Start, Tips & Links

HOW DO I START MY GENEALOGY RESEARCH WORK AND USEFUL GENEALOGY TIPS AND LINKS.

By Peter Liliequist.

Where do I start my research work? Always start with writing down all you already know about your relatives, ancestry and family. Talk to your older relatives and write down/or record what they will tell you about your family. If you are old do the same with your cousins. Go through drawers, the attic etc. to find old photos, letters and notes to learn more. What your relatives tells you is sometimes not to be found in the church archives. It´s all about collecting clues and analysing them.

What tools do I need for this? It´s ok with a pen and paper. The best is to use a computor together with a family tree program to build a family database. Here you can put in all your information, sources and photos, search in your database, and look at your research work from all angles. You can also produce a GEDCOM-file(database) to use in any other genealogy program or website. The more information you collect, the easier it is to handle in a database. Remember to always make backups of your genealogy research work. You can do this on external harddiscs, USB-memories and in online cloudstorage.

What more do I need to know? Always write down the sources to your information, so you can verify them anytime, go back and look at them again if needed. Before you start it´s useful to read some good tutorial genealogy books, and I also recommend in old swedish hand writing. You don´t need to know swedish language, but you need to be able to read the letters. Then you can always ask someone to help you translate. Join a genealogy class or/and a local genealogy association.

Is internet a good tool? Using the internet in your research work is very helpful today. There are many archives that are free or paid, which saves you a lot of time. There are tempting shortcuts on the internet. Just remember that if you use published material from the internet, there is a lot of information around that is not correct. So you will need to verify them directly from the sources in the archives to be sure they are right. Best is to verify each data at it´s own place, but also ok to do so for each person.

Should I publish my research work on internet? This is a personal question! My experience is that it helps. To share almost always brings you new information and contacts with new distant relatives. Sometimes this information is impossible to find on your own. I have found new relatives this way in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. They email or phone me, so I say yes, share it.

How far back can I go in Sweden and Finland? For the common people the answer is late 1600s or early 1700s, though through land owners tax archives you can sometimes go back as far as 1530. For nobility ancestors you can go back longer. Swedish nobilty often had relations with foreign nobility families or royal houses. Thanks to this many swedes today can lead their ancestry to the French Emperor Charles The Great, who died in 814. His ancestors are known some generations back to 600s. Before that there are investigations without convincing evidence.

How far back does the authors family go? I thought you would never ask! My family goes in straight paternal line to a farmer mentioned in 1574, who should have been born around 1540-1550. I have on both my fathers and mothers sides ancestors of nobility, which brings me back to the above mentioned French Emperor Charles The Great. This website is is a release of all the 588 families in my own ancestry. It took me 46 years to gather all this information, and I´m still working on it. It´s my passion!

Genealogy links recommended by Peter Liliequist, member of Sveriges Släktforskarförbund. There are also some good Facebook groups, where you can put a genealogy question and hopefully someone has time to help with what you need.

Ancestry

FamilySearch

Find My Past

Ellis Island

Geneanet

GenGophers - 80000 digital genealogy books

My Heritage

Arkiv Digital

Rötter/Roots

Wikirötter/Wikiroots

DIS

Riksarkivet/SVAR

Tidningar/Kungliga Biblioteket

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Uppdated by Peter Liliequist. Copyright (c) 1970 - 2018 By Peter Liliequist, Sweden Roots Hunter & Peter´s Web World.