Genealogy Basics

How to Start Your Family Tree: The First Five Steps

By Monte Horton · October 29, 2026

Most people start a family tree by typing a great-grandparent's name into a search box. It feels like the fast way. It's usually the slow way, because without what you know about the generations in between, you can't tell your John Smith from the hundred others.

Here's the order that works, whether you're 20 or 80.

Step 1: Start with yourself

Write down your own full name, date and place of birth, and the same for your parents. Then your grandparents. Write down what you know, and mark anything you're only guessing at with a question mark. You'll be surprised how quickly you reach the edge of what you're sure of. That edge is where your research starts.

Step 2: Gather what's already in the family

Before you search anywhere online, look around the house, and ask relatives to look around theirs. The best early clues are usually in a drawer or a closet:

• Family Bibles (births, marriages and deaths were often written inside the front cover)
• Birth, marriage and death certificates
• Obituaries and funeral cards
• Letters, diaries and scrapbooks
• Military discharge papers
• Old photographs, especially the backs, where someone may have written names, dates or places

Don't take anything apart, and don't write on originals. Photograph or scan them instead.

Step 3: Talk to your oldest relatives first

The people who remember your great-grandparents won't always be here. Call or visit, bring a few old photos, and ask about names, places, and where people are buried. Record the conversation if they're comfortable with that. A single afternoon with a great-aunt can save months of searching. (There's a whole guide in this series on how to do these interviews well.)

Step 4: Write it down the way genealogists do

Two simple forms keep a growing tree from turning into a pile of notes:

• A pedigree chart shows your direct line: you, your parents, grandparents, and so on back.
• A family group sheet shows one couple and all of their children, with dates and places for each person.

Write dates as day, month and year (12 Mar 1888), write places from smallest to largest (town, county, state), and record women under their maiden names. Most important of all, write down where each fact came from. "Grandma said so" is a source. So is "1910 census, Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma." Later, when two records disagree, you'll know which to trust.

Step 5: Search records one generation at a time

Now go online. Start with the most recent generation you can't fully prove and work backward. A free FamilySearch account is a good first stop: it holds a very large collection of records and family trees at no cost. Look for:

1. Census records, which place a family together in one household
2. Birth, marriage and death records, which give exact dates and often parents' names
3. Obituaries, which list relatives and places
4. Cemetery records, which confirm death dates and family burial plots

Before adding a new person to your tree, make sure the record really fits: the right place, the right ages, the right family members. Many online trees copy each other's mistakes. Treat other people's trees as clues to check, not as answers.

A simple first-week checklist

Don't skip the photos

Photos are often what gets a family interested in the first place, and the people in them are your research subjects. Before the people who can name them are gone, get the photos scanned, labeled and somewhere your relatives can see them and fill in what they know.