Cost Effective Genealogy

A good place to start is by grabbing two essentials items: pen and paper! Next you could start by making a list of surnames (i.e. last names). If you can't do this because of familial purposes (i.e. orphan, foster, or adopted child), your best bet would be medical records or agencies you have been through.

Another great source is your family. Ask around, and be specific, generally, you want to start with dates, times, and places. You can fill in other details later. You can usually find cesspools of information in your grandparents, sometimes even your great aunts or uncles. These are my "go to" persons, whom have done most of the work for me, which is a blessing, but family trees are ever expanding (at least mine is), with marriages and new birth additions constantly.

They say that family history research can be very costly, although, I'd like to beg to differ, I have done mine for practically free (by this I mean, yes-there were a few times I had to use public copiers, maybe 5 or 10 cents. And not to mention the people search, I have done, paying for a person's address listing so that I could send them a questionarre about family. This was a one time fee of $9.95).

The Library and the internet are my two top sources of information. The library has oodles of books available to take out for a limited time. For example, The Complete Beginners Guide to Genealogy, the Internet, and Your Genealogy Computer Program by Karen Clifford, The Complete Idiots Guide to Genealogy by Christine Rose, Tracing your Family History by Lise Hall, Finding your Family on the Internet: the Ultimate Guide to Online Family History Research by Michael Otterson, The Family Tree Problem Solver: Proven Methods for Scaling the Inevitable Brick Wall by Marsha Hoffman Rising, Family History 101: A Beginner's Guide to Finding your Ancestors by Marcia Yannizze Melnyk, Genealogy Online for Dummines by Matthew Helm are all great starting books. Some books that have helped me are: The Genealogists Companion & Sourcebook by Emily Anne Croom, Tracing your Scottish Ancestry by Kathleen B. Cory, and Our Family History: Tracing your Ancestry by Sybilla Vere. This last book has been extremely helpful, in which there are lists and questionarres you can copy and send out to your family to help organize your search. Don't forget to check the back of these books were further sources of information are listed.

Some great Internet sites are: www.Cyndislist.com; in which there are a ton of other sources to search from, www.familysearch.org; this is a compiliation made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a very good starting site (and its FREE), www.ancestry.com; this site only lets you search for a certain amount of items before they start asking for $9.95! The Internet is at your disposal, there are millions of sites out there!

My next source would have to be my computer. And although there are fancy-pants programs like for example, Hallmarks' Family Tree Maker, which costs anywhere from $15-25.00, I prefer to use Microsoft Word. That's right you read correctly, Microsoft Word. Although there may not be pedigree charts or family trees, I like to list everything by every person in my family-yes, this is very time consuming, however, it does help layout what information is missing. There are alternatives of course! As they say, "Every action there is a re-action" The Microsoft website does have a hefty list of templates and wizards you can download to further help organize your family history search and the best part is, it is FREE!