Seven Basic Ideas (Genealogy On One Page)

1. Start with the information you have, and use it to find out information you don't have.

2. If you can't find information in one record, use another.

For example, if you know the children, but not the parents, you might first look for the child's birth certificate to see if it lists the parents.  If you can not find it, then you might look for the child's marriage announcement or obituary.  If you cannot find those, maybe a census record from the children's childhood that shows who they were living with, and so on.

3. Children often have the same parents.

If you can not move from a person to their parents, then research their siblings.  If you find the sibling's parents, you can find the person's parents.  If the situation is dire, the research first cousins to find common grandparents, and you can get even more extreme.

4. The Basic Genealogy Data Flow:

Source of information about your family (such as obituaries, census data, birth announcements, stories that people have remembered)   

-- flows into --->

Your genealogical records (which are usually a database which is

part of a genealogical software package)

-- flows into --->

Reports, charts, and paperwork that you can share with others (and

which are usually created by your genealogical software)

5. Genealogy is all about building a database, which means it is easy to start and stop, as time permits.

 

6. For all information that ends up in your database, source it.  That is, record where it came from.  If you get it from a person use "Joshua Levy, per. comm." [personal communications] or "Interview with Joshua Levy" or similar.

 

There are two strong reasons to do this.  First, you will come across conflicts: facts which don't agree.  I've got three different birthdays for one Grandmother, and different places of birth for many people.  Sometimes even different names.  You will never be able to resolve these issues without knowing the sources for all the different facts.  Second, if you do make a mistake, and distribute it, and some of your relatives are unhappy, you can just tell them "that was from X" and then it is X's mistake, not yours.  (Well, it was your mistake to believe X, but that is usually a lessor mistake.)
 

7. Although consistency is important, you can change your mind about how data is recorded, as you learn more about genealogy, and especially early in your research.  Don't be locked into a particular convention by an early mistake to use it.