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Genealogy and Public Records - Searching for Your Family Tree

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by Christi Lundquist

Your family tree may well be one of the most prized possessions to come into your family, but for many families, it simply hasn't been started yet. Some families have placed a great emphasis on the importance of their family history and genealogy, and others struggle to find answers as to where they came from, and how they got there.

In today's world, most people leave a paper trail miles long as they fill out forms, purchase property, get married, divorced, gain credit, destroy credit, apply for loans, and sign documents. These records can be extremely useful when researching the genealogy of your family. But record keeping wasn't the strong point of our ancestors, but birth, death, and marriage records have proven to be extremely useful, and are readily available online, as well as directly from the public records of many courthouses.

Putting together a family tree can be a difficult task. It helps when you can give your project some organization right from the beginning. Set goals of how long each day or each week you would like to spend on your project, because there will be times you are truly addicted to your project, and just don't want to quit for the night, and on the other hand, there will times you are completely frustrated, and won't want to touch it again for a year! This is one of the major reasons why people just starting to build their family tree end up quitting halfway through, never to pick up where they left off. Keep your project moving, and if you loose motivation in one area, try to move on to another area of the genealogical line. If one relative seems to continue to provide dead ends, try a different relative. That's the true beauty of building a family tree. With extended family relationships, you have the option of using several different people searches to get information about the same relative.

Starting with yourself, your family will begin with two sides – your mother's side of the family, and your father's side of the family. If you're working in your complete family tree, you will want to keep records on both sides of your family, and keep them separated. As you delve deeper into your family line, you will find many names of people you have never heard of, and you don't want to mix the family records, complicating the process. By keeping the two sides of the family separated, you will be better able to keep track of the names, the relations, and it will make the long term goal of the project easier to see. There will inevitably be times when you'll feel as though you've hit a road block, and it can be very helpful to have another area you can concentrate on while you contemplate your options.

When you are ready to begin, there is one key factor that will help you trace the lines of relatives in your family. With common names, simply Googling for information may not be enough. Start with someone who is LIVING. Many people make the mistake of trying to begin with someone in the family who has already passed, which can work in some cases, but in others, it creates a dead end too early in the project. This is especially true when searching online for answers. When it comes to information online, let's face it, there's a lot to sort through. If you're starting with yourself, work your way up to your parents and grandparents, because you may end up with information that can lead you to more. For a really privileged start, run a report on yourself using a company like PeopleFinders, which will give you specific information to work with. Memories fade, and names, addresses, and other information becomes harder to precisely remember. Without correct details, you could halt your search before it has truly begun.

Feb 12, 2007

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