How do you go about making a family tree and finding people from years and years ago?

Question

I am looking to make a family tree and I'm not sure how you can look up information about people that you're related to. No one in my family seems to know the story. Any good, RELIABLE, sites or do I need to go more in depth?

Answer 1

Sometimes in the news paper you can find genealogy clubs you can join.

Also as amazing as it may seem the Mormons have the most extensive records of people's backgrounds of any one in the world.  Contact a Latter Day Saint's Church and I'm sure they can help you.  (Same as Mormon)  (They might change something, I'm not sure.)

Answer 2

You should start by asking all your living relatives about family history.  Then, armed with that information, you can go to your public library and check to see if it has a genealogy department.  Most do nowadays; also, don't forget to check at community colleges, universities, etc.  Our public library has both www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com free for anyone to use (no library card required).

Another place to check out is any of the Mormon's Family History Centers.  They allow people to search for their family history (and, NO, they don't try to convert you).

A third option is one of the following websites:

http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

http://www.geni.com/

Cyndi's has the most links to genealogy websites, whether ship's passenger lists, ancestors from Africa, ancestors from the Philippines, where ever and whatever.

Of course, you may be successful by googling: "john doe, born 1620, plimouth, massachusetts" as an example.

Good luck and have fun!

Check out this article on five great free genealogy websites:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...

Then there is the DNA test; if you decide you want to REALLY know where your ancestors came from opt for the DNA test. Besides all the mistakes that officials commonly make, from 10% to 20% of birth certificates list the father wrong; that is, mama was doing the hanky-panky and someone else was the REAL father. That won't show up on the internet or in books; it WILL show up in DNA.

I used www.familytreedna.com which works with the National Geographics Genotype Program.

Answer 3

First u start with the family members you know and the other members of your family know going back to your grandparents.  Now from there you can either log into geneaological web sites (such as the mormon one, very big with loads of info) or something we did was to utilize census records online.  These list a persons name, where they lived and who they were married to and parents names.  So from there you trace back another 10 years to prior records and so on.  

This does get harder once you reach the end of local records and have to go overseas but there are records available from there as well (especially the UK).

Other records are old newspaper obituaries (loads of info, relatives etc), old telephone books list addresses for correlation of where people lived, tax records for cities and such.  If someone was in the military and a direct relation such records are available as well (usually by request).

There are sites that help in performing searches for names and such so hunt around. We even toured some grave yards as these years ago were quite family oriented in sections so was helpful in finding some obsure relatives and other families related by marriage (combining old marriage records and death records etc).

Have fun

Answer 4

After acquiring some basic information about your family (as suggested by nightbearer), you might find some of the genealogy message boards very helpful. All of these are free, though some require that you register: genforum . com / boards . ancestry . com / rootsweb . com / myfolks. com .

Good luck!