How To Start Tracing Your Family Tree

Before starting to trace your ancestors, it is a good idea to talk to your parents and grandparents if they are still alive. You should ask them to tell you what they can remember about their early life and make sure you find out where and when they were born and married. Also ask them if they know this information for their parents and their siblings as well.

As things have changed such a lot in the last 50 to 100 years, you'll discover that their life would have been very different from your own. For instance most people who live in the rural areas will find that their grandparents didn't have things like T.V., computers and mobile phones which we take for granted now. I can even remember not having electricity and it was my job to spend half an hour each day pumping water from the overhead tank so we'd have water in the house! I also had to fill the kerosene fridge every Saturday and bring in the chips each day for our bath heater. We didn't have Supermarkets when then, but old fashioned grocery stores where us kids were able to buy sixpence worth of broken biscuits. We could buy lollies 'four for a penny' then too.

If you know where & when your grandparents were married, it is quite acceptable to start tracing your family tree by buying their Marriage Certificate. In Australia, it changes a lot, depending on where they married, as the records vary quite a lot between states.

One of the first things you should do when tracing your family is to join your local Family History Society as this way you can often use their records and there is usually somebody to show you the best way to go about your task. Some societies only have the records for their own area, but others have really good records for all the different states.

If you don't have a society in your area, or if they don't have the records you need; it is a good idea to check out your local library to see what they have to offer. A lot of libraries also keep copies of the Genealogical Research Directories which are issued every year. In these you can look up all the surnames that you are researching, and if you are lucky, you might find somebody else researching your surname in the same area. In the back of these books is an index where you can find the name and address of people researching your name, so you can swap information with them. In these days of computers, if they give their email address, you can check very quickly if they are indeed a distant relative.

As there are a lot of privacy laws, you have to be very careful that you don't advertise information of living people without their permission, which is another reason why it is a good idea to start with your grandparents.

Most Australian states have issued CD's and/or Microfiche with an index of Birth, Death & Marriage records, though some give more information than others. Also some of the CD's allow you to use an asterisk or a question mark to help you find the record you want. Birth records range from about 1905 to 1920 depending on which state you need, while some Marriage records go from 1937 up to 1949 and Death records can vary quite a lot with Victoria going up to 1985. Some states have extra years free on the Internet too.

Once you have found your Grandparents Marriage on a CD, your next step is to send for the Marriage Certificate which, hopefully, will give you the information you need to trace back another generation. Your Genealogical Society or Library can probably give you the address to contact to buy the certificate and probably the price, which varies from state to state.

This is enough information to help you get started, and I'm sure you'll get a real thrill when you end up finding out the names of your great-grandparents.!