methods to genealogy?

answers1: If you get lucky someone has done some work along the line
you want, but most likely they have copied someone else information
and have no sources to verify the information is correct. If you are
serious about Genealogy - go to your public library and find out if
there is a genealogy or history society or Genealogy Library where you
live. Even the smallest towns have them. Take some classes, and
learn how the research should be done. If you don't want to bother
doing the work, you can try the LDS family site, or one of the many
free genealogy sites, but remember without sources of information, it
means very little to a serious genealogists. There are lots of charts
out there that are frauds. It was big business in the US at one time
and people with money wanted to belong to the royal families of
Europe so crooks created charts got paid and the incorrect charts have
been around for years. Some are on line as the real thing, I find it
amusing that people still believe they are real.
answers2: I have been doing a massive project and recommend getting a
library card to your nearest library. Sometimes they have FREE
subscriptions to online genealogy sites which allow you great access
to documents from the past. Make sure you have the names of your
extended relatives available.
answers3: Your start is not online. It is getting as much information
as you can on your family: names, dates of births, deaths, and
marriages. Do this for yourself, your brothers and sisters (siblings),
parents and their siblings, grandparents and their siblings, etc. Then
you can get online and start looking for records to back up the
information you got. <br>
<br>
Start by going to the library for resources that might be right there;
especially if your family has lived in the same area for a long time.
Ask the librarian for any historical or genealogical societies that
may meet there. People in those groups can give you some good advice
on how to get started. <br>
<br>
Ancestry.com is a site that has a LOT of records, not just from the US
but from Canada, England, France, and Germany (in the native
languages), as well as local and family histories, obituary indexes,
some newspaper references. Thousands of things to access. This site
charges, but your library may have a subscription that allows you to
access the site from there. There are some other sites, and if you go
back and read some of the resolved questions here, you can get lists
of them. <br>
Beware of family trees that you find online, though. Many of them have
not been researched well, if at all. Just because you find a name that
matches someone in your family doesn't mean that they are a relative.
You may find that there are many people with the same name. That is
why it is important to get as much information on your family as you
can before you ever go online. Also remember that it will not be easy
to find records on living people due to privacy laws, and the
possiblilty of identity theft. <br>
Census records will only be available up to 1930 for the US, and not
even that recently in Canada and the UK. State and county birth,
death, and marriage records are not all online. Some have more than
others. A lot of the work to digitize and upload is done by
volunteers, so it depends on how many were willing to work for that
particular state/county. <br>
When looking for your ancestors, be sure to try different spellings of
the name, as some of the writing in those old records can be hard to
read, and some of the names were spelled more phonetically than the
way the family would have spelled it. <br>
There are many other tips that genealogists could give you, so don't
be hesitant about asking. <br>
Good luck and have fun.