The Genealogist

How to complete The Genealogist

This is about turning scattered family stories into a sourced, defensible record that goes back several generations rather than a guessed sketch. The value is permanent: you preserve names, dates, and relationships that would otherwise vanish when older relatives pass.

1. Interview your oldest living relatives first and record full names, birth/marriage/death dates, places, and maiden names before that memory is gone.
2. Open free accounts on FamilySearch and a tree builder; enter only what you can confirm and flag everything unverified.
3. Pull primary records to back each link: birth/marriage/death certificates, census returns, church and immigration records, gravestones.
4. Attach a source citation to every individual and date so each fact is traceable, not assumed.
5. Resolve conflicts (two birth years, spelling variants) by trusting the document closest to the event.

Tips

• Work backward one generation at a time; jumping to a famous ancestor invites wrong branches.
• Census and gravestone dates are often off by a year or two, so corroborate before locking anything in.
• Photograph or scan every original document immediately, then file it by surname.

What counts as done

You have a tree spanning at least four generations where every person and key date links to a cited primary source.