10 Tips from 20 Years of Online Family History Research

My aunt (Happy), my dad (Orin), and my uncle (Ed), with other children.

I was hooked on genealogy the first time I found an ancestor’s record on a microfilm of the 1860 census. That was on a visit to a regional office of the National Archives, sometime in the 1970s. It’s a whole lot easier now, and that’s a good thing, because once you start researching your family tree, you will never come to the end of it. But you’ll learn something new every day and you’ll make a lot of interesting connections with people, places, and events that take on a new life when you learn how influential they have been in making you who you are.

1. If You Haven’t Done a DNA Test, You’re at the Children’s Table

I spent the first 15 years of my family tree research without the Internet, and the first 20 years without taking a DNA test. I had almost lost interest in it, for lack of finding information about my various brick walls (see below). DNA testing changed all of that. If you’re serious about learning who your ancestors are (and aren’t), you need to take a DNA test: the big three companies are Ancestry.com, FTDNA.com, and 23AndMe.com. After you do that, you want to download your results and then upload them to GEDMatch.com. That will give you maximum exposure to all of the people that you are related to. Some of them will respond to you, some of them won’t, but on balance, you will have access to the widest…