Your parents’ and grandparents’ names, birth dates, marriage dates, and death dates, if you know any of those.
Lynn Bancroft: Generally, you should start by writing down what you do know about your ancestors. Your parents’ and grandparents’ names, birth dates, marriage dates, and death dates, if you know any of those. You also should check your closets for any kind of backup material, like certificates, photo albums, or anything that would give more information about family members. Then you could begin to fill out what we call an ancestor chart to put it all in an organized structure.