HOW CAN I START MY FAMILY HISTORY?

 We want to help you in a logical, easy and familiar way: with the information you have about your own family: your own spouse and children, and next your parents, grandparents, etc.

First, assemble information you know about your family.  Look through family photographs, Bibles, newspaper clippings and other records, many of which you may have in your own home.  Look for birth, marriage and death dates and places, and for locations where your family lived.

Record that information in family groupings and in pedigree lines.  We have forms at the Center to simplify and organize that process, or you may want to download those forms or the easy-to-use free Personal Ancestral File program from www.familysearch.org, the free LDS website which provides a wide spectrum of family history information.

Next, check with relatives who may know about your family, particularly your parents, grandparents and those beyond.  Add that information to your record from your own resources.

Then, meet with the Family History Consultants who staff our Center or with Ward Family History Consultants in your LDS congregation, to continue the process.  During our open hours, Center staff can generally give you personal attention to suggest the next steps, and how to obtain further information.

The Consultants will assist you to find any research others may have done for your family or ancestors.  There are on-line sources for that data, and you can use our Center computers.

The Consultants will help you know how and where to find missing information about your family and ancestors. 

At the Center, we have a unique on-line computer reference to free sources for internet research, and a carefully selected and effective collection of references for a wide number of geographical locations to help you find your information.   See “Ji’s Site” in the Links area of this website.

To help you improve your knowledge of family history and research techniques, we suggest that you peruse the www.familysearch.org website, which has a “Get Started With Family History” section on its home page.   That site is in the Links area of this website.

Locally, our Center has periodic larger seminars and other focused trainings for patrons at all family history experience levels.  We invite you to those.  We will also point you to other seminars and trainings provided by other area organizations with expertise in family history.  All of those will be on the Coming Events area of this website.

Further, individual Staff members have genealogy experience in specific geographical areas, and are willing to provide detailed help.  See the Our Staff area of this website.

Because we are an arm of the Salt Lake Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you can order at modest cost for your use at our Center all of that huge Library’s circulating resources in microfilm and microfiche form.  We already have a large number of those resources on hand, for certain geographies.  See the Collections area of this website.

We welcome you to our Center, and hope you will find joy as you progress in knowing more about your own family.