I am not a professional genealogist but have had years of experience doing my own personal genealogy research. I have been a member of The Daughters of the American Revolution, serving my then local chapter as a Media Chairperson and as Vice President. To become a member of DAR, one must provide genealogical evidence and have that evidence reviewed/verified by professional genealogists through DAR before member acceptance. For my Jewish lines, I provided evidence to the Jewish Unity Through Diversity institute for verification by a master genealogist.

All of the above said, you do not need to verify anything professionally or become a member of any genealogy-based organization to know who you are and what your ancestors were about–this is an important note. Personally, being a member of DAR taught me a lot about family research and records collecting. I have never been close to family members who could have provided more oral information to me, and I was, at a younger age, lacking in research confidence. Verification by professionals assisted me in moving forward (although I have encountered at least one genealogist who actually got a detail wrong in my family that I corrected later … but we won’t get into that here. Errors do occur).

I am going to provide a simple guide to methods of genealogical research that have worked well for me. This doesn’t mean that it will be good for you or be comprehensive enough for your situation as all situations and circumstances vary, but I hope it helps.

As a side note, and for clarification purposes, tracing the side of my family with DAR connections was easier that tracing my Sephardic Jewish sides. This is due to the fact that The DAR ancestor I used for entry into DAR was a better-known patriot and a cousin of George Washington (I am currently not an active member of any chapter). This, along with the fact that a great-aunt was a former member, made my entry and records verification process much easier than it would be for some.

Interview family members.

• Obtain full names, dates of birth (at least a close year estimate), place of birth, names of spouses from living relatives.
• You want to focus on your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents information to get started.

Make a family tree

• Graphically, you could draw them out on paper or create one on an ancestry website to help keep a clear visual organization of names and relation for quick reference. This helps immensely as information and records collection grows.
• Understand that as you go further back in generations, errors may be made. It is not uncommon to end up deleting a family member due to lack of evidence or replacing that person’s name with a question mark. Leave room for note-making on paper, and if on an ancestry website–make use of the notes section to annotate your doubts or any concerns for future review. You can make this tree private as you work on it if this feature is available.
• Some ancestry sites have other members who already have the information of your lost relative attached to their own family tree. When reviewing this info (many are not set to private), be sure to see if records are attached (you may have to pay to see them) or at least write the name and info down and use it to link them in records you can find yourself (see next section).

Use records websites

• You can create a free account on Family Search–run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints here: https://familysearch.org/

This website holds an enormous amount of information. I have found that records on this website are the same as ones on sites you must pay for access to. This doesn’t mean that some sites may not have records that this one doesn’t. Records on this site exist from various countries and have been scanned into databases over the course of many years.

At the top menu, you will find a “search” tab. After clicking on that, I personally select the “records” option, as I find that it yields the most successful results. This is when full names and dates, even spouse and children’s names, will become helpful. As you review records, you can compare the information you have with what is provided. Begin in a logical order so that linking a grandparent to their parents makes sense and is verifiable.

For example: You have information on your parents. You are seeking information on a grandparent you may not know too much about. You have a birth year, name, and location of birth (or location of marriage, or residence at some point). Entering what you have into the form will yield several results–sometimes hundreds. Surprise! There are a lot of people with your grandparent’s name. Once you click on records that seem to match, many have a visual scan and a databased summary attached. Look for names on these records that will also identify your parents, your parent’s siblings, and/or your great-grandparents names to verify your match. Save this record or write down the information to help look for the next record (after finding a birth record with grandparents’ names included, seek their marriage record, census, or death record with other family names on it as well).

All of these records, once collected and organized, should ideally contain links from one parent/child to the next and so on until you have multiple points of evidence that flow with ease. This isn’t always the case as some trails go cold … but do the best you can.

Believe it or not, some of us–even if raised by our birth parents–do not know an accurate birthdate or even an accurate name spelling for our own parent. This was my own case. One of my parents had issues with … making things up. This person spelled their name differently at some point in life and had multiple birthdates and a family history that was altered and embellished. Be patient. You aren’t alone.

Use a folder/binder with protective sheets

• You can print records out and keep them in a chronological order for yourself and future generations. I have done this for my children.
• Leave blank pages where research is incomplete, or a record is missing. DO YOUR SEARCH AGAIN after some time has passed. New records are scanned and entered often and it takes some time. I have found missing records several years after thinking they were lost forever.

Be prepared to find records in multiple languages

• Use an online interpreter or a human friend to help out. Many of the records I encountered were in Spanish–an older form of Spanish I had a hard time with. These records were created by the catholic church in a fancy scribble in Mexico and Spain (Uh … after forced conversions). The more of them you review, the better you get at it.
• Separate your binder into sections for multiple family lines. Admittedly, this can become confusing as it didn’t take too long for me to see that several lines had intermarried into each other (Jewish lines) and many were cousins with the same grandparents and so forth.

Tips and Tricks

• This can become extremely frustrating. Prepare to take months to years to “complete” your family history search. Some records may never be found, especially the further back you go. Take breaks and come back to missing links when ready.
• Re-search after time has passed. Records have to be scanned into databases. It takes time.
• More recent birth records may need to be requested from city or county records websites. You will need a birth date and as full of a name as possible, and their parent(s) name helps. Each county does this differently and many outsource to a third-party records service that will charge a fee. In my case, I still cannot access a birth record out of Brooklyn from the 1930s that still hasn’t been scanned in … but they are working on it.
• If you are Jewish, a rabbi may be able to help direct you. This was not my case as my family members were Conversos from Spain … but there are websites specifically for seeking Jewish records such as Jewish Gen, that I highly recommend.

I’m sure I have left some things out, but this was the method I used to complete record searches for three out of four of my grandparents. The fourth grandparent’s line stops quite abruptly in the 1800s. I plan to resume that search in the future … unless I lose interest.

This was a coping mechanism for me for many years as I didn’t come from the most stable upbringing. It helped me to feel a sense of belonging, and in some strange way, validated my existence–our ancestors went through a lot for us to be here and I try to remember that. I have only paid a genealogy service once to look over my findings, and this was more for reassurance than anything else as I learned to do this on my own and with the help of becoming a member of DAR. All the records provided to the service were located by myself. Personally, being dyslexic, a professional set of eyes helped a lot.

I hope this information helps someone else.

Thanks for reading.