How to trace your family history
6 min read
Tracing your family history sounds daunting, but it starts with what you already know and grows one name at a time. You need no special training or paid records to begin — just curiosity and the memories close to hand. Here is a simple, five-step way to start.
Start with what you already know
Write down yourself, your parents and your grandparents: full names, birth dates, and the places each person was born, lived and married. You know more than you think, and these first facts are the foundation every other branch hangs from.
Talk to your oldest relatives first
Living memory is the richest source of family history — and the most fragile. Ask your oldest relatives for names, dates, places and stories, especially where people were born and why the family moved. Record the conversations; a detail skipped today can be lost for good.
Gather documents and photographs
Birth, marriage and death certificates, old letters, family bibles and the backs of photographs all carry names, dates and places. Each one either confirms a memory or opens a new branch you didn't know was there.
Record names, dates and places as you go
Keep every person together with their key dates and the places tied to them. Consistency matters more than completeness: a single tree you can keep adding to beats facts scattered across notebooks, messages and your memory.
Map where your family lived and moved
Pinning each birth, marriage and move to a real place turns a list of names into a story you can see — the migrations, the distances, the journey your family took across the generations.
Turn your research into a living map
RootsLore turns the relatives you remember into a family tree and a time-lapsed map of where they were born, married, moved and laid to rest. You can begin with only the names you know — no account and no genealogy expertise required — and fill in the rest over time, then share one link so the whole family adds what only they remember.