Golden Rules of Genealogy
Cairns and District Family History have some wise rules to remember when working on your genealogy.
Work backwards from yourself to your unknown ancestors – otherwise you may end up researching the wrong family because you have assumed a relationship that doesn’t exist.
Birth, marriage, and death certificates are important for verifying relationships. Beware, not everything on birth, death or marriage certificates may be the truth. The informant may not have known the correct details or may have deliberately falsified the information.
Spelling of names and places varied over time and not everyone could read and write. European names may have been Anglicised to make them easier to use. When you look at an index remember to check all spelling variants i.e. Johnson, Johnston, Johnstone etc.
Track your work and cite your sources. Everything is speculation until you have verified it with a reliable source – two sources of information is even better. Record all sources. Take printouts of relevant or speculative information, as it may prove useful to your research later.
Take photocopies or scans of original documents. Keep original documents in a safe place and use your photocopies or scanned images to take to libraries and archives.
Read all documents thoroughly – you may find clues to identifying other family relationships such as witnesses to marriages and beneficiaries or executors of wills.
Organise your research carefully. Use Pedigree charts and family group Sheets/ Charts. A computer genealogy software program is the easiest way to record your information. Legacy Family Tree software is a great program. It has a free program that you can download to your computer. https://legacyfamilytree.com/
Ancestry website allows you to create a tree online for free https://www.ancestry.com.au/
Join a family history society near where you live and ask for help. There are many advantages to joining a society. Cairns and District Family History Society offers one to one help to get you started with your research. Membership offers free use of their resources, interest groups, workshops, presentations and more …
Brick Walls. Don’t give up if you hit a brick wall. Look at the problem from a different direction. This is where help from a family history society will be valuable to you – don’t be afraid to ask.
Relatives. Visit and communicate with as many living relatives as possible to get family stories. Try to locate first and second cousins, uncles, and aunts, as they may know information about your family.
DNA testing is a useful tool. You can verify to disprove a relationship by getting yourself and a relative tested. An Autosomal DNA test can find many previously unknown cousin relationships. Y-DNA tests can assist males with their surname line. DNA results should be used with your paper trail research. Cairns and District Family History Society hosts a monthly DNA Interest group meeting to help with all aspects of DNA testing and interpreting the results.