Which Is Which : Genealogies And Family Trees On Familysearch.Org: Fill & Download for Free

Genealogy can feel overwhelming at first. When you're just starting out, it seems like there is an endless sea of resources to wade though. That's because there basically is. I would know—I navigated that sea for my latest project, It's All Relative, where I set out to create the biggest family tree in the world. Here are some great resource recommendations that will make the life of a budding genealogist a little easier right off the bat.1. Your living relatives.My mother-in-law recently pointed out that if we wanted to ask her anything, she’s “not going to live forever.” An excellent point. So my wife and sons sat down and videotaped her for three hours telling stories, some fascinating, some baffling (when asked her favorite childhood hobby, she said “throwing potatoes into the fire”). But it was three of the most valuable hours we’ve spent recently. I'd urge you to get out your pen and paper, tape recorder, or webcam and interview your parents, grandparents, great-uncles—anyone willing to remember and reflect.2. Online resourcesGenealogists talk about the Big Four sites—Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and FindMyPast.These four offer similar services—you can map your tree, link to relatives, control your privacy, find birth certificates and other documents—and they’re all good. You can’t really go wrong. But each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. Which is the best for you? To make an educated decision, watch this video: https://www.rootstech.org/videos/sunny-morton.Or if you’re in a hurry, here’s a super quick rundown.FamilySearch (familysearch.org, free)This site, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is free and huge—it’s got 4 billion profiles (by far the most) and a massive database of documents.Ancestry (ancestry.com, paid)This is the Coca-Cola of the paying family history sites—the most recognized brand name. It’s got 2.5 million subscribed users, and it scours databases to provide you hints of possible documents related to your ancestors. It’s also the most expensive of the four.MyHeritage (myheritage.com, paid)Based out of Israel, this site also offers powerful databases as well as DNA features incorporated into its 35 million family trees. It’s particularly strong internationally, such as Europe and the Middle East. Plus, it’s affiliated with Family Tree & Family History at Geni.com (see below).FindMyPast (findmypast.com, paid)With more than 4 billion searchable records, FindMyPast is especially robust in British and Irish databases, though it’s also building up a sizable collection of records for the United States and Canada.3. Connect to the worldIf you want to help build a World Family Tree—and connect yourself to everyone from Jane Austen to Aziz Ansari—I recommend one of these sites. Both of them use the Wiki model: thousands of users from all over the world collaborating and sharing information. Both of them also combine DNA results with traditional genealogical research.Geni (geni.com)This is the site I use the most. It’s got more than 100 million profiles and is an easy way to connect to cousins all over the world. I find the interface to be intuitive, and the how-are-we-connected function far too much fun. It’s got a free version, but the extra good stuff requires a subscription.WikiTree (wikitree.com)First of all, it’s free, which is nice. And its strength lies with its community—it’s a collaborative, friendly, generous, and hard-working group. WikiTree has nearly 15 million profiles.4. DNA testingThere are now more than 50 firms offering DNA testing, from the mainstream 23andMe to the lesser-known service “Who’z the Daddy” (check out the cartoon sperm in the logo on its website whozthedaddy.com).DNA testing has its drawbacks: You may discover unpleasant family secrets, and in this post-WikiLeaks world, you might not be able to keep the results private forever. But overall, we’re still protesting. The benefits are too enticing for us.DNA testing can give you an estimate of your ethnic breakdown and a list of people with whom you share DNA. Sometimes the revelations can be life changing. Here are the major services I recommend: 23andme, MyHeritage, AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA and the Personal Genome Project.5. Old newspapersOne of the biggest advances in family history (or regular history, for that matter) has been the recent digitization of newspapers. We love them, and not just for the numerous sock-garter ads. Here are three of our favorite sites:Chronicling America (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, free)The Library of Congress maintains this amazing database of historic newspapers. The oldest article we found is from the May 13, 1789, Gazette of the United-States—a scathing editorial against dueling. Very convincing.Newspapers (newspapers.com, paid)Another vast repository, currently at 282,000,000 newspaper pages dating back to the 1700s. This is where I found out my ancestor suffered from hemorrhoids. A turning point in my research.Fulton History (fultonhistory.com, free)This website has more than 39 million newspaper pages—all of them scanned by one obsessive and dedicated man. His papers are from the United States and Canada, many of them based in New York. The search function isn’t so sleek, but I still highly recommend the site.6. Other online toolsOne-stop surfing: Cyndi’s List (cyndislist.com, free)If there’s one website you should know about, it’s Cyndi’s List. This is the mother lode, the index of all indexes. It’s got thousands of links in every imaginable topic of genealogy, and these links are organized into categories ranging from Adoption to New Zealand, from Anabaptists to Timber and Logging records.7. PodcastsExtreme GenesScott Fisher has the best and deepest voice in genealogy. He and cohost David Allen Lambert chat about the news and conduct lively interviews. Note from A.J.: This is where I first heard the story of the family with one mother and eight dads.The Forget-Me-Not HourHosted by Jane Wilcox, this interview show has in-depth Fresh Air–type interviews with great historians and researchers.The Genealogy GuysIt’s like Car Talk, but without the accents or crankshaft references.Twice RemovedHosted by noted author A.J. Jacobs, this five-part miniseries from Gimlet Media introduces guests in the studio to a mystery cousin. You’ll learn about Food Network host Ted Allen’s culinary roots and writer Dan Savage’s gangster ancestors.***I go over a few more in my new book, It's All Relative.

To expand on what Alan Moll said, you usually start with your close family and expand from there.Like he said, FamilySearch.org is free, and is a good place to record information and preserve memories as you go along. The main things available there are:A billion-person shared Family Tree that everyone works on to try to create one family tree for the whole human family. Yes, we step on each others’ toes sometimes, but we also don’t have to repeat all research for each user, but can pick up where others left off.Billions of historical records, which contain the “puzzle pieces” needed to continue growing and proving the Family Tree.Memories, where you can upload photos, documents and stories, tag faces, and link the people in the photos to their corresponding person in the Family Tree. Unlike other services, since this is free and backed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, these should be preserved “forever”, even after you die. And since the faces are linked into the tree, relatives who are interested in those photos will naturally discover them as they walk the shared tree.Here are a few steps that can get someone started:Talk to relatives (parents, grandparents, aunts, etc.) to learn what they know.Enter this information into your initially empty-looking part of the FamilySearch Family Tree.As you get back to your grandparents or beyond, keep an eye out for “possible duplicates” that you can merge with in order to connect into the main tree. Then you’ll find many generations of ancestors that have already been researched (often with historical record sources and even photos or stories attached).When they tell you stories, write them down, type them up, and upload them as a Memory and attach to the person in Family Tree.You can also use the free Memories app from FamilySearch to record 5 minute snippets and upload those if you’d like. Or, record a video on your cell phone as they tell the stories, and edit the video later to create audio or video clips you would like to preserve with the best stories.Gather family photos, birth certificates, etc., that you have around your house, and scan them.For pictures in glass frames, use Google’s free “PhotoScan” app, which will use multiple pictures and algorithms to remove glare.Upload these to Memories, tag the faces, and link to the Family Tree, thus preserving them and sharing them with relatives, including ones you don’t know yet.Visit relatives’ houses to see what photos they have and scan and upload those, too.Expand the tree. Walk back through whatever portion of the tree you’ve built up so far, and look for “record hints” (blue icon) to see if there are historical records that mention who you already know about, to see if they confirm what you know and perhaps add more information or even more relatives to the tree. Attach such sources as you find them. If no “record hints” are available, search the FamilySearch records collection to see what other records might mention your relatives. Repeat.Visiting with your relatives is a sweet experience, so this process can be a lot of fun, and bring you and your relatives a lot of joy. Looking for records, attaching them, and growing the tree is a fun adventure, like putting together a puzzle, except that you’re discovering your roots, which can be really rewarding.Best of luck!

Ancestry.com, Free Family Tree, Genealogy and Family History and familysearch.org, depending where your ancestors come from you might find specialist sites for the region are even better (for me for example familia-austria.at was great, and Forschungsgruppe Grafschaft Glatz). Also for some regions there are local “churchbook scan” pages for certain regions, like Digitální archiv ZA v Opavě, often such local pages contain data not found on familysearch. But as you did not say from which country your ancestors are, I cannot say more here.