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This article is to be a guide to Genealogy and the study of family history. It will provide information to help people on their quest to discover their heritage.

Contents 1 Getting started 2 Types 3 Reference 4 Charts 5 Documentation analysis 6 Tips

[edit] Getting started

• 1. Write down everything you know. Include names, dates, relations of people, stories, etc. Start with yourself and work your way backwards.
• 2. Gather information from things you may have. Look around your house for things that could help you in your research. You may have documents somewhere or perhaps old family photographs. Gather diaries and things that have been passed down from you parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc.
• 3. Ask family members for information. Perhaps your parents or grandparents or cousins have done some research. This information can be helpful. Ask your relatives about what they know about the family. Perhaps they may have documents, photographs, or old diaries in their posession that could help your research.
• 4. Once you collect a lot of information, you should keep organized. Have a filing cabinet, folders, and/or boxes to sort the information in. Get a family tree software program to show how everyone is related. This wiki allows you to upload photographs and documents and sort out the information so you can collaborate with other researchers.
• 5. Get more documents. You can find a lot of documents at records halls, courthouses, family research organizations etc. You can also access census data on the internet.
• 6. Once you get going, there is always new information to find. You may meet distant cousins to collaborate with that can help your research.
• 7. Help others. Helping others can encourage growth in Genealogy and thus enrich everyone's research to breaking down brickwalls, and forming connections with other researchers.

[edit] Types

• Ancestral Genealogy is the branch of genealogy concerned with identifying a person's ancestors. Ancstral genealogies frequently provide detailed information about each ancestor, but by their nature they are of interest to a relatively small audience. As a result ancestral genealogies often remain unpublished, unless they deal with an historically significant person.
• Descendant Genealogy involves tracing the descendants of a given ancestor, or ancestral pair. There are many such genealogies that have been published. These documents, though varying widely in their extent of coverage and accuracy, are often useful to researchers because they provide broad based coverage of a relatively limited number of surnames, often with a specific geographic focus. Because they include numerous descendant lines, they tend to have a more extensive audience than Ancestral Genealogies which trace the ancestral line of descent to a given person.
• One Surname Descendancy is a form of a descendancy traces the male descendants of a single couple. Thus all the individuals listed in the descendancy share the same name. This is a very common form of genealogical research found in libraries. They are particularly helpful for researchers looking for information on an individual when the person's surname is known.

[edit] Reference

• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Definitions and methods
• Verification and Validation

[edit] Charts

• Ahnentafel

[edit] Documentation analysis

• German script

[edit] Tips

• Tombstone Cleaning Tips, Tricks, Techniques