How do I begin ???????

This is a tricky question. How do you begin? First and full most you gather as much information you can from living relatives. talk to you Parents, Grandparents,Aunts and Uncles. Take notes on everything they tell you, your primary information needed is FULL names (first, middle, last) Dates (Birth,Christening,Marriage,death) Places (birth,Christening,Marriage and Death). Do not worry if anyone you talk to doesn't have a clue most information can be found online (if they are deceased) and can be obtained by the clerks office. I have made myself a template I call census records  (see Pictures Below) each line is for every Grandparent and then I have columns for key Items I am trying to obtain.

As you can see I just black out what I DON'T need  and Highlight what I have gotten.


Second would be to set up a program to store all this new information in. If you use the computer, there are a couple programs you can use. I Use a combination of PAF = Personal Ancestrial File this you can obtain in the attached link to the LDS Family site. the other one I use is a similar program with a tad bit more Link is attached to this post. BOTH programs are realisiic and easy to use. Neither really needs any explanaition to how to use it unless your an LDS and need to do Temple Ready

My beginnings

Don't find new cousins! Just kidding.

How my Family mess started was actually rather simple. We got our computer in 1999, At this time I had found Rootsweb.com. My Aunt had started my family tree in the early 1980's, she even went to Norway and Germany and got some information. Well I took that information and the 100 name's she had come up with and put them on this site, here I thought I am not going to get any farther then she did. WRONG WRONG WRONG. 

Just about the middle of January of 2000 I received and email from a guy in Minnesota subject line simply said "HI, I am your cousin" OOOOOOOOOk. Well we talked back and forth for a few days, but now this had peaked my genealogy interest a tad more. So I started deeper hunting and searching and this is exactly how it went. The next week I found my cousins in Norway who actually still live on OUR family farm, the next week he found a cousin in Australia. This was blowing my mind. Then he found another one in Oklahoma. 

Then one Wednesday night I was on the computer after dinner as normal and Googling my last name and going through a ton of sites I came across this one tree that had my 3rd Great Grandparents on it so I said I' am going to see just how far back she has. So I started clicking on the fathers then it split to the mothers. It was going and going. THEN the wording started to change and since I do not know Norwegian I had to Google. WHAT Hey no. Curious the word was Kong Means King. 

Seems that my (if my memory is correct) 6th Great Grandfather was married had a son, his wife died and he remarried my 6th Great Grandmother and this is my line. SO to find out through a half brother we are connected to all the Kings of Norway and Denmark from 1580 Ad to think it was 34 BC, I kid you not. BUT as you search and such you find out that this line of the family is High up and are hooked into English Royalty, William 1st, OK my Head was spinning. OK from 100 names to over 22,000. And about 1/4 documented and verified. Isn't that a good reason for my head to be spinning? OK NOT all are blood related and technically connected, how my tree works is there are all the branched and leaves over all blood relatives and then their family huh? OK Johnny married Mary Turner. Mary's blood relatives and at least 4 generations if not more if they had more, are attached. 

You Will notice I may repeat myself.  Why I do this is to stress what is important to keep in mind to help you on your journey.

Truth or Not the Truth thats the Question

You go to Ancestry. com,  and Rootsweb.com and also Familysearch.org  and you find your umteenth Great Grandpa.  IS it him?  all looks good  so you take the information and add it to your tree.  then find out its wrong.  KEY NOTE.   These sites the trees are uploaded by you and me so if YOU have wrong information  your just passing it onto the next and so on. So MY suggestion.  write the information down and store in notebook and keep going back use it as a base not a law.  If you find out its true  cool  but if not then it's not on your tree yet.