search guide
Family history search: a plan you can finish in a weekend
Short answer
A family history search reconstructs a family unit and its collateral branches from documented records. It's the wider version of an ancestor search — one household at a time, decade by decade, until the family tree stops giving you living relatives to interview and starts giving you strangers on old census pages.
- Interview living relatives before touching a database.
- Anchor names in the 1950 US census and walk backwards.
- Confirm every generation with at least three independent sources.
- Follow FAN (Friends, Associates, Neighbors) leads when a name goes cold.
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