Getting going
Place your immediate family at the start of your family tree, and work from there, with what you already know before doing any research at all. Start with yourself, your children or your grandchildren - it is usual to start with the youngest members. Then work through your siblings and their children, and then your parents. Thereafter, you will be working backwards through time.
'If you have a particularly complex family tree, you may want to make copies of various sections for ease of reference when you are researching.'
You will soon want to move on to more in-depth researches. When you are ready, go to the companion article to this one - 'Getting Started on Your Family Tree' (see right, for link).
It is best to work with two copies of your family tree as you go along. One should be a working copy that you can amend as you pursue lines of enquiry, and the other the master copy, on which you can record known or verified facts.
On your working copy, make a note in pencil of evidence gathered from talking to other family members, such as presumed birth, death and marriage dates of possible relations. These can then be researched and added to the master copy on confirmation.
Where possible, try to keep separate research notes for each family member. If you can develop some form of reference system that links your notes to people on the family tree - perhaps using a card index system if you are not working on a computer - it will help you keep a clear idea of where you are going.
Make sure that you keep abbreviations in notes and on the family tree as consistent as possible. Try to compile your own glossary of abbreviations as you go, adding new ones to the list as your family tree becomes more complex.
If you amend the master copy, remember to make a note of the date on the working copy - so that you know when you last transferred data from one to the other.
You may find your working copy gets quite confusing. When this happens, start again with a fresh version and date it. Keep the old one for reference, because accidents can happen, and notes do get lost.
If you have a particularly complex family tree, you may want to make copies of various sections for ease of reference when you are researching.
Remember, 'Getting Started on Your Family Tree' will help you with your next steps. Good luck!
About the author
About the author
Dr Nick Barratt worked at the Public Record Office (now The National Archives, or TNA) from 1996 to 2000, with the family history team. He has given many talks on family history, and has written frequently for the TNA's genealogy journal, Ancestors. He has worked for the 麻豆官网首页入口 as a specialist researcher on programmes such as 'One Foot in the Past','The People Detective' and 'Who Do You Think you Are?'.
Published: 2004-09-13
