AncesTea Crash Course: 1. Starting Your Ancestry Journey
- Sarah Kelly
- Jul 18
- 7 min read
This is the start of a 10-blog series titled: AncesTea Crash Course! Think of this as a step-by-step educational series for more specific instruction on genealogical research. If you’re just diving in to genealogical research, this is the place to start. Let’s dive in.
Starting Your Ancestry Journey
We all have a starting point. Someone asks a question or tells a story, and suddenly you think: “Where did I come from?”
For me, my ancestry journey probably started in 4th grade. For years, we had heard rumors that we were related to some famous historical figure on my dad’s side. And then, suddenly, we had the proof. One of my dad’s relatives sent us a yellowing packet — a genealogical report written by a distant cousin. My dad started up Ancestry.com, which was in its earlier stages, and filled out our first ever pedigree chart. One branch of our family was distantly related to Abraham Lincoln!
Shy, 4th grade Sarah was so excited that she actually created a whole poster presentation of the pedigree chart to present to her class. It was the first time I used words like “5th cousin” or “7 times removed” or “paternal line.”
It wasn’t until freshmen year of high school, however, that an ad popped up on the TV: “Start your free trial with Ancestry.com today!”
For years, I had revisited that yellowing packet on and off. I pulled it out again. It started me wondering — who might be in the other branches of my family tree?
I started my free trial that day.
🌱 Step One: Don’t Start Online
I know I said that my journey started with a free trial at Ancestry.com, but that’s not where my research started. Before I touched any online document, I started typing into my first ancestry tree what I already knew. When my own knowledge ran out, I asked my parents what they remembered.
Before you search anything, pause and ask yourself and your family:
What do I already know about my family? Names? Dates? Relationships?
What does my family know? Who can I ask?
What do we assume to be true? What might just be family lore?
🧬 What Genealogy Really Is (From Day One)
At its core, genealogy is not just about collecting names of relatives and ancestors. At it’s root, it’s about answering questions about our families using evidence.
I mention this now because all genealogists learn early on to take everything you discover with a grain of salt. Go back and read the blog post, “Common Mistakes Beginner Genealogists Make (And How to Avoid Them).” I highlight the most common assumptions genealogists make that can derail your research. Now — at the very beginning — is the time to remind yourself:
Not everything you hear is true
Not everything your family believes is true
Not everything online (even seemingly well-documented trees) is accurate
Even official documents can be wrong or full of human error
Professional genealogists have set standards in place, such as the Genealogical Proof Standard, to ensure that proper research is undertaken and presented in our conclusions. Personally, I think that all genealogists, from the most casual hobbyist to the most experienced professional, should follow these standards. All future generations should have confidence in the research produced by genealogists of the present.
🌱 Step Two: Ask A Question
When I started asking questions about my ancestry, I was surprised not only by what my family knew, but also by what they didn’t know. Immediately, everyone had very specific questions.
In the blog post titled “Understanding the Genealogy Research Process,” I highlight the steps one should take when undergoing genealogy research. After you’ve gathered what you already know, your next step is to start asking those research questions that guide your research. Just saying, “I want to know everything and build my whole tree” is an unrealistic goal. Start small:
Who were my great-grandparents?
Where was my great-grandmother born?
Who were my grandfather’s siblings?
You may have lots of questions. These were mine:
What happened to my great-grandfather when my great-grandmother remarried?
Who were Big Mama’s parents? (This was what my family called my maternal great-grandmother).
What was the exact connection between my family tree and Abraham Lincoln’s?
When did my mom’s family migrate from Germany?
Some questions will be more realistic than others, and some more focused than others. A larger question I’ve mentioned before is if my mother’s family is actually somehow connected to Charlemagne. By itself, this is an unrealistic research question. Likely, getting to the answer will require dozens of smaller research questions in between. You’d be surprised how many hours it can take to answer even the smallest of genealogical questions.
🌳 Your First Family Tree (No Websites Yet)
There are a handful of ways you can go about starting. Want to keep everything organized online? Go ahead and start up an online family tree, or download family tree building software to your computer.
Digital trees
FamilySearch (free!) **beware: FamilySearch is a collaborative tree. Your research builds on what other genealogists have already compiled on deceased ancestors.
Downloadable Family Tree Software
Are you more interested in starting the paper route? Try using a family group sheet or one of the various types of ancestral charts available for download and print
Printable Family Group Sheets
National Archives and Records Administration (USA) Family Group Sheet
See Cyndi's List for additional options available online
Paper trees
Use paper trees if you love working offline or want a visual chart to hang. Printable pedigree charts, fan charts, 5 generation trees, etc., are widely available online. If you want to keep it professional, check out the options available through reputable sources:
National Genealogical Society - Free Charts and Templates (available with a free subscription)
See Cyndi's List for a large assortment of family tree charts online.
Personally, I like a combination. I use Google Drive and Notion.io for the majority of my research. Both of these platforms can be accessed from any computer anywhere (as long as I have my Google login information) and I can easily share the information with other users.
One passion project of mine is creating Notion.io templates for genealogists. I haven’t made them yet, but stay tuned if you’re interested in this amazing platform!
As far as Google is concerned, there are a number of templates available online for you to download. Here’s an example of a document I use to organize information in a Family Group Sheet using Google Docs. (Ignore or delete the extra notes if you want; I’ve had to add some instructions for clients in the past).
🔍 Crash Course Activity
Ready to get started? Here are your instructions:
Using at least one of the tools provided, create a 3-generation tree (you, your parents, and your grandparents).
For each fact, note whether or not you know the fact to be true, or only assume it to be true.
Pay attention to any uncertainties in your research, and pick one to focus on first:
Are you unsure about a specific date?
Do you need to verify someone’s maiden name?
Are you making assumptions about relationships you’ve been told about?
Do you not know who someone’s parent is?
One of those uncertainties should become your first real research question.
🧠 What You’ve Actually Learned (Even If It Feels Small)
If this felt almost too simple, that’s a good sign. You just did what most people skip:
You started with yourself
You separated fact from assumption
You created your first research question
That’s the foundation of focused genealogical research.
🌳 My Example
While we go through this Crash Course, I’m going to take y’all through one of my own family tree mysteries, one step at a time.
3-Generation Tree (well…4)
For the sake of privacy, I have anonymized living individuals in the following pedigree chart. This is very roughly what my tree looked like when I first started gathering information from my family (I probably knew less than this, especially when it came to marriage dates, but it’s been so long!). I was lucky enough to have had a lot of information passed down from my paternal line, though the same couldn’t be said for my maternal. I also went ahead and put in 4 generations rather than three, mostly because a lot of questions came from my parents’ own 3-generation tree. They had questions about their grandparents, my great-grandparents.
Labelling Facts vs. Assumptions
Looking back, I definitely assumed everything told to me was fact. For example, my father was told that his grandfather had died in war, but we soon realized that his timeline did not place him in any obvious war to die in. His whole life soon became a conglomeration of assumptions rather than fact, based on lies that were passed down (we’ll have a whole drama series just on this family line!)
In hindsight, most of the information that was given to me from family, however, was fact. I learned, instead, that I was holding on to a series of assumptions that affected my research. I assumed most of my ancestor’s families were traditional nuclear families. Turns out, there was a lot of divorce and remarriages complicating the timelines. I assumed people’s names should remain the same throughout the decades. Turns out, a surprising number of family members altered the spelling of their surnames, or even reported to government agencies under nicknames. My Crowe family, for example, added the “e” to reportedly stop the children getting bullied in their small farming community. And my grandfather took the last name of his stepfather, which is how I got my maiden name!
First Research Question
Like I mentioned previously, my own chart elicited the following research questions:
What happened to my paternal great-grandfather when my great-grandmother remarried?
Who were Big Mama’s parents? (This was what my family called my maternal great-grandmother, Bessie Alton Dickey).
What was the exact connection between my family tree and Abraham Lincoln’s?
When did my mom’s family migrate from Germany?
Moving forward in this crash course, I’m going to take y’all through how I answered the question about Big Mama’s parents. It’s definitely one of the more straightforward mysteries I’ve had the pleasure of solving. My great-grandfather’s story…that will be it’s own journey.
☕ Coming Next…
In the next AncesTea Crash Course post, we’ll take that first question you circled and show you exactly where to start looking—using the most important records in genealogy.