Getting started

3. Beginning your family tree

Having spoken to your relatives, and checked your home for clues, it's time to start building your family tree. Luckily, findmypast.com can help you with this. Family Tree Explorer is not only entirely online, meaning that you don't need to download it (or any future upgrades), but it's also free. And due to it being online you can access your family tree from any PC, adding ancestors from libraries or record offices, as soon as you find them.

Start with what you already know: yourself, your spouse and children, your parents and grandparents. Your family tree is already starting to grow.

Start building your family tree now

Enter as much information as you can, dates of birth, death and marriage, add photos and notes. It is important to note your sources, if you hit a brick wall this is a useful way of trying new avenues of research.

You might not have exact dates yet, or full names, or details of spouses. You may have a relative who 'disappeared'. These are the first things that you will look at with your research, but note everything you know, and from where you know it. Even rumours and legend often have their uses and can help to narrow down a search.

With Family Tree Explorer you can share your tree with other relatives, store files and images and make sure that all of your research is backed up on our secure servers.