What to ask at your first family history interview
Questions to get the conversation going, with practical advice on recording, taking notes and deciding what to share.
Read articleGive your curiosity a place to begin.
From a family memory to evidence you can return to. Learn how to find, evaluate, preserve and tell a family story.
20 articles · Showing 20
Names change; clues remain: recording name variants
Record characters, forms of address, and spellings separately, and use surrounding people and places to test whether a name belongs to the same person.
Read articleBuild a checkable timeline from scattered memories
Organize a life with date ranges, sources, and uncertainties, turning gaps into the next research questions.
Read articleTwo people with the same name: avoiding a mistaken connection
Compare relationships, places, ages, and record origins while keeping each candidate separate.
Read articleWho is in this old photo? Clues to names, places and dates
Look beyond the faces. Handwriting, studio stamps and a photo’s place in an album can help you work out who it shows.
Read articleReading family letters: writer, recipient, and surviving paper
Keep envelopes and original order, distinguish dates, reported information, and silence, and explore everyday relationships through correspondence.
Read articleRecord every source: make family history retraceable
Use stable identifiers, precise locations, and assessment notes to connect a story to material you actually examined.
Read articleFinding a person's everyday life in old newspapers
Turn a newspaper mention into a verifiable family-history lead through name variants, coverage checks and examination of the original page.
Read articleWhen did your family arrive in Australia? Finding passenger records
Where to search, what to try when a name is missing and how to check whether a passenger is the person you are looking for.
Read articleTracing household addresses through censuses and directories
Understand whom different lists recorded and omitted, then build a careful residential timeline through successive years and neighbourhood clues.
Read articleHow to find and read a Chinese family genealogy (jiapu)
Use places and family details to find the right book, then check the links between generations before adding names to your tree.
Read articleFinding the places behind historical names
Retain original place names, check map dates, scale and purpose, and use spatial clues to find records without treating a map as proof of residence.
Read articleReading archive catalogues to find the next source
Understand creating agencies, series and items, and turn a name search into an archival investigation with defined scope and traceable references.
Read articleHow to continue when a family-history search finds nothing
Record an unsuccessful search with defined scope, check coverage, names and method, and choose the next worthwhile route.
Read articleReading Old Words: OCR and Reliable Transcription
Move from images and machine recognition to careful checking, preserving both original wording and uncertainty.
Read articleContinuing Research When Records Disagree
Turn disagreements into testable questions, examine how records were created, and state bounded conclusions.
Read articleDigitising Family Materials and Keeping Them Accessible
Build a transferable preservation routine through identifiers, capture, description, and checked backups.
Read articleHow to keep a family history research log
A simple way to track searches, save useful references and pick up where you left off. Includes a worked example you can adapt.
Read articleAI-Assisted Family Research: Tasks, Checks, and Boundaries
Use AI to organise material and suggest questions while tracing every biographical fact to checkable evidence.
Read articleWriting a Family Biography With Evidence and Humanity
Build a readable, traceable life story from questions and a source timeline, keeping unknowns visible.
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