Genealogy 101  

Starting with yourself, or a deceased parent or grandparent, work systematically backward one generation at a time to organize what you know and to fill in facts and information that you are lacking.

1.  Organize What You Know

    • Pedigree chart or Ahnentafel
      • Think hard about who should be 1. on the chart (perhaps not a living person)
        • Person x 2 = Father
        • Person x 2 + 1 = Mother
        • Divide to go backward
        • The numbering is the same for a pedigree chart or Ahnentafel
      • Fill in everything that you can, even "guess-timates," especially for post-1930 information
        • 1930 is the latest federal census we can access (72-year lag)
        • WPA transcriptions of birth, marriage and death records to 1920 or so may be the latest available online, in print, etc.
    • Family Group Record
      • Create a family group record for each couple on the pedigree chart or Ahnentafel
      • Fill in all that you can, especially post-1930 information
    • Resources
    • Once you have organized what you already know, you can see the gaps and start filling in the information that is missing.


2.  Add Information (Informal)

3.  Add Information (Formal)

4.  Evaluate the Sources and the Information

    • Digitized resources and databases
      • Images of books, records, etc. may contain incorrect information; but they are exact pictures of the original information.
      • Transcriptions of books, records, etc. may introduce errors (typos, incorrect transcription of difficult handwriting, etc.).
      • Indexes may be incomplete or inaccurate or both
        • Bad OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for digital images
        • Bad, careless, too rapid manual indexing
    • Contributed information
      • The information is only as good as the contributor
      • Has the contributor cited a source?
      • Potential value: it may be easier to verify or refute contributed information than to have no information at all
    • The Genealogical Proof Standard (Board for Certification of Genealogists)

5.  Decisions

Last revised: February 3, 2010