Are you new to genealogist and you want to start successfully
climbing your family tree? Fantastic. You're in the right
place. In this video, I'm going to show you five things
that you need to know to be more successful finding your
family. Howdy, I'm Devon Noel Lee with Family History
Fanatics where we help you understand your DNA, climb your
family tree, and write your ancestor stories along the way.
Now, if you are a newbie genealogist in the comment
section below this video, type newbie. If you are a
experienced genealogist, say genealogist. That way, I'll
know who's watching this video. So, for you newbie genealogist,
I want to take you back in time, back in time to when I
started doing genealogy. In every beginning genealogist
workshop I ever attended oh so long ago they always handed me
this chart. And they said fill it out. Start putting facts
about yourself and your family on this chart. Yeah. There's a
problem with that. I don't know about you but I don't know all
of the facts that go on this chart. I mean it was a good job
I knew the names of my parents and their birth dates and where
they were born. I didn't always remember when they were
married. And then Grandma Geisler was Grandma Geisler but
that's not really the name I'm supposed to put on the chart.
So what is a person to do? And if you are adopted yeah this
doesn't work. So when you start climbing your family tree you
need to start in a different location. So while I agree that
starting with yourself is important I think you really
need to start with your stuff or the stuff that you have
access into your close family members home. Let me tell you
why. Well, first of all, many of us have photos and if you
have a disorganized mess like this, then, you need to go
visit the description of this video for a link to how to
solve this problem but in your photos are clues to your past
and the sooner you get it organized and labeled and
identify the people in them, you're going to save yourself a
heap of time climbing your family tree because those
photos help you understand relationships. The next thing
you want to pay attention to in your stuff is documents. I
can't tell you the number of time that myself and others
have found the answer that they've sought for 10 years to
solve a genealogy mystery only to find it's in the documents
in the in the journals that are in their home. So take time to
examine the documents, the letters, the diaries that are
in your home or in the home of people around you that you're
closely related to. Next, possessions. Yeah, very few
genealogists tell you about possessions but I can't tell
you the number of time that I've looked at the possessions
that belong to my grandparents and my great grandparents and
found the clues I needed to find more records about them
and to bust through some of their lyric roles so
possessions what artifacts are around your home that give you
clues to your heritage take time to find out the stories
about them and while you're at it take a picture or two and
finally people in genealogy we've got to talk to people and
we've got to talk to people before they are no longer able
to talk to us so you need to talk to people and not just say
tell me when something happened facts. Ask those questions we
learned in grammar school. Who, what, when, where, why, and how
because people remember stories and when they remember stories,
then, they can also pick up the facts and when you're a newbie
genealogist, go ahead and take a DNA test for yourself and any
living relatives that are willing to do so. You don't
want to start doing genetic genealogy just yet but you
don't want to miss out on the opportunity to one, have
someone else do your genealogy for you and two, miss out on
the gene genes that you need when it you have the skills to
do genetic genealogy. Take the test now so that you can use it
later when you're ready. Principle number two, if you
have never done genealogy before the last thing you want
to do is look at your pedigree chart, find an empty place in
your third great grandfathered gen and start researching
there. The records are challenging or non existent or
in a different language or or or. So instead, you're going to
do that principle of starting with yourself but you're going
to become very familiar with the documents that prove who
you say you are unless you don't want to prove yourself.
So, you want to explore the documents of your birth, your
marriage, if you have married, even if you've married multiple
times, it's okay. Get your documents together and look at
them. Familiarize yourself with the content that are on these
types of records and then, as you begin to explore more about
yourself and documenting yourself, you're going to look
for census records. If you're old enough to appear in the
census records, you're going to look for city directories,
telephone books, school directories, church
directories, you're going to look at school records,
military record, any record you have about your you're going to
not only organize them and familiarize yourself with them,
you're going to prepare yourself for when you move on
to the next generation. You're going to gather in corral
records about your parents, their birth, their marriage,
their death if they've passed away and so on and then you're
going to repeat the process and go find census records about
them if they're old enough and city directories and military
records and so on and so forth. That is what we do in
genealogy. We find a new person and look for records to
establish who they are. Find the clues in there and move
back generation by generation by generation but what happens
if you're adopted? Well, you need to build your genealogy
muscles and as I said in this video how to begin researching
if you're adopted. You need to practice on people that you are
familiar with. So, your adopted line and if you don't like
them, then, just pick somebody that you know and do their
genealogy for a little bit. The concept is you need to practice
building from current to the past with someone that is known
so you can know when you make a wrong turn or right turn and
then take those skills and apply it to your adopted family
tree. Be sure to check the links in the description for
more strategies if you're adopted. Now, if you're still
struggling to familiarize yourself with records or the
records you have found are not the genealogy record you were
would expect then may I suggest you go and learn how to do some
indexing I have a video on how to do that be sure to check a
link in the description but when I need to flex my muscles
with records I go do indexing. Now one of the things that I
wish I knew when I was a young genealogist, a newbie
genealogist was how to determine if a record is a good
source or not. Not every rec is recreated equal and lots of
errors creep in to the documents. So what is a good
source? Typically and I have to stress typically typically a
good genealogy source is one that is created close to the
time an event happens. So a birth certificate would be
better than a death certificate to tell you when someone was
born. The next part of the state is it's created close to
the time of the event with a witness who can attest or
testify to that event taking place so would a child be able
to be a reliable informant to when their parents were born no
because they weren't alive when their parents were born but
would a mother or a midwife be able to attest to the birth of
a child more than likely Now, that doesn't mean the records
are always foolproof and they don't have errors. Ask anybody
who's been adopted or find the nonexpected change in their
birth and who they were related to. So, some records do have
outright lies or just mistakes but use this as a guiding
principle to help you understand is a record reliable
or not. So, here's an example of a good geneal source. It is
a passenger record. Now, it doesn't give you everything but
it was created at the time that people boarded ships or got off
the ship. So, it's contemporary to the events of someone
immigrating. That's about it. All the other details, their
age, their nationality, and those types of information.
Yeah, that person didn't really attest to those things. They're
relying on your ancestor to tell them the truth. So, within
a document some information is that first hand information and
some of it is second hand so you need to be very careful in
how you analyze documents now let's look at this this is a
hand drawn family tree is it a good source well you never
want to absolutely rule out sources because it could be
clues and hand drawn trees like this often point me in the
direction of records and I hadn't thought of before
because I talked to people. However, I wouldn't rely solely
on a tree like this until I backed it up with more records
which comes to my next point. One record does not rule them
all. You need a collection of information to help you
validate your relationships between your ancestors and the
dates and places where a facts happens in their life. Can give
you all the ins and outs on how to evaluate records so I want
to direct you to other videos we have on this channel. If you
want to learn how to evaluate a death record, be sure to check
out this video. I even have a video on how to evaluate what
we call derivative. I know, derived from other people's
information. This is fine degrees and I have a video that
teaches you how to evaluate that as well. All the links to
the videos I'm going to about in this video are found in the
description. The third thing I wish I learned when I was a
newbie genealogist that I hope you'll take to heart is that
you have to take time to explain yourself. When my
brother was a teenager, he had this phrase, prove it. It
didn't matter what the topic was and it typically wasn't
genealogy but if you made a statement, he wanted you to
prove it and that applies to genealogy. So, let's say you
find this census record and yeah I know it's really hard to
read. It actually is just hard to read. It doesn't get better.
In any case let's say you think you know that is my great
grandfather George Geisler. Even though the name is really
poorly written. And the indexer the person who made this form
searchable by putting information into the database
they didn't even get in close to Geisler. But let's say I
believe that this is my ancestor. Well, I have to
explain to myself and others why that is. So, I'll say
things like, even though this record was indexed as
grassless. It's really geistler because this, this, this, and
this. You need to leave yourself a note breadcrumb
trail because just like Hansel and Gretel needed to follow a
breadcrumb trail, hopefully to get back out of the woods, if
you leave a permanent breadcrumb gels than theirs
then when you come and revisit a situation like this five
years from now five months from now or even five days from now
you'll remember why you need that decision so develop the
habit of explaining why you think records pertain to your
ancestor or your ancestors family you will be glad you did
now if you want some more training on how to do that
check out this video now the final thing you want to know
about genealogy when you're a beginner is that you need to
stay organized with your citations. Yeah, go back to
English class. Do you remember what your teachers told you to
do? Anytime you had a fact taken from something else, you
needed to cite your sources. Now, in genealogy, people get a
little overzealous with their citing the sources but I'm
going to show you as a beginner how to do this. So, let's go
back to this record. I want to remember that I saw this
document and I want to keep track of it in the future.
Well, I could spend time crafting a source citation like
this or I could go to Family Search and since my trees on
family church search I can attach the record to George and
now I have a list of all the documents very much like that
bibliography in English class the sources that document
George over on ancestry they do something similar right here in
the middle is a list of the sources that pertain to George
and what I really like is they show you the facts that they
pertain to and any additional individuals to which attach
this one particular source. Some sources actually pertain
to multiple people. So, it's really cool to visually see how
these records are connected and if you want to invest in a
genealogy software program, you're going to have to craft
your own citations but programs like Roots Magic and Family
Tree Maker, you know what they do? They give you forms and you
just type in the information kind of like citation machine
for the MLA and the APA the Chicago. Mm hmm. When you're
writing those reports, there's similar forms in Roots Magic
Legacy Software and Family Tree Maker that will give you the
forms that you can craft your citations and keep the facts
together. So, be sure that you organize your citations but
don't stress out about them. Now, if you will keep these
five principles in mind, you will climb your tree faster
than if you were back in the days when I began Take
advantage of all the videos that are here on Family History
Fanatics YouTube channel. Our latest one is here and tips on
how to become a better genealogist right here.