Genealogy...where to start?

[sirdaniel1975]

[/b]ALWAYS, ALWAYS [/b] start with the present and go backwards in time. It may be inviting to skip over a generation or two or 10 to some one you "just know" had to be an ancestor, but you could be building a genealogical edifice on sand and end up watching decades of research crumble when the truth emerges. Working from the past forward almost always leads to disappointments and ultimately a waste of time.

As has been said, the best way to start is talking to the oldest people in your family, tape recorder in hand. Interviewing the elderly is an art in itself. Sometimes you just have to let them ramble on until the synapses click in their own good time.

There are probably several good introductory books to how to start genealogical research at your local library, bookstore, Amazon.com, etc.

I would hold off on subscription websites until I had a better idea of where exactly you will be looking and what you will be looking for; however, ancestry.com has more public records than others. Rootsweb is free.

I would used www.familysearch.org with exteme caution. They don't do much---or any that I know of---quality control, and archive whatever research is given them, sometimes by professionals, sometimes by bored amateur teenage LDS members fullfilling their religious obligations when they would rather be doing soemthing else. I have come across valuable informatino there, but relied on it ONLY after verifying it elsewhere.

Genealogical research can be fun, a shared project to do with others in your family, but also addictive, more than kilts. For every generation you go back, you add another line to research, mothers' and fathers'. There is a finite number of tartans, but we each have an infinite number of ancestral lives.

There is one other resource, DNA testing. It is in its infancy, only generally available for the last 6-7 years or so. You might take a look at the FAQ at www.familytreedna.com, which has the largest and therefore the most helpful database of DNA test results. You may find something helpful, you may find nothing, or you may match someone who has a well-researched paper trail who turns up in months or years. I think at this point Y chromosome DNA testing is more helpful for showing you areas where it might be beneficial to research, and areas where it would definitely not be helpful to research, rather than giving results that have the certainty of a well-documented paper trail.

Gilmore has a point about familysearch.org , although I do suggest using it. Use it as a cross reference database, not as your sole researcher. They have included lots of dates, BMD's that are fairly close. It's good to get in the ballpark. I will say and back up Gilmore's point again. There are loads of records that are the same person, with multiple entries and slightly different dates. I suggest referencing all of it, until you can weed out the nonsense.

ancestry.com is running a 50% off the cost of DNA testing right now, so that's something to think about.

[gilmore]

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ancestry.com is running a 50% off the cost of DNA testing right now, so that's something to think about.

If it was me, I wouldn't use it, or maybe only use it to verify unexpected results I got from Family Tree DNA. DNA testing is only as good as the database that your results are compared to. Ancestry.com has been doing DNA testing for only a year or so, while Family Tree DNA has been doing it for several years and has by far the largest consumer-driven genealogical DNA database in the world. Therefore, you are far more likely to get matches using it than using a smaller database. But then I guess you get what you pay for.

There is another site that may be helpful, www.ysearch.org. It is sponsored by FTDNA, but you can go there and enter results from any testing company.