Just beginning your genealogy research? Start at home

Researching your genealogy begins at home, with whatever family documents and other items you have there.

Many personal records can yield valuable clues. Useful information can be found in baby books, which sometimes have genealogy charts, and in guest registers at weddings or funerals where relatives identified themselves. Scrapbooks should be examined, as well as photographs, making special note of photographic studios, addresses and cities, as well as any inscriptions. You might find legal papers and certificates for births, marriages, divorces, adoptions, or those related to religious events. A family Bible could be a gold mine. Always note the date the Bible was published, along with the other recorded information. Many families retain military service records, which could contain a wealth of information and could lead to a pension search.

Announcements are another source of information. Look for birth announcements, wedding invitations, memorial cards for funerals. Naturally, if your family has recent immigrants, you should be looking for naturalization documents and passports. Those can lead to other records in the National Archives and those kept by other agencies. Newspaper clippings, often obituaries, also can be a treasure trove. So there are a lot of items to look for at home before you begin your online search to verify what you have found and place your family in the larger context of genealogical sources. There, when checking Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, you can often link your family to other kin via the census and other sources.