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Family History Guide

This guide is designed to help with family history research and provides suggestions for resources from other institutions and organisations.

What is your goal?

Photo of a large treeBefore starting to search for information for family history you need to have an idea about what you want to produce. This can change over time to reflect what you discover or are interested in however it will help you focus your efforts.

Ask yourself - Do you want to:

  • Produce a "Family Tree", following a line of ancestors back through time?
  • Produce an "Extended Family Tree", showing all of the descendants of a particular ancestor?
  • Produce an "Ancestry Chart", showing all of your ancestors through every line?

(For more information of these, see the section on Organising Your Reseach).

We acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants of the nation and acknowledge Traditional Owners of the lands where our staff and students, live, learn and work.Acknowledgement of Country

Creative Commons Licence
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License. Content from this Guide should be attributed to James Cook University Library. This does not apply to images, third party material (seek permission from the original owner) or any logos or insignia belonging to JCU or other bodies, which remain All Rights Reserved.

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