Genealogy is an interesting way to save your family history for future generations and get to know your ancestors. It can also be time consuming, complicated and lead you down a few dead ends.

We’ve had a few emails since Balsham a village story 1617 to 2017 was published about family history and genealogy. We do not offer a research service but you may find answers to family mysteries in the book as we cover a few families and mention many names.

Here’s some advice on how to get started if you want to research your family.

1. It helps to know what you want to get from it first. This is important for you not just to stay on the right track but also to keep your motivation going.

2. What do you already have to hand? Make a list of diaries, photos, documents, and records that you can easily access and keep it growing, it’s a useful record and shows how the project is growing.

3. Make a separate list of the resources that you need but don’t have yet. Add to this list as you go.

4. Start with the interviews of the closest family members, yours or the family of the person you’re researching. You can capture video or voices on mobile devices, computers and tablets. Remember to back it up to a cloud account like Dropbox or Google Drive, and on a back up drive of your own.

5. Write down what you see or hear too and carefully tag or note down each conversation you record to help you locate them later.

6. Make a draft of the family tree and update it as you get hold of new data.

Have you started your research as a result of reading Balsham a village story 1617-2017? We’d love to know how went and add your story to our blog posts! Drop a comment below!