Seven Tips to Get You Started on a Genealogy Search

1. Start with your immediate family. Begin with yourself and work backwards. The information you'll need for each person is: full name (including maiden names for women), approximate dates for vital events (birth, death, marriage) and locations for vital events (location is the key element in genealogy since it indicates where the vital records are today).
2. Gather family information. Now that you've determined what you already know, you are ready to fill in the missing pieces. Gather your home resources such as scrapbooks, bibles, photograph albums and journals. Interview family members and record the information by hand or with computer software. Print out family group sheets and pedigree charts and fill them in as you go. Keep notes about different families within your family history separate. Most researchers sort research notes by surname or individual, then by location and then by topic or source the information came from.
3. Focus your search. You have eight great-grandparents making up four families. Choose to focus on one ancestor.
4. Write for death records. Death records are essential tools for finding out about one's lost relatives because they include the exact place of death (which leads you to other records about the person's life and death), name of the person's father and maiden name of the person's mother, exact date of birth and death and possibly the person's spouse, cemetery where the person was interred, social security number and other information. Remember that 20 percent of birth/death certificates have mistakes. Therefore, it is important to obtain many different kinds of records to compare for accuracy.
5. Follow up on death record clues. Death records can provide clues for other information such as social security records, cemetery records and funeral records.
6. Search the census. Since 1840, census records list ages, places of birth, occupation, personal wealth, education, spouse, children, hired hands, and immigration information. To protect individual privacy, the government doesn't release census data for 72 years after they take it, so the 1930 census is the latest available. Your public library may have access to "Heritage Quest Online" and/or "Ancestry Library Edition." Both of these databases have the complete set of Federal Census records digitized and searchable.
7. Search at the state and county level. If you've located an ancestor on a census, you know their county of residence. Now you're ready to search for their records at the state and county level. Many states have started putting vital records online. Check with your local library for assistance in finding those records. State and county documents to search for include: newspapers, state censuses, state military records, county histories, special genealogy collections, birth, death or marriage records, tax lists, voter registrations, court records such as vital and land records, coroner's records and probate records such as wills and estate papers. Find these documents in places such as state archives, county courthouses, cemeteries and funeral homes, land offices, libraries and museums and local genealogy and historical societies.