The best source(s) on you ancestors is your immediate family - they are living repositories of you family's history. You should ask all your family members to provide you with details, documents/photographs, memories and oral history of your family.
Remember, your living relatives are a finite source - they may not be here tomorrow to ask. Memories fade, documents thrown away, photographs that appear to have no relevance destroyed.
DON'T DELAY. DO IT NOW!
Most of your relatives, and don't forget family friends, will willingly share their memories and documents/photos. If you decide to talk to your informants don't just try and remember what they said - take a recorder and record your conversation. Alternatively ask them to write down what they know so you have a first hand record.
The internet provides you as a researcher, with a large array of opportunities to locate other family historians who have individuals that are also in your tree. These family tree researchers are an excellent opportunity to share your research and grow your tree. Hopefully the sharing will be two-way and both your trees will grow.
Contact with fellow family historians with whom you share common ancestors are usually met through:
- Family History Societies (FHS) - FHS in your geographical area of interest often maintain registers of Surnames of Interest. You can lodge an expression of interest for a particular individual or family.
- Historical Societies - Local Historical societies hold a multitude of knowledge about activities and people in their local area. As an example: I knew my grandfather grew up at Warrandyte, Vic (at the head of the Yarra River). I wrote to the local Historical Society and asked if they had any information on my grandfather's family. I received a wonderful suprise with the reply - they had a wealth of information, including some photographs of distant relatives, which they freely passed on. They also provided me with a copy of an audio tape of an interview the Society conducted with my Great-Uncle in 1975 (He was 90 years old at the time).
- Genealogy Groups with an interest in a particular family name. (eg Watkins Family History Society - this web site is dedicated to connecting Watkins families world-wide).
- Genealogy Noticeboards - Posting your family of interest on web sites that provide noticeboards - eg Rootschat
- Family Trees that have been posted by other genealogists on free web sites - eg Family Search
- Web Sites dedicated to holding family trees. These subscription based sites provide te ability to search all the family trees held and also provide regular matching services eg Genes Reunited
- Web sites that accept personal family trees for publication along with regular genealogy (BDM etc) databases - eg Ancestry, Family Search
- Web Sites dedicated to providing global vital records (BDM) as well as a miriad other references (census returns, electoral rolls, convict records, immigration records, passenger lists etc etc. eg Ancestry, Some of these sites are country specifis, only dealing in records of a particular country eg FindMyPast (UK), ScotlandsPeople (Scotland)
- Newspapers. New web sites dedicated to digitising old newspapers are now starting to appear on the internet. Newspapers are a valuable source of birth, marriage and death notices, as well as obituaries. Local country newspapers often have a "Social Notes' column listing that list people by name. Your local library may also have copies of newspapers - either original issues or on film. Online searchable Australian newspapers can be viewed at The National Library of Australia.
In the course of your researching your family tree you will come across other family trees that contain individuals that are also in your tree. Most genuine family historians realise that sharing information with other family historians about common ancestors is one way of building profiles of your ancestors.
Sharing information is a valid way to build your tree. The important thing to remember is you are sharing - it is a two way street. Sharing works both ways - you share with them and they share with you. Do not be just a taker or just a giver.
WARNING: A healthy dose of sceptacism is not a bad idea when you use peple's memories as the basis of your research. Memories are often tainted by time and bias. If the memories are not first hand recollections then the chances of errors (unintentional or not) are greatly increased.
Similarly, you should treat other researchers trees with care. Not all family historians are meticulous in their research habits - many a good guess has resulted in false information..
Always try and support your family's oral history and information taken from other people's trees with supporting documentation.
You should always remember -Genealogy is mythology without documentation.
HINT: During the course of researching your family tree you will visit many genealogy web sites - some you will use regularly whilst others you will visit spasmodically. Trying to remember all the genealogy web sites you have visited is almost impossible. A good way to keep track of your favourite web sites is to bookmark them in you web browser (Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla Firefox (Firefox) etc). In Internet Explorer they are called 'Favourites'. I have my favourite genealogy web sites in a 'Favourites' folder named Genealogy.
To get to any of my favourite genealogy web sites I click on the Genealogy tab on my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar to show a list of all my favourite web sites. I click on the one I want and bingo, I'm there.
How to Create Favourites in Internet Explorer
How to Bookmark your Favourites in Mozilla Firefox