 Identify What You Know  Begin with personal records :  Gather information, using family group sheets and pedigree charts to organize what is known. These will be entered later into the computer using PAF. Look for journals, scrapbooks, old letters, family Bibles, copies of birth, marriage and death certificates, photographs, school records, military records, obituaries, deeds, and wills.  Interview family members. Audio or video recording of interviews with older family members is suggested.  Record information and its source as the information is found. It may be good to keep notes of biographical information on separate sheets.

 Decide What You Want To Learn  Missing / unverified / conflicting information:  Select one ancestor to learn more about. It is necessary to know at least a surname and some idea of when and where they lived.  Expect missing, incomplete, unverified and conflicting information.  Begin with ONE research objective:  Select a research question, e.g. Where was the individual born? married? died? What are the names of his children? his parents? To increase the chance of success, focus on only one of these questions as the research objective.

 Prepare a research log:  A Research Log is essentially a diary of the research process. Before beginning, list every possible place searching will be done, such as census, vital records, family bible, etc. For every search, fill in the form detailing how and where the search was made.  The Research Log provides space to format the citation and record the specific information found. If no information was found, that should be noted as well.

 Paid website (about $300 per year), but free to students on BYU-I campus.  Contains:  U.S., U.K., and Canadian Census Records  Birth, Marriage, and Death Indexes  U.S. Military Records  U.S. Immigration Records  Land Records  Directories  And much more!

Select a Census year you would like to search Or select a collection you would like to search

 Located on FamilySearch

 Located on

Begin Searching for an individual Or select a region to find out what records are available