How to start your family tree
You can make real progress in one weekend with a notebook, a phone and free websites. Follow these seven steps in order. Each one sets up the next.
1. Start with yourself and work backward
Write your own full name, birth date and birthplace. Then do the same for your parents, then your grandparents. Move one generation at a time, from the known to the unknown.
Do not start with a famous person or a family legend and try to connect down to yourself. That is how wrong trees get built.
2. Search your own home
Before you search any website, gather what your family already holds:
- Family Bibles, funeral programs and obituaries
- Birth, marriage and death certificates
- Military discharge papers, naturalization papers and old passports
- Letters, postcards and address books
- Photographs. Look at the back for names, dates and studio addresses
- Deeds, wills and insurance papers
Photograph every item with your phone. Name each file with the person, the document and the year, for example ruth-hargrove-marriage-certificate-1952.jpg.
3. Interview your relatives
This is the one step that has a deadline. Talk to the oldest people in your family now. Ask permission to record, and let them talk.
Questions that produce useful answers:
- What were your parents' and grandparents' full names? Did anyone use a nickname or a different spelling?
- Where did the family live before here? Why did they move?
- What church, school or workplace was the family tied to?
- Who is buried where?
- Who in the family served in the military?
- Is there a relative nobody talks about? What do you know about them?
- Who has the old photographs and the family Bible?
Treat every story as a lead that still needs proof. Family stories usually hold a true core with wrong details. A "Cherokee princess" may turn out to be a real great-grandmother from a different background. Write it down exactly as told, then test it.
4. Put it in a tree
Enter what you have into the free tree builder. It shows your pedigree chart with dashed boxes for the people you still need to find. Those boxes are your research plan.
For every fact, note where it came from. "Aunt Diane, phone call, October 2026" is a valid source. A fact with no source is a guess.
5. Find each family in the census
The United States has counted its people every ten years since 1790. Census pages from 1850 onward name every person in a free household. The 1950 census is the most recent one open to the public. Records are released 72 years after they are taken.
Start with a relative who was alive in 1950 and find them. Then find the same family in 1940, 1930 and so on. Each page gives you ages, birthplaces, occupations and neighbors, and each one points to the page before it.
Almost all of the 1890 census was lost after a fire in 1921. Expect a twenty-year gap between 1880 and 1900 and use city directories, tax lists and state censuses to fill it.
You can search every surviving census free at FamilySearch.
6. Collect birth, marriage and death records
A death certificate usually names the person's parents, including the mother's maiden name. A marriage record often does too. These records carry you back a full generation.
Start with deaths, because they are the most recent and the easiest to get. Then work to marriages, then births. See where to find records free.
7. Take a DNA test
A DNA test gives you a list of living relatives, ranked by how much DNA you share. It confirms the tree you built from paper and it finds branches the paper lost. Test your oldest living relatives first, because they carry DNA from ancestors that you did not inherit.
Read DNA testing for genealogy before you buy a kit.
Common questions
How much does it cost to research a family tree?
You can do most of it free. FamilySearch, the National Archives and many state archives charge nothing. Expect to pay for a DNA test and for copies of some certificates. Many public libraries give free access to paid sites such as Ancestry inside the building.
How far back can most people trace their family?
Most Americans can reach the mid-1800s with census and vital records. Going further depends on where the family lived, whether local records survived, and whether your ancestors were recorded by name. DNA can extend the search past the point where records stop.
What if I was adopted or do not know a parent?
DNA testing is the most direct route. Your closest matches and the family trees they share can identify a biological parent even with no paperwork. Read the DNA guide, and consider how you will approach newly found relatives before you write to them.