You probably know more about your own immediate
family than you think. Birth/Christening dates, Marriages, Deaths/Burials,
and so on ............So let's begin here, by simply recording all that
you you know in a logical format.
Family Group Sheets are a way of recording information
of one unit of a family, husband, wife, and children, onto one or two A4
or letter size pages, depending on the number of children in the family
unit. Family Groups are also the basic design of more sophisticated Family
History Computer programs and so to obtain knowledge of the layout and
information to be filled in, on such a sheet, will be of invaluable help
when you obtain your first computerised family history program.
I have designed a basic Family Group Sheet and have named
it "family.rtf". It is a file that you can download (transfer) to
your own computer and save it on your hard disk with the same name. The
extension of the filename is .rtf and means rich text format and can be
loaded into any word processor and as many copies printed up as you wish.
Click on the name
family.rtf and save it to your hard disk in a folder of your choice.
Print up a couple of copies so that you can see what needs to be done.
You will see that the Family Group Sheet requires certain
information to be filled in. If you are married start filling in
a sheet for your own family, your wife, (or husband) and your children
in order of birth. Always use maiden (pre-marriage surname) for the wife,
as this is the name you will need to research for the maternal (mothers)
side of the family.
Once you have completed one sheet for your own family,
then start on a sheet for your own parents or your spouses' parents where
you or your spouse would appear as one of the children.