3 Tips on How to Build a Family Tree

Finding out about your family history can be so interesting for everyone in your family but where to start?

The website Family Seek (www.familyseek.com) offers 3 great tips for families who want to get started searching for their own family’s history and background.

Find Everything You Have

Gather all the materials you have access to into one place including birth and death certificates, marriage records, photos and things handed down from the family. Lay them out by family name to keep it straight. If you are missing something, ask your parents or other relatives what they have and make copies for your records.

Do an Interview

One thing I so regret now is not asking my grandmother and my father more questions about their childhoods, their siblings, stories from the family, etc. Take some time to ask questions about their lives, their challenges, the things that were different back then. As Family Seek points out, not every story is part of public record. Also record the names of any older relatives your family remembers so you can further research them.

Start a Family Tree

There are tons of on-line resources to use for filling out the family tree information. Also, you can utilize pedigree databases, genealogy message boards and public records databases. If you still live local to your family, you might also check public records available at the library.

If you want to try and work online, Family Seek suggests the following programs to use for working on your genealogy electronically:

Ancestral Quest – It’s driven on its own database and allows users to add an unlimited number of children, attach photos, videos and audio clips and can be downloaded to removable drives so you can take it with you while doing research elsewhere.

Family Tree Builder - This program contains wizards to help step you through the process. It was released by the website www.MyHeritage.com and offers automatic face tagging to attach names to photos in the program. The program also allows users to stick pins into maps to note locations and tie specific photos and events to this location such as births, deaths and where ancestors lived.

GEDitCOM II - A Mac-only software that offers drag-and-drop usability and built-in media players so users don’t have to rely on third-party media programs to view media files such as videos, audio clips and photographs.

Even if you can only go back as far as your great grandparents, that’s your children’s great-great grandparents and five generations completed for their own children someday! What are you waiting for?

Check out Family Seek (www.familyseek.com) for more ideas and tips for creating and chronicling your family’s rich heritage.

Marijo Tinlin is the editor in chief of Family First, one of the oldest family-oriented websites on the internet. She is also the author of the new book “How to Raise an American Patriot, Making it Okay for Our Kids to Be Proud to Be American” available at www.raisinganamericanpatriot.com.