yourself a base to grow your research.
We’ll leave it here for now and allow you to go away and gather as much information as you can.
In the next video, we will cover how you go about visualising the information you are about to put together, so you can obtain a full understanding of what information you have, what information you need to find, and, what your path forward will be.
Please ensure you have some Family History forms and charts ready to go before you start on the next tutorial. If you do not have any you can find them here.