In days gone by, the average person had little hope of tracing his forebears without long and expensive correspondence with a professional genealogist, or spending precious vacation time doing the rounds of dusty records offices.

However, thanks to the Internet and its wonderful resources you can now begin to trace your ancestry as soon as you finish reading this article. This is how to get started, in easy steps.

Step One - Harvest family memories

Ask your parents what they remember about their own parents: full names, dates or years of birth, places of birth, where they lived, when they married, occupations. Write it down. Better still, if your grandparents are still alive, write down their details, and ask them about their parents. You have eight great-grandparents (the parents of your four grandparents) and you are already starting to find out things about them that you never knew.

If some or all of your grandparents are dead, your great aunts and uncles belong to your grandparents' generation. They will jump at the opportunity to spend an afternoon reminiscing.

Borrow old family photos, no matter how dog-eared, and scan them into your computer.

Step Two - Store your information digitally

You now need a user-friendly way of storing your information on a computer. Most genealogy software lets you start with details about yourself - your full name, date of birth, &c. You then proceed to add information about your partner, your children, your parents and your siblings. You can add partners, children, parents or siblings for each new person in your tree. Your software will store all the information, work out the complexities of each person's relationship to every other person, and allow you to print charts and text lists of your genealogy.

Genealogy software is very easy to use. You can download a very useful shareware program called Brother's Keeper, but there are many others out there. Just type 'free genealogy software' into your search engine and see what comes up.

Step Three - Share your information online

It is a good idea to share your information with other amateur genealogists who may have some of the same people in their own tree. The genealogy software you use on your home computer will usually allow you to create something called a gedcom file. This is a file which sorts your information into a format which is able to be recognised by online genealogists whichever software they use. This means you can upload your information to sites such as the British-based Genes Reunited or the more global Rootsweb.

Uploading your information to sites such as these protects your data against accidental loss. If your hard disk crashes and you don't have a back up, don't worry: your precious family tree is waiting to be retrieved from the internet. However, the real point of putting it there is so that your potential distant cousins can contact you and share information about ancestors you have in common.

Step Four - Access birth, marriage and death records

If you are looking for US birth, marriage and death records, your best starting point is site such as vitalrec.com, where you can register for a free trial period before you decide to become a paid subscriber.

For those with English ancestors, FreeBMD will be your new best friend. The volunteers at Free BMD are transcribing the entire Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales, and making the data available free online. Civil registration began in England in 1837, and so far the transcribers have completed almost 100% of the data from 1837 to 1929.

If you know your English ancestor's name, approximate year of birth, marriage or death, and have a rough idea whereabouts in England the event occurred, you can make use of Free BMD, and then order a copy of the certificate of the event from the General Registry Office.

Step Five - Use the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ('Mormon church')

Members of the Mormon Church need to trace their ancestors for religious reasons, so they have established a free Family Search website. Anyone can use the site. It has free access to the census details for 1880 in the USA, and 1881 in England and Canada, and to the Mormon Church's International Genealogical Index (IGI).

The IGI is a database created from church and other registers of the United States, Canada and Europe. It contains information about baptisms, marriages and burials in the centuries before the beginning of civil registration.

Step Six - Get more local information to use in your genealogical research

Rootsweb has a section devoted to local information and existing research organisations for the USA, which you can use once you have established which town your ancestors came from.

A site called Genuki has a similar and even more detailed guide for those with English ancestors.

Both Rootsweb and Genuki have guides and FAQ sections to get you started in genealogy, and you are more than likely to find many relevant online records as well as links to local family history societies who may be able to assist you in your search.

Step Seven - Subscribe to a fee-paying website to obtain census details

Although the Mormon Church website gives free access to the details of the censuses conducted in the 1880's, there are many other earlier and later censuses. Although you can search a census index on many websites free of charge, you will receive little information beyond the fact that the name you are looking for exists in the census, unless you are a paid subscriber.

The best value subscriber website is probably Ancestry.com because it gives you access to a great many other records, in addition to the census records, for a large number of countries.

The quality of information given improves with each census, and in later years you can expect to find full name, age, gender, relationship to head of household, occupation and place of birth for each individual.

Step Eight - Expand your online resources with Cyndi's List

By now, the 'Favourites' tab on your web browser should be crammed with online resources you have discovered by following the links above. You may think you have discovered most of the online resources available to you in your search for your ancestry. Think again.

Cyndi's List is the most extensive list of genealogy sites on the Internet, an absolute treasure trove for both the beginner and the experienced genealogist.

If you follow the eight simple steps outlined above you will soon have collected an interesting family history and embarked on a fascinating hobby.

Learn more about this author, Rosetta Taylor.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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