The Complete Idiot's Guide to Genealogy

by Christine Rose, Kay Germain Ingalls

This user-friendly volume offers readers an opportunity to understand the craft of genealogy, explore their roots, perform online research, and begin to discover their true identities. Includes new information on the release of the 1930 census, the pros and cons of online research, and creating family trees.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Research, How To

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 1997

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Christine Rose, is a Certified Genealogist Emeritus of The Board for Certification of Genealogists®, and a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. Her lecturing experience included national conferences, and many regional seminar and local county seminars. In addition, she undertook client research across the country for many years. Since 1992 she was been an instructor and coordinator of Samford University's Institute of Historical and Genealogical Research. She is a prolific author of well reviewed genealogy guidebooks.

Reviews

[Denise]

Wow, I thought I was doing well on my new interest--genealogy research. OMG, I have barely scratched the surface. This book was so informative. I took pages and pages of notes--probably should have just bought the book! (It was a library read.)

This book is a must read for anyone just getting started in genealogy research.

[Karen]

Despite the distasteful name of this series, this was a good basic guidebook for those interested in exploring their family roots.

[Lauren]

This book really dumbs down genealogy. I get that it is an "idiot's guide" but come on! Can we please have the expectation that the reader has some level of intelligence. People are coming to "idiot's guides" & "for dummies" books for simple instructions. Not this idea that they are dumbasses & we are explaining things to them as such.

[John Beckett]

While the 2012 version of this book is a little dated - especially in terms of the internet stuff, it has proved itself to be very helpful. I shall be keeping it for a reference. The section on travelling lead to a very productive trip.

[Myra]

A pretty comprehensive beginner's guide to genealogy. Can be a bit overwhelming, but covers a lot of topics.

[Carolyn]

Very useful to help me build my family tree.

[Amy]

Great information that I've already found useful in my genealogy search. Lots of websites, addresses, interview questions, and ideas to make hunting for ancestors easier. I've already sent a couple of military records requests (using addresses in this book) and learned a lot about how the census is set up and ideas for getting the most from found census records. I've found family census records back to the early 1800's! My book is full of sticky notes and highlighter pen markings. :)

[Liddy Barlow]

Wow -- this really explained what a huge project I'm hoping to step into. But it was also very explicit about how exactly to find those public records and suggested some other great sources. I'm pumped to start but also awed by the scope of the project! Written as a how-to, so not great literature, but worth four stars. [Reviewed in the "book journal" I kept throughout 1999.]

[Courtney Skelton]

Very informative. It was a little bit dumbed down in the beginning, but after that it showed that the value of it is its simplicity. I took some good notes, and I look forward to applying this to my personal search for family.

[Laura Cushing]

Good starter guide to genealogy. Answered a lot of questions I had about sources and record keeping. Needs to be updated again (I had the second edition) to keep up with the internet's ever changing resources, but overall a good starter book for someone like me who is new to the hobby.

[Eleanor]

"How to" guide to genealogy.

[Sara]

Got a lot of good ideas that have panned out for tracing my family.

[Al]

Good place to start. Plenty of info. Some links may be dead.

[Diane Wachter]

PB-B @ 1997, 3/03. Advice, steps and methods. Interesting.

[Mike]

Nothing about tracking genealogy in different countries, which sucked.

[David Phipps]

Marking this as d.n.f for now. Not sure why I ever marked this as currently reading. I decided a long time ago to table any genealogy research until I finish a photo digitization project.