How to start a family tree when you know almost nothing.
Start with yourself and go back one generation at a time: your parents, then your grandparents, writing down only what you know and where you learned it. One name and a rough date is enough to begin; each record you find names the next person to look for.
1. Write down what you already know.
Your own birth, your parents' names, where they grew up. Then your grandparents, even if all you have is a first name and a town. Note where each fact came from ("Mom said", "on the funeral card"), because a fact with a source is worth ten without one.
2. Ask before memories are lost.
The oldest people in your family know things no record holds: nicknames, the town "back home", who wasn't spoken of. Ask them now. Look through what's in drawers and attics too: letters, obituaries, photographs with names on the back.
3. Go back one generation at a time.
Don't jump to a famous name with your surname. Find each parent from their child's records (a birth, a marriage or a death record usually names them), and only then look for their parents. The National Archives' genealogy guide starts the same way: with yourself, working backward.
4. Keep it in a file that's yours.
Whatever program you use, make sure you can save your tree as a GEDCOM file, so your work is never locked in one place.
Or just ask.
AncestralFire does these steps with you. Tell it one name, and it reads your tree, searches FamilySearch Family Tree once you connect it, and tells you what it found, with the source behind each fact. A real answer:
I'm Eunice Kennedy. I'd like to meet my dad's father, Patrick Joseph Kennedy.
I'm your family-history partner here; we'll start with what you know, then look for public records for relatives who've died. I added Eunice Kennedy as the center of your tree and noted Patrick Joseph Kennedy as your dad's father.
A new account's first answer: one name is enough to start.
See a whole conversation on How it works, or what it finds in one family: The Kennedy family tree, from Wexford to Dallas.
Keep reading.
- Is AI genealogy accurate? What to check. It can be, when it answers from records and says which ones.
- Second cousin once removed? Work it out. A second cousin is someone who shares a set of great-grandparents with you, and "once removed" means you are one generation apart: your second cousin's child, or your parent's second cousin.