Starting a family tree for free: FamilySearch first, then the archives

The route 1. Write down what you already know, with the source of each fact: a birth certificate, a family Bible, an obituary, or "my aunt told me in 2026". Unsourced facts are where trees go wrong. 2. Make a free account at https://www.familysearch.org. Run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it holds billions of indexed records and image-only collections, free. 3. Search Records, not just the shared Family Tree. The Family Tree is collaborative, and anyone can edit it. Treat it as a lead, never as a source. 4. Use the Catalog (search by place) for records that are not indexed. Many county deed, probate and court books exist only as browsable images. This is where most brick walls actually come down. 5. Work backwards one generation at a time. Find each person in every census they lived through, then the vital records, then land and probate. Free archives worth knowing - National Archives (census, military, immigration, land entry files): https://www.archives.gov/research/genealogy - Library of Congress newspapers: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov - State archives and county clerks, for deeds and probate. Where to stop and check If two records disagree, do not pick one. Write down both, with sources, and look for a third. That habit is the difference between a tree and a story. DNA can help across the gaps, but a DNA ethnicity estimate is an estimate, not a record. Background reading on what haplogroups can and cannot say: https://wiki.soapbox.community/wiki/Haplogroups_and_Genetic_Heritage