How can I trace my family??

Question

Im trying to trace my ancestry but I dont know when any of my relatives were born or got married. Where would I start?

Answer 1

You need to get organized and have a plan when you want to research your ancestry.  It is very difficult if you don't have guidance and tips to point you in the right direction.  This website was the most helpful to me and it comes with great printable guides to get you started.  

Answer 2

Any of your family members that are still alive won't exist in any official genealogy website, so you will have to ask them.  Family members that are dead can be found relatively easy (depending on their recency - the farther back you go, the harder it gets).

A good place to start would be to ask your oldest living relative on a particular family branch and ask them about their parents or grandparents.  Knowing that, you can go to a genealogy website (a good free one is www.familysearch.org hosted by the LDS church) and input the names of known ancestors with their spouse names to get pretty accurate results.  From there you can trace the line as far back as the site will let you.

Once you get to the point that the website can no longer help you, go to Google and type in the name of your search and the word "genealogy" or "family tree".  Chances are that someone, somewhere, has your same lineage and already has the information posted.  Look through the results and find one that matches the information that you have.  Remember, once you get new information, go back to your genealogy website and see if they have anything on the new person - they might have that person's genealogy link and no information that the two people were related.

If you want a genealogy program, a great one is PAF (also hosted by the LDS - they are really into genealogy), which can be downloaded for free here: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Home/Wel...

Answer 3

You start with yourself. Then you ask or look up your parents. Then you ask or look up your grandparents. You go back one generation at a time. You need to get back to people alive before 1930 before you can use most of the genealogy data on the web.

Please edit your question to put what country you live in, so that our friends the Brits don't waste their time giving you links to UK sites. Or, if you are a Brit, so the rest of us don't tell you about US Gen Web.