Starting your family history research can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. This simple checklist will help you take those important first steps and begin building your family tree with confidence.
☐ Write down your own full name, date of birth, and place of birth.
☐ Add your parents' names, dates, and places of birth (if known).
☐ Add your grandparents' names and any details you know about them.
☐ Record any marriages, deaths, or other important family events you know.
☐ Speak with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other relatives.
☐ Ask about family stories, photographs, and old documents.
☐ Write down what you learn.
☐ Make note of who provided the information.
☐ Look for birth, marriage, and death certificates.
☐ Collect family photographs.
☐ Search for letters, diaries, family bibles, or newspaper clippings.
☐ Make copies or take photographs of important items.
☐ Create a folder (digital, paper, or both) for your research.
☐ Save documents and photographs in one place.
☐ Give files clear names so they are easy to find later.
☐ Keep a simple list of where information came from.
☐ Search for records that support the information you already have.
☐ Look for census records, newspapers, cemetery records, and vital records.
☐ Record what you searched and what you found.
☐ Remember that finding nothing is still useful information.
☐ Check that dates and places make sense.
☐ Don't assume online family trees are correct.
☐ Save your work and back it up.
☐ Enjoy the journey!
Skeletons Key Tip
Don't try to trace every branch of your family tree at once.
Choose one person, one family line, or one question and focus on that first. Genealogy is a marathon, not a sprint. Careful, methodical research almost always produces better results than trying to race back hundreds of years in a single weekend.
Remember: Every experienced genealogist started with exactly the same first step—recording what they already knew.
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