Genealogy
Tracing your family tree is a meaningful detective story that connects you to your past and gives your family a gift. Much of the research can be done from your armchair.
What you need to start
- A notebook or family tree app
- Old family papers and photos
- Names and dates from relatives
- Access to free records online
At a glance
Your learning path
Three stages, taken at your own pace. Start at the top, get comfortable, then move down as you grow. There is no rush, and no wrong place to begin.
Brand new to family history? Start right here. These four lessons show you how to begin from what you already know, capture stories from living relatives, and build your first real family tree online.
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AncestryReady to go deeper than the basic tree? These five lessons take you into the core records genealogists rely on, plus how to stay organized, cite what you find, and dip your toe into DNA.
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Genealogy with Amy Johnson CrowWhen the easy records run out, these five lessons help you push further: making sense of DNA matches, breaking through brick walls, reading old handwriting, finding less common records, and finally writing your story down.
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Genealogy is one of the most rewarding hobbies you can pick up after 50. You become the keeper of your family's stories, preserving names, faces, and memories before they slip away for good. The research itself keeps your mind sharp and curious, like solving a puzzle that actually matters. It naturally connects the generations, giving you something meaningful to share with children and grandchildren. Best of all, the vast majority of it can be done from the comfort of home, at your own pace, with nothing more than a computer and a cup of coffee. Every ancestor you find is a small, real discovery.
Your first month, week by week
Write down everything you already know. Start with yourself, then your parents and grandparents, filling in names, dates, and places. Gather home sources: old photos, letters, the family Bible, certificates in a drawer. This is your foundation.
Call or visit your oldest living relatives and interview them. Record the conversation if you can, and ask about names, places, jobs, and stories. Memories fade, so capturing them now is the single most valuable thing you can do.
Create a free account on FamilySearch or Ancestry and enter the first four generations of your family. Start with what you know for certain, mark living people as private, and let the site suggest record hints to confirm.
Pick one ancestor and find them in a census record. Notice where they lived, who they lived with, and their occupation. Save the record to your tree and write down where you found it. You are now officially researching.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Copying other people's online trees without checking the sources. Treat every online tree as a hint, not a fact. Confirm each name, date, and relationship against an actual record before adding it to your own tree.
- Not recording where you found your information. Write a source citation for every fact: which record, which website or book, and when you found it. Future-you will thank present-you.
- Assuming names and spellings were always fixed. Spellings changed constantly, and clerks wrote names as they sounded. Search for variations and think phonetically when a name won't turn up.
- Jumping back too many generations too fast. Work backward one well-documented generation at a time. Skipping ahead is how you end up researching a stranger's family by mistake.
- Keeping everything in one place with no backup. Back up your research regularly to the cloud and an external drive. Years of work can vanish with one failed hard drive.
- Trusting that a record match is your ancestor just because the name fits. Confirm with a second detail, such as age, place, or a family member's name, before you accept a match as truly yours.
Make it easier on your body
Simple ways to keep genealogy comfortable and safe with arthritis, low vision, or limited mobility.
- Research entirely from home online. Genealogy is one of the few hobbies you can pursue almost completely from a chair at home. Sites like FamilySearch (free) and Ancestry hold billions of records, so limited mobility is rarely a barrier to real progress.
- Use a large monitor and browser zoom. Old documents and tiny census handwriting are far easier on a big screen. Press Ctrl and the plus key to zoom any web page, and connect a large monitor so you are not squinting at faded scans.
- Dictate your notes by voice. If typing is tiring or painful with arthritis, use the built-in voice typing on Windows (Windows key + H) to speak your research notes and interview summaries instead of typing them.
- Use a flatbed or phone scanner for fragile items. A flatbed scanner protects delicate old photos and letters, while a free phone scanning app lets you capture documents at the kitchen table without standing or handling them too much.
- Turn on high-contrast and screen-reader settings. For low vision, Windows offers high-contrast themes, a built-in Magnifier (Windows key + plus), and the Narrator screen reader, all of which make long research sessions far more comfortable.
- Add good lighting and a lighted magnifier. When you do read original documents in person, a bright daylight lamp and a handheld magnifier with a built-in light make faint, faded ink legible without eye strain.
Words you'll hear
- Ancestor
- A person you descend from directly, such as a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent.
- Descendant
- A person who descends from a given ancestor, such as their children, grandchildren, and on down the line.
- Vital records
- Official government records of life events: births, marriages, deaths, and divorces. They are prime genealogy evidence.
- Census
- A periodic government count of the population that lists households, names, ages, and other details, taken in the U.S. every ten years.
- GEDCOM
- A standard file format (.ged) used to export and share family tree data between different genealogy programs and websites.
- Primary source
- A record created at or near the time of an event by someone with firsthand knowledge, such as a birth certificate. It is the most reliable kind of evidence.
Where to find your people
- Local genealogical and historical societies. These groups hold meetings, run beginner classes, and have members who know your area's records inside out. Many welcome newcomers and offer research help for free or a small fee.
- FamilySearch Family History Centers. Run by FamilySearch and staffed by volunteers, these centers give you free access to records and friendly one-on-one guidance, with locations in many towns and libraries.
- Public libraries with a genealogy desk. Larger libraries often have a dedicated genealogy or local-history section, free access to subscription databases like Ancestry Library Edition, and librarians trained to help.
- Online forums and Facebook groups. Communities like the Genealogy subreddit and surname or county Facebook groups let you ask questions, share brick walls, and get answers from experienced researchers any time of day.
- DNA project and surname groups. Surname projects and regional DNA groups (often hosted at FamilyTreeDNA) connect you with genetic cousins and researchers working on the very same family lines.
Start learning Genealogy
Sign up for our free, friendly lessons and we will help you take the first step. Tell us where you are starting from and we will meet you there.
