Your first month of genealogy research
Most beginners start with a DNA kit and no plan. Here's how to actually build a family tree in your first four weeks — what to search, who to call, and when records start talking back.
By Colin B. · Published June 14, 2026
Photo by Good Faces on Unsplash
Genealogy has a problem other hobbies don’t: it looks like it starts with buying something, when it actually starts with a phone call. The best genealogical research in the world begins with the living people who already have the answers you’re paying a database to find.
Before you order a DNA kit, call the oldest person in your family. Ask them where their grandparents were from. Ask for maiden names. Ask what languages were spoken in the house. Ask what they were told and never told anyone else. Write everything down.
You’re not ready to research until you’ve done this. Go make the call.
Week 1: Build the foundation for free
Once you have what your living relatives know, start with the tools that cost nothing.
FamilySearch.org is the most underrated resource in genealogy. It’s completely free, run by the LDS Church as a public service, and has digitized billions of records across 100+ countries. Census records, vital records, immigration documents, church registers — often indexed and searchable by name. Set up an account, enter your grandparents’ names, and search. Many beginners find their great-great-grandparents on FamilySearch without spending a dollar.
Start with yourself and work backward: your parents, their parents, their parents. Enter every name you know with birth years and locations. Leave blanks where you don’t know — the blanks are what research fills in.
The most common mistake in week one is building wide instead of deep. Don’t chase 50 distant cousins. Chase your direct line — one person at a time — as far back as you can go.
Week 2: Order your DNA kit and start the paper trail
Order your AncestryDNA kit at the start of week two. Results take 6-8 weeks, so the sooner it’s in the mail, the sooner the data starts working for you.
While you wait, start building in the documented record systems:
U.S. Census records are the backbone of American genealogy research. Every ten years from 1790 to 1940 (the 1950 census was released in 2022), the federal government recorded every person in every household, with names, ages, relationships, and birthplaces. The 1940 census is often the starting point for working backward on 20th-century families.
Look for your grandparents’ parents in the 1900, 1910, or 1920 census. The age, birthplace, and “mother tongue” fields will tell you things nobody in your family may know they forgot.
Vital records — birth, marriage, and death certificates — are held at the state level and vary by accessibility. Many have been scanned and uploaded to FamilySearch or Ancestry. When online records run out, county clerks and state archives often have the paper originals.
Military records are available through NARA (archives.gov) and often through Ancestry. The WWI draft registration cards (1917-18) cover nearly every male in America between 18 and 45, and the information density is remarkable: employer, physical description, nearest relative.
Week 3: DNA results arrive — here’s what to do with them
Your AncestryDNA results land with a lot of information. Here’s the order that actually matters:
Ignore the ethnicity estimate for now. It’s interesting and will become more useful over time, but it’s not actionable for genealogy research in week three. The percentages shift as Ancestry updates its reference panel, and beginners frequently misread them as definitive.
Go straight to DNA matches. Your closest matches — first cousins, second cousins, half-siblings — are real, living people who share your ancestors. Many of them have built trees, and their trees contain your ancestors too.
Find a close match with a large, detailed tree. Look for the common ancestor you share. That common ancestor has descendants (including you and your match), and those descendants have a tree. Follow it back.
The chromosome browser matters eventually. If you care about pinpointing which specific ancestor you share DNA with, the chromosome browser (available on 23andMe and GEDmatch) lets you see exactly which segments of DNA you share with each match. Don’t worry about it in week three. Understand your matches first.
If you’re not finding first or second cousin matches right away — common for people with smaller extended families or ancestors from populations with thin database coverage — don’t panic. The match pool grows every day as more people test.
Week 4: Break your first brick wall
By week four you’ll almost certainly have hit a wall: a missing record, an ancestor who appears from nowhere, a surname spelled three different ways across different documents. This is where genealogy earns its reputation as a mystery to be solved, not a form to fill out.
A few tools for breaking through:
Name variants matter enormously. Before 1900, spelling was not standardized. “Schmidt” and “Smith” might be the same family. Vowels shift in transcription. Search for phonetic variants, not just exact matches.
Cluster research — looking at the neighbors, witnesses, and church members who appear alongside your ancestors in multiple records — often reveals extended family connections. People emigrated together, settled together, and served as witnesses for each other.
GEDmatch (gedmatch.com) is a free platform where people from different testing companies upload their raw DNA for cross-company matching. Useful when a relative only tested at 23andMe and you’re at Ancestry.
Local genealogical societies are still valuable. County societies often have indexes, transcriptions, and local knowledge that isn’t online anywhere. Most have email lists and welcome beginner questions.
What a month of research actually looks like
Most beginners find three things in their first month: one ancestor they didn’t know existed, one record that contradicts what the family believes, and one wall they can’t get through yet.
The contradiction is actually a good sign. It means you’re finding real records, not just confirming what you already know. Family oral history is often wrong on specific dates, correct on relationships, and silent on the things that were shameful or hard. The records tell a different story.
The wall is just the work. Every genealogist has lines that go cold in a particular generation, in a particular place, for a particular reason — a destroyed courthouse, a country with poor civil registration, an ancestor who changed their name at the border. Learning to recognize when you’ve genuinely exhausted a source, versus when you haven’t looked hard enough, is the core skill.
At the end of month one, you’ll have a tree that’s at least partially documented, a DNA match or two you’ve corresponded with, and a list of exactly what you don’t know yet. That list is the research.
Ready to buy a DNA kit and choose a subscription? See the genealogy gear guide for exactly what to buy, in what order.