How to start your family tree in one weekend

Most family trees never get started because the job looks endless. It is not. A useful tree, three or four generations deep, can be drafted in a weekend if you work in the right order.

Start with yourself and work outwards

Write down what you already know before you ask anybody anything. Begin with yourself, then your parents, your siblings and your grandparents. For each person, note the full name, any other name the family uses, the year and place of birth, and who they married. Do not worry about gaps. A tree with question marks is still a tree, and the gaps tell you exactly what to ask later.

Working outwards from yourself has one more advantage: every person you add is connected to someone already in the tree. You never end up with a loose list of names that nobody can place.

Talk to the oldest people first

Documents will still be there next year. A grandparent's memory may not be. Make the first phone call or visit to the oldest relatives on each side of the family, and go with specific questions rather than "tell me about the family".

• What were your parents' and grandparents' full names? Did anyone go by a different name at home?
• How many brothers and sisters did you have, in what order?
• Which village or town did the family come from, and when did they move?
• Who married whom, and roughly when?
• Is there a story about a particular person that everyone used to tell?

Ask permission and record the conversation as a voice note if they are comfortable. You will not be able to write fast enough, and decades from now the recording itself will matter more than the notes.

Write down where each fact came from

Family memory is generous with stories and careless with dates. Two aunts will give you two different birth years for the same person. When that happens, record both, and record who told you. A one-line note such as "per Lakshmi atta, phone call" is enough. Later, when you find a school certificate, a wedding invitation or a date written in the back of an old photograph, you will know which version to trust.

Collect photographs while you are there

Old albums are the quickest way to unlock names. Sit with an elder, go through the album, and write on a slip of paper who is in each photo, left to right. Take a picture of the photo and of the slip together. Once the people who can name the faces are gone, an unlabelled photograph is very hard to identify, so this half-hour is well spent.

Agree on spellings and dates early

Names that move between scripts get spelt several ways in English. Pick one spelling per person, usually the one on their own documents, and keep any others as alternate names. Do the same for dates: decide whether you are recording the official date on documents or the date the family actually celebrates, and note it when the two differ.

Be careful with living people

A family tree holds things that people do not expect to be passed around: dates of birth, phone numbers, health notes, a first marriage, an adoption. Before you share the tree, think about who is in it.

• Share a branch with the relatives who belong to it, not the entire tree with everyone.
• Leave out health details and contact numbers unless the person has agreed.
• If someone asks you not to record something, respect that. The tree is for the family, not the other way round.

A realistic weekend plan

1. Saturday morning: enter yourself, parents, siblings, grandparents, and every aunt, uncle and cousin you can name without help.
2. Saturday afternoon: call or visit the oldest relative on each side with your list of gaps.
3. Sunday morning: go through one photo album and label it.
4. Sunday afternoon: add birthdays and anniversaries for the living, make a backup, and send each branch to one relative to check.

That last step matters. Relatives correct mistakes much faster than they volunteer information, so a draft that is slightly wrong is the best questionnaire you can send.