Insight #1--Your Genealogy Activities

As you begin your Family History journey, keeping track of your discoveries in an organized way will help.  Write down notes about a particular ancestor before doing any research.  Before begining your search, think about what you want to find and write it down to help you remember what you are looking for. A research log is a great way to do this. 

1. Start with the full name of your ancestor.  Most search engines (Yahoo, Google, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch

2.  Be consistent with dates and places.  A common method for a date is Day/Month/year: 2 Feb 1945.
A common method for notating a location is City/County/State/Country: Midvale, Salt Lake, Utah, United States

3.  Scan through  results of searches quickly.  Most searches will result with 5,000 to 500,000 results.  Many search sites will use a scale of stars (*) to indicate relevance.  The more stars the better.

Alma Anderson and Family, LaRee's Great Grandfather

4.  Involve your family when possible.  They may remember something about your ancestor that you didn't know. 

5.  Check out the Family History Library Favorites.... a great resource that is organized by geographic regional websites regarding national and internation genealogy searches.

6. Be sure to use a software program like PAF (free), ancestry.com, RootsMagic, or LegacyFamilyTree.com or more to store your records.

7.  Keep track of your results.  Use your research log to mark down your findings so that you can reference them later.

George 25 Aug 2010