How to Write a Genealogy Research Report

How to Write a Genealogy Research Report.

Family history is important—and far too often, family history is lost to time because people don’t take the crucial step of committing family history to paper. If you want to preserve family memories, find out more about your family tree and other important historical information, you should create a genealogy research report. The following is a step by step guide that will help you turn your family history into a genealogy report that will help you and future generations of your family remember the past.

Step One: Determine your research goals

First, you need to determine your research goals for your research report. Are you looking to fill out an entire family tree? Do you have an existing family tree that needs gaps filled in? Do you want to find out more about certain areas of the family? How far back do you want your research to go? Once you know the goals, it will be possible to move on to the next step of the report. 

To learn which is the best software for doing a family tree click here.

Step Two: Create an outline

Now you will need to create an outline for your report. Most reports should start with a basic introduction which leads into the various categories you want to cover in your report. You can finish your outline with a summary or conclusion based on your findings. Your outline can be as detailed or simplistic as you want it to be, based on your personal needs and how you prefer to work.

Step Three: Research to fill in the outline

Once your outline is finished, you can begin researching to fill in the outline. The research should help you answer the questions created by the goals you set in the first step. If you can, organize your research by outline section; this will help you figure out what you need to write in each section later on, after all your research is done. 

To learn how to Label Your old photo digital scans by using metadata click here.

Step Four: Write the report

Once you have all of the research completed, it is time to get to the real heart of the work: actually writing the report. The key to a genealogy report is to be factual, concise, yet provide all of the relevant information at the same time. The length of your report will depend on what you wanted to cover and the amount of information you found during your research. 

Step Five: Finalize 

When you have the first draft of your report written, have someone else check it over for you. They can check for spelling and grammar errors and give you their thoughts regarding the clarity and overall success of your report. If necessary, keep writing new drafts. Once you have a draft that you are happy with, it’s time to finalize everything. Your final report can be published wherever you wish, such as social media, an ancestry or genealogy site, or simply printed out and kept in your family’s important family history documents.

Keep the above steps in mind when writing a research report on your family genealogy. 

To find out why you should hire a genealogist click here.

To find out how to record your family’s love stories click here.

To learn how to back up our old photographs click here.

To learn how to share your old family films safely click here.