John Louis... can you tell us what you do have?

Your parents, grandparents, greats and great-greats if you know them... locations and dates help us help you too.

Have you tried looking at:

FamilySearch.org? [the Mormon/LDS] website.

Rootsweb.com is free.

Ancestry.com has some free information.

Sign up for free newsletters [especially RootsWeb and ancestry.com]

If you type in one of the names you do know... with as much information that you have... you will get an "index, list or a catalog" of possible matches and usually many many leads.

Most data repositories have more than one way to search for information... so be clever and inventive... especially with names that may have different phonetic values.

Use different combinations of information.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions of anyone... if they are a true family researcher... they will be glad to help, we all started somewhere and needed assistance.

Always remember to say “please and thank you”. Researchers are usually very pleasant and helpful folks… they just need a little courtesy too. Especially if they spent some time to help you… for free. It is discouraging to assist someone and then never hear if they used the information, and that they appreciated ones efforts.

Thirty years after starting this researching my family lines...

I still like to begin at the beginning.

Using hardcopy family group sheets, pedigree forms, etc forces the brain to retain the information you are transcribing from your notes to a form.

There is plenty of time to set things up in a software program.

The more you handle the material... the more you will be embed it into your memory and research thoughts.

You will be surprised how many times an obscure fact will seem incredibly important when you have been researching and have an aha ha moment.

Happy hunting
Kristina, Brigham Administrator
KristinaFamilyArchivist [at] yahoo.com