Getting Started with Your Genealogy with 2 Websites

Are you brand new to genealogy? Getting started with genealogy can be overwhelming at first. Have you begun your personal genealogy, but want to create family trees on Ancestry and FamilySearch and don’t know how? Then this article will show you the steps to getting started.

Ancestry.com

This website is a major powerhouse in the field of genealogy. Therefore, I highly recommend that you get a subscription to this major online site. Now they have three subscription options. There’s the U.S. Discovery Option, the World Explorer Option, and the All Access Option. If you already know that you have ancestors from other countries, then I recommend getting the All Access Option because it covers American records and Foreign records. You have the option of a free 14 day trial, then you can pick either a monthly subscription or a 6 month membership. The choice is yours. In addition, if you’re a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then you get access to Ancestry.com for free.

Once you pick your membership option, then they have a great tutorial on how to set up your family tree. I will link it here and I will also show you the steps in the following section.

Steps to Getting Started with Genealogy

The first step to creating an Ancestry family tree is to gather the records and information that you already know. This includes birth, marriage, and death certificates, journals, family Bibles, obituaries, etc.

The second step is to enter the information about yourself into a family tree. Here is an excerpt from Ancestry that explains the actual process of entering information. You always want to start with yourself first, then work your way back until you run out of information.

1. From any page on Ancestry, click the Trees tab and select Start a New Tree. If Start a New Tree isn’t an option on the Trees tab, select Create & Manage Trees instead. On the page that appears, click Create a new tree.
2. Click Add Yourself or Add home person.
3. Enter information and click Save or Continue.
4. Click Add Father or Add Mother, enter their information, and click Save.
5. Follow the prompt to add more people or to name the tree. Once your tree is created, you can access it from the Trees tab.

If you want to share your tree with family and friends, then click on the Trees tab, select a tree, then click Share in the top right corner. Ancestry.com has other tutorials about building your tree, finding records, and other search tips. Therefore, I highly recommend taking the time to learn from these tutorials. Getting started with genealogy shouldn’t be complicated. However, you will run into things that you don’t know yet. If you want to learn more about what I’ve written about these two online giants, then go here and here.

FamilySearch.org

With this major online powerhouse, you don’t need a subscription. It’s totally free! You first want to create your free account before diving in. Then, you want to go over to the top right corner and click on Help, then select Getting Started. This is the basic tutorial for how to use Family Search and how to create a family tree.

Again, when you’re ready to create your family tree, start with entering your information into the tree and working your way backwards. In addition, I would recommend going into the Learning Center under the Help tab to take advantage of online classes that cover a variety of topics.

That’s how you get your family tree started in either genealogy website. There is a lot more to these websites then I can cover here. Therefore, I highly recommend exploring these sites on your own and seeing what they have to offer. Again, getting started with genealogy doesn’t have to be complicated. When you’re ready to go deeper into your genealogy research, then contact me or another friendly genealogy guide that can show you more.

In the mean time…

Good luck and happy hunting

Tiffany

P.S. If you’re looking for more genealogy websites, then subscribe to my email list and you’ll get a free download of all the websites that I use for my business.