How to Organize for Family Tree

Have you wanted to have your family tree organized but weren't sure how to start? Assuming you are just starting, here are some ideas on how to get started.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Family
• Computer (optional but helpful)
• Storage box

1. Start by identifying the first four generations of your family. This is you, your parents, your grandparents and your great grandparents. Depending on the age when you start this project, people may or may not still be alive. If any are deceased you probably have some living relatives who knew them that can help you fill in the gaps. This is not a lot of people to start off a family tree with, but they can become a foundation for much of your research. It is much easier to start with yourself and go into the past than it is to start with someone in the past and come forward to the present. Identify what relatives you have living from the above group and, if at all possible, visit them.
2. When you start to capture information, there is some basic information you want to gather about any individual person, such as Who (the person), What (an event), When (when the event occurred) and Where (where the event occurred).
   For example:
   
   o Person’s name (Some people may go by a nickname, so try and give their full legal name. This can help with your research. I try to capture both. If adopted, try to get birth name also.)
   o Date of birth.
   o Place of birth, i.e., city, county, state, country. (Some people like to also capture the hospital name, if born in a hospital.)
   o Person’s marriage date. (Be sure and capture all marriages.)
   o Full name of spouse and his/her information.
   o Place of marriage. (Some people like to capture the name of the church and the minister or officiator also.)
   o Death date.
   o Place of death. (Today this is usually different from their place of residence.)
3. Some people like to capture the following optional information:
   o Christening/blessing information.
   o Baptism information.
   o Education information.
   o Residence information. (May be more than one.)
   o Occupation information. (May be more than one.)
   o Military service information.
   o Community service information.
   o Hobbies.
   o Short history.
   o Divorce information.
4. Put a collection box in a convenient area of your house and start dropping items into it as you start to find them. These can be things like pictures, Obituaries, birth announcements, engagement announcements, marriage announcements, funeral programs, copies of primary documents like birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates, copies of pages from family bibles or any other register, etc. You can organize these items later but should be retained as source information.

Tips & Warnings

• Purchase a multi-function or all-in-one printer-scanner-copier as your next printing device. It will make it easier to make copies of documents and pictures. You may want to do some in hard copy and some as scanned images. All of these devices come with software that supports these operations. (See article on Preserving Documents.)