How to start a family history with what you already have

A family history usually begins closer to home than people expect. Before you pay for a subscription or send off a DNA test, there's very likely a drawer or a shoebox somewhere with the first chapter inside. A notebook and whatever the family has kept are plenty to start with.

Start with yourself

The National Archives gives the classic advice. Start with yourself, the known, and work toward the unknown. Write down your own birth date and place, then your parents', then your grandparents', with marriages and deaths where you know them. Leave a blank wherever you're not sure. The blanks become your to-do list.

Our fictional sample family, the Does, shows how this looks on paper. John Q. Doe, the made-up reader of our sample book, writes himself down first, then his parents, Robert Allen Doe and Margaret Ellen Kowalczyk, then his four grandparents. It fits on one page, and it already shows him which lines he knows well and which ones thin out.

Look through the papers in the house

"The place to begin is at home," says the National Archives. Its list of things to look for includes family Bibles, newspaper clippings, military certificates, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, naturalization certificates, diaries, letters, scrapbooks, photographs and baby books. It's worth asking around the family as well, since the box you're hoping for may have gone to an aunt or a cousin.

As you go, write a line about each paper and where you found it. "Marriage certificate, Dad's desk, top drawer" will save you a hunt later, and it means you can put things back where they belong.

The family Bible

If there's a family Bible, turn the pages slowly and look for handwritten lists of births, marriages and deaths. Look for loose papers tucked inside, too. Funeral cards and newspaper clippings sometimes end up there.

These pages can matter more than you'd think. The National Archives notes that in most of the United States, birth and death registration became a requirement between 1890 and 1915. Before then, those events will generally be found only in church records and family Bibles.

Read the entries with a gentle, careful eye. If many years of them are in one hand and one ink, someone may have written them all at one sitting, perhaps from memory. Check when the Bible was printed, as well. An entry for an event before that year was written in afterward, so it's a copy, and copies can slip. Photograph every page before you do anything else.

Photographs

Old photographs are best sorted with a relative beside you, because they'll know faces you don't. When you learn who's in a picture, the National Archives suggests writing on the back, along the edge, with a No. 2 pencil or a softer one, and never on the image or the front. It also advises taking off paper clips, rubber bands and sticky notes. If a print won't take pencil, write the caption on its sleeve or envelope instead.

Obituaries and the newspaper

The National Archives also says not to overlook funeral home records, obituaries, cemetery records and gravestone inscriptions. An obituary may name the children and where each of them lived, so a single clipping can hand you a whole generation. For older notices, the Library of Congress's Chronicling America is a free collection of historic newspaper pages published through 1963, and you can search it online.

Work backward, one generation at a time

Once you've gathered what's at home, pick the oldest person you're sure about and look for them in the records. Then step back to their parents. It's tempting to leap to someone famous with your surname, but each link needs its own proof before you build on it.

The 1950 census is a good first record for many families. The National Archives released it on April 1, 2022, and you can search it free by name and location at 1950census.archives.gov. Because of a 72-year restriction on access, 1950 is the most recent census anyone can see. Its name index was made with computer reading tools and isn't 100 percent accurate, so if a name won't come up, try other spellings or browse the neighborhood. From there you can work back through the earlier censuses, ten years at a time.

FamilySearch is another good free place to begin. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides it free of charge to everyone, and you'll need a free account to use all of its records and tools. For birth, marriage and death certificates, each state has its own vital records office. The federal government doesn't issue these certificates, so the CDC keeps a list of where to write in every state.

Write down where every fact came from

Of all the habits in family history, this one pays off most. Next to every date and place, write where you found it, something like "Family Bible, births page, photographed 13 October 2026" or "Grandma's obituary, clipping in the blue album." If two sources disagree, keep both and note which you trust more, and why.

It takes a few extra seconds each time. In return, anyone who picks up your work later, including you in ten years, can see where each fact came from.

What's the oldest paper in your house, and whose handwriting is on it? We'd love to hear about it.

When you're ready for the next step, we can take what you've gathered and research it into a hardcover book. The Ancestor Portrait starts from $450, The Family Heritage Book from $1,500, and The Heirloom Collection from $2,800 (three volumes, one hardcover set of three books). Each takes about 4 to 6 weeks of research and writing, then about 3 to 4 weeks for your review, the design and printing. You can see finished pages in our Sample Pages, the details are on Books & Pricing, and our free Family Story Starter has a chart to fill in as you go. If you'd like to talk it through, a free 30-minute consultation is a relaxed way to begin, and we'll send a written fixed quote within two business days.

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Picture: The Census, an enumerator collecting statistics, 1890. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.