How to find your ancestors: a beginner’s guide

1. Start with yourself and work backwards

Genealogy runs in one direction: from the known to the unknown. Write down yourself, your parents and your grandparents with whatever you know: full names, birth surnames, roughly when and where they were born, married and died. Each generation you confirm gives you the names, dates and places you need to search for the one before.

Resist the urge to start with a famous person who shares your surname and work down. It is the most common way to end up with somebody else’s ancestors.

2. Talk to older relatives

The oldest members of your family are the most valuable and most time-limited source you have. Visit or call them, take notes or record the conversation with permission, and bring old photos to prompt memories. Useful questions:

• What were your parents’ and grandparents’ full names, including surnames before marriage?
• Where did they live, and did the family move? Which town, village or district?
• Roughly when were they born, married and when did they die? Where are they buried?
• What did they do for work? Did anyone serve in the military or emigrate?
• Were there brothers, sisters or children who died young, or second marriages?
• Who else in the family kept papers, photos or a written family history?

Ask for places and approximate years rather than exact dates. “Born in Multan, a few years before Partition” is a better clue than a guessed date. Write down who told you each fact.

3. Search for papers at home

Before paying for anything, look through what the family already has. Ask relatives to check their drawers and boxes too:

• Birth, marriage and death certificates, passports, identity cards and naturalisation papers
• Marriage contracts such as a nikah nama, wedding cards and invitations
• Family Bibles, handwritten family trees and shajras kept by elders
• Letters, diaries, address books and funeral or memorial cards
• Photographs, especially with names or dates written on the back
• School reports, military service papers, property deeds and wills

Photograph or scan everything and note who owns the original. A single certificate can name parents, addresses and witnesses who are relatives.

4. Birth, marriage and death records

Civil registration records are the backbone of family history research. A birth record usually names both parents; a marriage record names the couple, often their ages, addresses and fathers; a death record gives an age and sometimes the parents or spouse. Together they let you climb one generation at a time.

Registration began at different times in different countries and regions, from the 1800s in much of Europe and North America to the 1900s elsewhere. Search the indexes for the place where the event happened, then order or view the full record: indexes often leave out the most useful details.

5. Census records

Many countries counted their population every ten years and recorded each household by name. Older censuses that have been released to the public list everyone living at an address, their ages, relationships to the head of the household, occupations and often birthplaces. Following one family through several censuses shows children being born and leaving home, and the birthplaces point you to the next records to search.

Ages and spellings in censuses are often approximate. Use them as clues that a certificate or register can confirm.

6. Religious, community and other records

Before civil registration, births, marriages and burials were usually recorded by religious communities: church baptism, marriage and burial registers, mosque and madrasa records, and temple or community registers. In some Hindu families, genealogy registers kept by priests at pilgrimage places such as Haridwar record visits and family members across many generations.

Also worth searching:

• Gravestones and cemetery records, which often name spouses and children.
• Newspapers: birth, marriage and death notices, obituaries and local news.
• Immigration and travel records: passenger lists, naturalisation files and passports.
• Military records: service files, pension papers and war memorials.
• Land, tax and probate records: wills and property transfers name heirs and relationships.

7. Archives, libraries and genealogy websites

National and regional archives hold most original records, and many have free online catalogues. Public libraries and family history societies often offer free access to subscription websites and local knowledge. Free genealogy websites such as FamilySearch host large collections of indexes and record images; commercial websites add more collections for a fee.

When a record is found online, save the image, the website and the collection name. You will want to find it again.

8. DNA tests

Consumer DNA tests compare your DNA with other testers. They can confirm a suspected relationship, find living cousins who have researched other branches, and estimate broad regions of origin. They do not hand you a list of ancestors: matches become meaningful when you compare them with a researched family tree.

DNA results also reveal information about your relatives and can uncover unexpected parentage. Read the company’s privacy settings first, and think about how you would handle a surprise.

9. Check your evidence

• Prefer records made at the time. A birth record made the week of the birth beats an age given decades later.
• Be careful with common names. Two people with the same name in the same district are common. Compare ages, places, spouses and parents before deciding they are one person.
• Treat online trees as clues. Check each fact against a record before adding it.
• Record uncertainty honestly. Write “abt 1890” or “bet 1888 and 1892” and a note, rather than a precise guess.
• Note conflicts. When two sources disagree, keep both in a note and say which you trust and why.

10. Keep it organised in a family tree

As your research grows, a family tree keeps everyone connected and stops facts from getting lost in notebooks. In this free family tree maker you can record each person’s names and also-known-as names, dates as precise or approximate as you know them, places, life events, notes and the sources you used. Tree health lists people entered twice so you can merge them.

Print a pedigree or fan chart to take to family gatherings: relatives fill in gaps much more readily when they can see the tree. If you use another genealogy program as well, move your tree between them with a GEDCOM file.