Introduction
Let me be clear from the outset that I am
not a
professional genealogist.
I don’t even play one on TV. So what I offer here is not professional advice. Instead it is some of the accumulated experience I’ve
acquired over nearly a decade as I’ve collected and organized information
about my family’s history and my wife’s family history. Call it advice for
amateurs from an amateur. Take it for what it’s worth.
I began putting together my family tree shortly after my great
aunt Eleanor and her husband died suddenly in a car crash. It made me realize
that, of the ten children in my grandmother’s family who survived to adulthood,
only four of them were still alive. I had had the idea of assembling a family tree
in the back of my mind for some time, but the sudden demise of Auntie and Uncle
Francis made me realize that I was in a race against time to obtain information
from my grandparents’ generation.
So if you are considering starting a family tree (and, if you’re
reading this page I assume that you are), my first bit of advice is to start now.