What do I need? Before embarking on any extensive research you need three things: patience, patience and more patience! Don't think you're going to sit at your computer over a weekend and trace your family back to William the Conqueror in 1066. The information on these pages, as simple as it may appear, is the result of over 30 years of research. You could easily spend five years just collecting verified results on four generations. In genealogy verified usually means when you're ninety percent sure as, the further back you go, the more likely you will be to find important documents torn, illegible or both.

Where do I start? Start with what you know, then check it. Put down on paper yourself, your siblings, your parents, their siblings, their parents and siblings. Write down everything you know about these people. Now start checking; get copies of everyone's birth certificates, your own included. Was your mother really born in 1960 or has she cut five years off her age? Is Uncle Jim's name James or Jimblin? Was your grandmother's maiden name really Johnson or was it Johnston? Write down anecdotes about your family: your grandfather's experience in World War II, your aunt's first visit to America. Write down family legends; you may be surprised when, one day in the future, you find evidence to back up something you'd always thought was a load of rubbish. Now get yourself a good genealogy program and enter all this information on it. Keep everything on the computer AND on paper. It's easier to work on the computer, especially when you've got a few thousands names but computers crash and websites go down.

What next? You now have four grandparents, decide which line to follow. Most people follow their name; we decided on a specific line because those were the stories we heard as children. Do not try to do every line at once, you will get confused and go crazy. We have gotten confused and gone crazy just following two lines. Once you reach a certain point you may want to start on another line. After all these years, we've only just started researching our father's history!

Don't believe everything (anything) you read on the Internet. The internet is a magnificent source of information and is an excellent starting point. But...everyone has access and anyone can upload unverified information or misinformation. If you read online that John Horatio Brown was born in St Ann's Bay in 1783, use that as your starting point. Go to the RGD and start with that year and that place; if you don't find him, look throughout St Ann and five years before and after. The Internet may allow you to spend one week looking for an ancestor instead of six months but it cannot be the full extent of your search.

Get the background. Our ancestors were living people, don't put them down as names and dates. Here's where the Internet becomes invaluable. Your 4xgreat grandfather was born in Germany in 1810. Read everything you can find about Germany at that time. Read about what life was like in those days in that place. Look for old maps of similar times, look for paintings of how people dressed, what their houses looked like. Put your ancestors in their time, not your own. Everyone hopes to find someone famous or royal in their bloodline but be prepared to find pirates, murderers, traitors and thieves. You might find St Francis but you may also find Hitler.

Untangle the names. Once you get four or five generations back, you will come across something of hair-tearing proportions. You know you're named for Aunt Jean and your brother is named for your Dad's best friend. They did it then too, but more so and they had larger families. John Peter and Mary Jane had twelve children. All the boys have either John or Peter or both as middle names and all the girls have Mary and Jane. Each of those twelve children have twelve children and every single one of them have a John Peter and a Peter John. Well you get the point, in three generations you will find twenty people of the same name and you will have to unweave them! Add to that the fact that in very Catholic countries, as France was before the Revolution, all Christian names had to be the names of saints so that reduces the pool of names. There were twenty kings of France called Louis, including four after the Revolution, two Restoration and two Napoleons. Don't expect your family to be any different. Most French girls and some boys had the prenom Marie. In our family, were we actually to count, we may well find a thousand Marie Vendryes! But very few were actually called Marie. Marie Louise Jeanne Beatrice may have been called Louise and her cousin Marie Louise Jeanne Beatrice may have been called Beatrice.

Also, how a name was recorded had much to do with the nationality of the person doing the recording. Your great, great grandfather may have been Peter, but he was baptised by a Frenchman and recorded as Pierre; years later he was buried by a Spaniard and recorded as Pedro. Ever wondered at the vast quantities of Williams families in Jamaica, most of them with no English ancestry whatsoever? Well when the East Indian and Chinese immigrants arrived, the Englishman or Irishman recording them could not understand their languages, much less spell in it, so it was a lot easier to write Tom Williams than Ravi Vishnaturasingh.

Look to the future. Family researchers spend so much time in the past that we often forget the future. When you're putting pictures of Grandma's 80th birthday in an album, you know it's Grandma's 80th birthday but someone 200 years from now may come across that picture and want to start on their own journey of discovery. Help them on their way, label the photos: "Jean Cecile leBlanc, 80th Birthday, 12th June 2008, at home 56 Tweedledum St, Kingston, Jamaica. Left to right: Aunt Mary Brown, Uncle Tom Smith, etc." In fact, label one or two pictures from each set you have and I would even suggest labeling all the photos of any family gathering. Think of the decades you would have saved if your great, great grandmother had done the same!

If after reading all that you still want to research your family, I wish you well. You're in for the adventure of your life!