Searching for Scottish Ancestors

You could develop a form with all the information you require and send it to relatives. The disadvantage of this is although the names, places, facts, and dates are important to build up the structure of the family history, the anecdotes about relatives are much more enlighting to your new-found interest. Finding out the eccentricities, pet like and dislikes, or sense of humour on someone who previously had just been a name is fun.

Information about other sources of data is important at this point so finding things like the Family Bible or news of a distant relative who is looking for family history can be helpful

.