If you love family stories and history, building a family tree can be an interesting hobby or family activity that can bring different generations together.
How to get started
- Buy a family tree book, download a pedigree or ancestor chart from the internet or join a genealogy site. Some sites will have a monthly or annual fee, but others, like familysearch.org, run by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, are free. You might prefer a hardcover book if you want to pass it down to your children and grandchildren.
- Input names and dates like birthdate, marriage date and date of death for family members you know. Thanks to technology, if you have an account with a genealogy site, it will recommend names and dates you didn’t know, like where your great-great-great-great-grandparents were born or how many children they had. The benefit of an online account is that other users will share photos of the person or their gravestone. Government records like birth certificates, census records, draft cards and newspaper clippings can be attached to the person’s record, too. It provides more interesting details and stories for you to explore.
- You can add family group sheets to your tree listing names and ages of all the children of your grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., that aren’t on your family tree.

Tips
- Be careful with the spelling of first and last names. It was more common in the past for last names to change. For example, my maiden name, Walters, used to be Walter when the family lived in Alsace, France, in the 1870s.
- For women, record their information under their maiden name, not their married name.
- Be careful with looking further down your tree if your relatives got divorced. It might be the second wife that was your great-great-great-grandmother, not the first. Your online chart might be directed in the wrong direction.
- For Catholic relatives or relatives who were members of the clergy, it might be interesting to explore more of their religious devotion, like when and where they got baptized, received First Communion or were ordained in a Protestant denomination.
- Be careful when writing down dates and places of births and deaths. As you go 300 or 400 years back, it is harder to find consistent sources for the same information.
- Talk to family members who have an interest in genealogy. If your grandparents or great-grandparents are alive, start with them. This is a time you can gather stories or other interesting facts like where they worked or attended church that genealogy sites probably won’t mention. They might have new names and dates you can add, or they can at least verify what you have found.
– Malea Hargett