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In the begining

One of the first things I did when I started my genealogy quest to find my roots was to gather notebook and pen in hand and start with my SELF. The next step was talking to my parents.Being that both sets of my grandparents had passed away many years earlier I am not as lucky as some who still have their grandparents to tell them grand stories. The number one thing I wish I had done was to have ask more questions before my grandparents passed on. Another thing I wished I had done earlier on was to have invested in a little tape recorder. It would have help with handwriters cramp and been memories for the rest of my life to be able to hear my long passed relatives on tape. But please remember,it is ALWAYS better to start with yourself and work backwards,then on to your parents,grandparents and so on until you can get back in your family tree as far as you can.

After gathering the most important information from all family members,I then started my quest at the public library. At first this started out as a hobby,but as I got more into gathering names,dates,and places I realized this was going to a project that would probably be on going for the rest of my life. You see,genealogy is never a finished thing,it goes on and on.
Getting back to the library. Most public librraries have a special room set aside for family holdings. This would be family histories donated by families of all sorts of life and surnames. Other books such as cememtery listings,marriages,census records,deaths,maps,old newspapers,history of the town and men that have served in the armed forces from the area would be here. Sometimes you might be lucky enough to find that someone has donated old family picture albums and year books that could help you. The list is endless. Make sure to take your trip to the library and have plenty of time to search. You can't do much in one day,remember,you have to learn to crawl before you can walk and once you learn the ends and outs it will get easier for you. A very important thing for persons who use and store their genealogy information on a computer is to please make sure that you make back up copies of your family history and photo's. A few years ago I lost over half my family information because I didn't back it up when I got a virus. So Please Do This! It could mean lost famiily information that you might not ever be able to get back.