Some Research Basics
1. “Start with the end in mind.” Decide what you wish to accomplish, and work towards your goals. Your paper documents and information stored only on your own computer may eventually be lost. Save your family history on FamilySearch,org to keep it safe. We have been saving genealogy for 120 years,
2. Start with yourself, and ask your older relatives for family history information. Information on people born in the recent 100 years may be protected by privacy legislation, so it is hard to find online.
3. To find out what records exist for a particular place, check www.familysearch.org/wiki
4. Printed charts can help to organize relationship information. There are two basic types:
Family
Group Records will list the parents and their children with dates and
places,
Pedigree Charts will list a person and their direct
ancestors with dates and places.
5. Work backward in time, adding sources as you go, to document your family tree.
6. Remember that the same name will have different spellings, depending on the clerk who wrote it. And names can change over time. Immigrant names are especially likely to change. And be aware of nicknames. Often people born before 1850 could not read or write, even in industrialized countries.
7. The most important information besides the name is usually the birth, as it follows a person throughout their life, Marriage and death information is important for those specific events, but birth information may be used in all the records of that person. "Birth dates" are often estimated from age.
8. You can estimate dates and places, if you are careful. Parents are typically 30 years older than their middle child. Look for records in places that they lived. Replace estimates with facts as they are found.
9. You can search the billions of FamilySearch historical records from any Person Details page in Family Tree or by clicking Search > Records.
10. The map is your friend. In rural areas of Europe, families often remained in place for multiple generations. A young man in a rural area usually found a wife within 7 miles of where he lived, if he had to travel by foot. If they lived by a county boundary, search on both sides of the boundary.
11. People were generally born at home. The “birthplace” may be listed as a nearby town or city.
12. Think of census records as a series of Family Group Records. Coordinate data across multiple censuses. (Remember that ages are usually approximate.) Often they help you find vital records.
13. The further back in time, the fewer records exist. Records of common people seldom exist before 1600 and almost never before 1500 in Europe. Aristocrats owned all of the land, so they can sometimes be found further back in time through deeds and titles. Noble lines may connect to royalty.
14. You will occasionally make mistakes in your research. Family Tree will point out some errors, but not all of them. If you make a mistake at one point, you can correct it later. Avoid merging records unless you are sure they identify the same person. As Sister Wendy Watson Nelson said at RootsTech, “I do my very best and then I move on.”
Some FamilySearch Basics
1. www.familysearch.org is part of the Genealogical Society of Utah, created by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1894, and well known for microfilming parish records, censuses and other old documents to protect them from loss or destruction. The world’s largest family history library is operated by FamilySearch, along with over 6000 FamilySearch Centers scattered throughout the world. These facilities and the website are 100% free for church members and the general public.
2. It is a safe place for your family history records. Your ancestors want to be there.
3. The Family Tree is part of FamilySearch, along with billions of historical records, and thousands of old user-submitted genealogies, books, and a Research Wiki that tells what records were created in various countries. There is also a place where you can help make old records computer-searchable.
4. The ability to add photos, stories, etc, is wonderful. As you add them, connect them to the people.
5. The FamilySearch Family Tree is not your private family tree, it is a shared tree, so share nicely.
6. Only you can see the information you add for living people, Records of the deceased are public.
Some DNA Basics
Nearly every cell of your body contains genetic coding in DNA, which you inherited from your parents and they inherited from their parents and so forth. The three common types of DNA tests are:
1. Y-DNA is passed from father to son. Y-DNA tests are available to males only, looking for other males with matching Y-DNA, indicating a common male ancestor. (In our culture it usually corresponds to the surname line.) It is useful for distinguishing between unrelated families with the same surname, and finding matches with documentation that goes back further in time than yours.
2. MT-DNA or Mitochondrial DNA is passed by a mother to her children. MT-DNA tests follow the direct maternal line, just as Y-DNA follows the direct paternal line. Recent developments (in the Million Mito Project) have made MT-DNA more useful for genealogy than it used to be.
3. Autosomal DNA, sometimes called a “Family Finder” DNA Test. This is the cheapest and perhaps the most interesting. It tests all of your ancestral lines, not just one line as in the case of the two other tests. But it gets unreliable beyond the 4th cousin level, because the amount of shared DNA decreases by half with each generation. It is especially popular with adoptees looking for biological family.
Which test is best depends on what you are trying to do. The slogan “The science does not lie.” ignores the fact that biological evidence is subject to interpretation. In particular, “ethnicity estimates” as given in Autosomal DNA tests depend on assumptions made by that testing service at that particular time. A DNA test might be a useful tool once you have gone as far as conventional research allows. FamilySearch makes no recommendation of any particular DNA test or testing service.
(The testing service FamilyTreeDNA.com has no connection to the FamilySearch Family Tree.)
Compiled by Bill Buchanan, Stake Consultant, Edmonton Alberta North Stake. (revised June 2025)
