What is the best way to lookup a family tree?

Question:

What is the best way to lookup a family tree?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Hey Danobain,

Start with yourself. Get your birth Certificate. It points to your parents, study the connections that it makes to them. It should give their names, and birth locations and their ages when you were born. So, now you have enough information to go and get your parents Birth Certificates. Get them, see the vital records sites below, or look up Vital Records for the Town/City/County/State they were born in, and follow the process to get their records. Your parents certificates will give their parents, and so on. This system will break down, and takes some time.

While you are waiting on things like that to come in the mail, interview every living member of your family that you can. Get names, dates, and who their children are, and parents were, where they lived, were born, and died. Wills, probate, any legal documents give clues for your family tree.

You basically have to construct the tree yourself. No one in the world, except your brothers and sisters have the same tree as you, so no one has made it. Once you do the basic up front stuff, you might want to organize your tree information. I put some software sites below, you can get free software from The LDS Family Search site. Or you can spend some time figuring which package you would like to use, and buy it. Then start entering the data into the software. Now you have the tree started. You can grow the tree by discovering things about each of your Grand, Great Grand and their subsequent parents. Here are some web sites to help you. Do type your surnames into the Yahoo search bar with FAMILY as a search word and your SURNAME. That will bring up anyone interested in the same name, and you might get lucky with cousins. Also, Type SURNAME (your surname), and GENFORUM - that is a genealogy forum started in your name - if it exists, read the postings, and post your own questions to people with your interest at heart!

Wow, I feel like I need to breathe, but want to get you started. Try some of these sites, and get back here with any specific questions as you get this going.