Start Your Personal Family History: Chronology Tutorial

Don't know where to start in your family history? Start with yourself! A chronology is a list of events in chronological order, and in itself a form of family history.

A couple of years ago I went to an excellent Family History class about starting personal family history offered by Don Norton at BYU. Here are the notes he provided on chronologies, letters, and journals.

How To: New Family Search website

Many people face the most daunting task of genealogy: where to start. Luckily the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has developed a FREE website to help, the New Family Search website. You can have temple-ready names in just 3 steps.

To get started,  go to the New Family Search webite with your Church-issued log-in information (to create a new LDS login, you need your confirmation date and your member number, which can be obtained by contacting your ward clerk or bishop). 

1. Once you have created a log-in name, you can now enter in all the information that you know about your family, including names, locations, dates, relationships, etc.

2. If you know a very limited amount (like me!), the website is equipped to help you search through an enormous collection of records owned or processed by the Church. Just type in what you know and cross-reference it with what they have. You never know what you find. Hopefully you will find enough information to confirm your relatives.

Someone once told me the secret of genealogy is to document EVERYTHING! So if you think you found a source to your ancestor, PRINT IT OUT! You might not be able to find it later. I definitely recommend keeping a copy of everything and stay organized.

3. Once you have searched and confirmed a number (or just one) of your ancestors (with at least some sort of date), you are now ready to submit their names to have their work done in the temple. The website is set up so you can print out a request and take it to the temple where your cards will be printed out and then the work can be done.

There are the three easy steps to get your familysearch started. Enjoy the search!

First Temple Trip with Family Names

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to finally take the family names I found to the temple. They have been waiting so long! My sister Angel helped me do the first part and my other sister will help me finish them. My heart is full, the Church is true!

Mac Users: meet your genealogical soulmate

I have been a Mac user for about three wonderful years. I keep hearing that it's hard to do genealogy on a Mac. Wrong! If you haven't already discovered Reunion, PLEASE run and get it.

This program is amazing. You can import/export gedcom files, get names ready for the temple (if you're LDS), organize sources (census records, etc), and insert multimedia for every family member, like pictures, videos, etc. You can even export webcards, personalized webpages to every family member and put this online (I'm working on this part).

Check it out!

Brenda Branch's Pedigree

Here is my genealogy start for my mother. I am currently using the Reunion application for Mac. Most of my information is a medley of data from familiysearch.org and from genealogy gathered from my cousin Stacey Adger, an avid genealogist.

It's pretty cool to trace back so far! I'll post pictures and other records soon.