On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 11:46:20 -0800, Tom Kunich scribed:

On Sunday, January 17, 2021 at 3:13:16 PM UTC-8, News 2021 wrote:
The best place to start finding out your family history is to talk to
all the relatives you can. tape it if you can, because this allows the
conversation to flow with out you stopping to write notes and
interrupting flow of thought

The next place is the official and other records. This art can get a
bit expensive (looked for share cert sites) as you may need all of
birth, marriage and death records for each person. The gold mine can be
the other information recorded and this is where 'church' records can
be helpful.

All my UK antecedents had left by the time official records started and
mostly the "records" were priests reports to the Bishop, but the
occasional surviving priest record book would also include the male
grandfather on children's birth entry. thus enabling that families tree
to be walked back.

You may also need to search shipping records, but these can be very
patchy. I picked up one families emigration from Scotland to Australia,
because the whole family was listed on the passenger list.

Look for multiple sources for everything. The last thing you want to
accept is anything listed at Ancestry. Even the LDS familysearch
site(derived from bishops reports,but also contributed expansions) has
fake records. According to one idiot on geni.com, our family has roots
going back to the Kings of Wessex.

Those family reminiscences I suggested first are the most useful when
you get stumped. especially when they verbatim repeat stuff they have
been told or overheard. These often give clues of where to look when
you don't know where to start, but grain of salt.

As always, YMMV, but I've managed to build family back over ten
generations through 'records', but a BIL only has three as all records
went up in flames in WWII.

It never surprises me in the least that you think that a 76 year old man
has older living relatives that could tell you your lineage. My older
brother cannot even remember the name of our mother's father.

As always YMMV. If you do not have anyone in the family, then it is a
document trail search. In one line of my ancestors where there is no
possibnle chance of a paper trail, all the 'cousin of the line tell the
same story of where the line came from.