What to do first

'So what do you want to find out?'

That is the most import question to start with and it'll prevent you from ambling around allow you to remain focused. Grab a pen and paper and start writing down ideas. Here are some you might like to consider:

1. Who were my Grandparents or Great Grandparents?
2. What did my family do in the war?
3. Is there a trend in family occupations?
4. Where did I come from 200 years ago?
5. Do I have relatives who are still alive?

Question 5 is quite a delicate matter to deal with as you can't always presume that people want to hear from you regardless of how pleasant your intentions are. Situations involving estranged member of the family, particularly in relation to adoption, are best approached delicate and with the advice of a professional. Your actions may cause more damage than good! I have been in that situation and we were lucky enough to have a positive outcome, but it could have gone very differently.

The next thing to think about is 'What do I already know?' If you are creating your own family tree then you can start mapping this information on a piece of paper. Start is the centre of the bottom of the page. Write your name followed by Date and Place of Birth. Draw a line going up from yourself and do the same for your parents. Then add your grandparents details. Don't worry if you don't know exact dates of birth for them as this can be established in other ways. Feel free to add in any extra information regarding siblings.

Once you have written down everything you personally know then its time to think about who else you can go to for information. If there is no one then don't despair as you can still work using the information you have. For example, my grandmother was adopted and on her birth certificate only the names of her biological parents were written. From this information I was still able to trace her family line.

Be prepared for there to be lots of conflicting information. Some stories will also be exaggerated so be prepared for the occasional chimney sweep! Never discount the stories though as they may be accurate but for the wrong relative.

When interrogating relatives its a good idea to take a list of questions with you so that the information remains on track and that you come away with at least some of the information that you went seeking. Here are some questions that you might think of using, some are pretty obvious ones:

1. What were their names? Were there any middle names?
2. Where did they live?
3. What did they do for a job?
4. About how old were they when they died?
5. Did they have any brothers or sisters?
6. Where did they die?
7. Do you know where they were married?
8. Did they serve in the World Wars?
9. Were they married before?
10. Has anyone ever mentioned any stories about them? (This can trigger details covered in previous questions)

Another area to start researching is with photographs. When my Nan developed dementia she started writing all the names of everyone featured in photographs on the back. This proved to be incredibly useful. Sometimes relatives with have birth, marriage of death certificates shoved in a draw so its always worth asking.

Once you feel like you have gathered as much information as humanly possible from your relatives you can start thinking about beginning to assemble a Family Tree using your computer.

How it began for me.

          In August 2009 I left to go on maternity leave from my job as a Police Criminal Intelligence Researcher/Analyst. My job involved studying crime trends, researching offences and creating profiles and reports on offenders. I loved my job and when I realised that it would not cover the cost of my childcare I was devastated to hand in my notice.

Within the first two weeks of having my daughter I missed work. I thought about the possibility of one day returning to work and I soon realised that having a few years out to have children, I am currently expecting my third, would make me less employable. In addition to this I felt stuck on a rung within my career which I would not be able to progress from for quite a while. This is where I decided to re-evaluate my skills and see what I could do which would accommodate having a family and continuous career development. One thing I was definitely good at was research.

After talking about this with my good friend Sam she expressed a wish that it would be great to research into her family tree. I immediately thought 'I can do that!'.

So I bought a few books and started to read. Some of them were huge and not being an avid text book reader it was slow going. I then looked into the websites available and started to build Sam's family tree. Within a year I had done five trees. It was only at this point did I think... what about my own family tree?

About 10 years ago, in a 'Big Reveal', my father had informed my brother and I that he was adopted but that was the end of the discussion and he didn't want to progress further with the matter. So I decided to start research my father's adoptive family tree. Half way through the process my father came to me and said that he wanted to discover his biological family tree. All of a sudden the nature of my work had taken a terrifying and vulnerable turn which was to take us all on an incredible journey.

I have loved every minute of becoming a Genealogist and I have so many requests from people to either do theirs or teach them how to do it themselves and work through various brick walls that they have hit in their research. The purpose of this blog is to help you create your own family tree without having to wade through 40 trees worth of books to do so. I will also highlight the hidden costs, pitfalls and ways in which to get your work published. I would love to hear from you so I can create a Q&A page. I am by no means a old genealogical wizard and everyday is a learning curve. The aim is to get you going, learning and achieving results.