# Where to start with family history when you know almost nothing > A first-week plan for family history research — work from the known to the unknown, write it from memory first, and let the gaps become your research plan. By Oleg Khmelnytskyi, Wiserta founder (https://wiserta.com/about#founder). Updated 2026-09-01. Canonical page: https://wiserta.com/start-family-history-with-what-you-have > **The short answer** > Start with yourself and prove one generation at a time. Write down everything you already know **before** you search anything — the gaps you leave on that page are your research plan, and they're more useful than the names. Almost everyone begins family history the same way: they type a surname into a search box. Within an hour they have forty possible ancestors, three contradictory birth years, a family tree somebody else built that goes back to the fourteenth century, and no way of telling which parts of it are true. Some of them stop there. The ones who don't stop usually spend the next two years quietly undoing that first hour. There is a slower opening that is faster in every way that matters. It takes an evening and it costs nothing. ## Rule one: work from the known to the unknown You are person number one. Your father is next, then your mother, then their parents, and so on backwards — one proven generation at a time. Never start from a famous surname, a coat of arms, or an online tree you found and work *down* towards yourself. That direction feels quicker because there's already material there, but you'll be assuming the connection you're supposed to be proving. Almost every badly wrong family tree in existence was built downwards. Backwards is slow at the start and then accelerates, because each proven generation gives you the exact question for the next one. ## Rule two: write it from memory before you search anything Print a four-generation chart or draw one. Put yourself in the first box. Fill in every name, date and place you already know **without looking anything up**, in pencil. Then stop and look at what you left blank. That page is now the most valuable document you own, for two reasons. It's an honest snapshot of what your family actually knows, uncontaminated by anything from a website. And every gap in it is a specific, answerable question — which is exactly what research runs on. Most people are surprised by how far back they get from memory alone. Most people are also surprised by what's missing: a great-grandmother's maiden name, a birth year for someone whose face they can picture clearly. ## Rule three: circle the nearest gap, not the most interesting one You will want to work on the ancestor with the story — the one who emigrated, or who nobody talks about. Work on the nearest gap instead. If you don't have your great-grandmother's maiden name, that is the next job, even if she's the least interesting person on the chart, because everything beyond her runs through her name. Skipping a generation to get to the interesting part is the single most common way family trees go wrong. You attach the exciting branch to the wrong trunk, and by the time you notice, you've built three years of research on it. ## Rule four: ask the living people first, this month Records will still be there in five years. The people who can tell you which town, which spelling, and which of two brothers married which sister will not be. Ask the oldest person in the family within the next month. Ask specifically — not "tell me about the family", which produces nothing, but "what was your mother's maiden name and where was she born?" and "who else lived in that house?" Write down **who told you** as well as what they said. Family memory is a source like any other, and in ten years you'll want to know whether a date came from a certificate or from an aunt. --- **A free place to put all this** **Genealogy Starter Tools** — a four-generation pedigree chart, a research log and a source sheet with a separate evidence-analysis page. A4 and US Letter, printable and fillable, free after one email confirmation. → [Get the free genealogy tools](/free/genealogy-starter-sheets) --- ## Rule five: write the question before you search A research session has **one written question with a yes-or-no answer**. "Research the Kellys" is not a question. "Which parish register records the 1871 marriage of James Kelly?" is. Write it at the top of a research log before you open a single website. Without it, an evening of searching turns into an evening of browsing, and you finish with twelve tabs open and nothing you could repeat tomorrow. ## Rule six: log the searches that find nothing This is the habit that separates people who make progress from people who search the same records over and over for five years. Log every search: the date, the database, **exactly** what you typed — the spelling, the date range, the place — and the result, including "nothing". A negative search you've recorded is worth more than a positive one you can't repeat. It means you will never search that same parish register for that same five-year window twice. Over a few years that's weeks of your life, and it also tells you something real: if the family isn't in that county in 1880, they were somewhere else, and that's a fact about them. Before you write off a source, ask three things: is it complete, is it indexed, and is the index any good? Most nineteenth-century indexes are not. ## Rule seven: cite as you go, never later A date without a source is a rumour. Every fact you write on a person's sheet gets a number. That number gets a line on a source sheet the same minute — not that evening, not at the weekend. "Later" does not arrive, and a tree full of unsourced facts has to be rebuilt from scratch by whoever inherits it. And weigh sources by **who knew what, and when**. A death certificate is excellent evidence of a death and poor evidence of a birth date, because the informant wasn't there. One online tree agreeing with another online tree is one source, not two. ## Your first three record types Once the chart is drawn and the nearest gap is circled, these three will answer most early questions: **Census records.** The best value in genealogy. They place a whole household in one location on one day, name everyone in it, and if you read the *whole page* rather than just your ancestor's line, the neighbours are frequently relatives. → [How to read a census record](/use-us-census-records-family-history) **Vital records — but in reverse order.** Death first, because a death record names the most people. Then marriage, because it names both fathers. Then birth, which is the hardest to find and often the least informative. Check when civil registration actually began in that exact county before you order anything — it's usually decades later than people assume. **Newspapers.** Obituaries name surviving relatives, married names of daughters, and where people had moved to. Frequently the fastest way to jump a generation sideways. ## What usually goes wrong in the first month **Paying before searching for free.** A great deal is free through a public library card, a family history centre, or an archive's own website. Check before you subscribe, and note where you found it so you don't pay twice for the same images. **Trusting the index instead of the image.** Indexes are transcriptions made by people reading difficult handwriting fast. Always look at the actual record image. The index will say Kelley when the register says Kelly, and it will drop a middle name that would have solved your problem. **Collecting instead of proving.** It's easy to accumulate two thousand names and prove none of them. Ten proven generations beat two hundred assumed ones, and only one of those is worth handing on. **Keeping it all in software.** Software is a convenience. Sources and notes travel badly between programs, and subscriptions lapse. Keep the paper as the authority and export a GEDCOM once a year. ## What counts as an answer An answer is a conclusion supported by at least two independent sources, or by one source created at the time of the event by someone who was there. That's a higher bar than most people set, and it's the reason careful research survives. It also tells you when to stop searching: when you've worked every record type on your plan, logged the negatives, and written down what would change your mind. --- **When the pile of forms becomes a system** **The Ancestor File** — 61 pages: pedigree, fan and descendant charts, person records, a research management system, a brick wall protocol and DNA worksheets. Bookmarked, US Letter and A4. → [See The Ancestor File](/shop/the-ancestor-file) --- ## Your first week, in five steps 1. Draw a four-generation chart and fill it in from memory, in pencil. 2. Circle the nearest gap. 3. Telephone the oldest person in the family and ask two specific questions. 4. Open a research log and write one yes-or-no question at the top. 5. Search — and log everything you searched, including the misses. That's it. That's a real start, and it's better than the first hour most people spend. ## Where to go next - [How to read a US census record](/use-us-census-records-family-history) - [What to do when you hit a brick wall](/genealogy-brick-wall) - [Free Wiserta resources](/free) --- *Wiserta materials are research and wellbeing tools, not legal or professional advice. Records access rules vary by country and by state and change over time — verify current requirements with the office that holds the record.* ## A ready-made starting point For a connected set of people, source and research tools, explore [The Genealogy Starter Bundle](/shop/genealogy-starter-bundle). You can also begin with the records you already have and add a system when you know what is missing.