Finding Your Family Tree: A Beginner’s Guide to Researching Your Genealogy

Embarking on a quest to uncover your ancestry? Finding Your Family Tree is the perfect genealogy guide to have at your side, with special research techniques for underrepresented groups.

Genealogy offers you the opportunity to understand who you are through your family history. With this knowledge, you can embrace your identity, understand your own health and wellness, reconnect with your roots and family origins, and find an overall sense of wholeness. Finding Your Family Tree: A Beginner’s Guide to Researching Your Family Tree is an ideal starting point for your own journey of self-discovery.

Your are eager to learn your ancestry, but in these disconnected times it can be hard to figure out on your own. With author and expert genealogist Sharon L Morgan as your guide, you can explore even the thorniest family tree. Sharon shows you how to embrace the world of genealogical research and provides guidance for underrepresented groups, such as African Americans and Native Americans, and anyone else who is interested in connecting with their family background.

In this engaging, accessible guide on how to do family research, you’ll find: 
 

• Tips and tricks for using major online and offline research sources—without falling for false leads.
• Techniques for overcoming common research obstacles. 
• Special attention to the challenges of genealogical research for groups that are underrepresented in the historical record.
• Sample research documents and useful visuals on how to interpret old records. 

Beyond exploring the practical challenges of researching your family history, this book will show you what’s most exciting about this research—the unique family stories and histories you’ll discover, but also the essential truths that bind and connect us all.

Sharon Leslie Morgan is a writer and genealogist as well as an expert in multicultural marketing. She is the founder of Our Black Ancestry, a website and Facebook group devoted to African American genealogy, that has more than 35,000 members. She writes and speaks extensively. In 2021, she was a keynote speaker for the annual RootsTech conference. Sponsored by FamilySearch, it is the largest family history convocation in the world. It was attended (virtually) by over 1 million participants from 242 countries. 

She is the co-author, with Thomas Norman DeWolf, of GATHER AT THE TABLE: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade (Beacon Press, 2012). It won the Phillis Wheatley Award for best nonfiction/memoir at the Harlem Book Fair.