It doesn’t take a degree in archival history to get into genealogy. Anyone with a penchant to record their family’s story and learn more about their own roots can take part in the pursuit.

To get started all a person needs is a basic idea of family history and a nose for sleuthing.

One of the best ways to begin is to start constructing a family tree. Start with your parents or your spouses’ and fill in the blanks, working backward. What you’re looking for in a basic tree is names and places and dates of births, marriages and so on. Move up from your parents to theirs and go as far back as you can without major research.

The simplest way to accomplish this is to ask a family member to help you fill in the blanks. If none are available with a recollection of the past, check into old family documents such as Bibles, photo albums and so on. Generally there’s at least one person in a family that enjoys hanging onto these things, so look them up!

Once you have a basic tree with a few branches and you can’t go any further, it’s time to start looking at archival documents. This might seem a little intimidating, but you can find a lot of help at local libraries and on the Internet.

Search for birth and death records, immigration records and so on from where your ancestors are from. Don’t get discouraged if you only can get your hands on documents that only go back a few generations. That, for many, is more than a great start, it’s a solid family tree.

With the branches spread out as far as you can get them to go, now’s the time to fill in a little more information. Find out what you can about each of your ancestors, relying first on living relatives’ memories. Record their likes, dislikes, professions, hobbies, talents and so on. Any detail can be more than fitting.

Whether you can only go back 100 years or your story stretches back 200, what you start when you create a genealogy is picture of your own past. It’s a fun and rewarding hobby that will give you a glimpse into the history of you.