I am so glad to see other people interested in genealogy finally coming out of the woodwork! It is one of my other all consuming passions besides quilting, cross stitch, reading, etc. Well, you get the picture - I need days to last twice as long as they do in order to get things accomplished. I have always loved history and was bitten by the genealogy bug back in the 6th or 7th grade when we had to do a family tree for a class assignment. 50+ years of accumulating stuff and I have only begun to scratch the surface. Basically, my people are the British Isles with the few exceptions that ended up in Holland to avoid the religious mess Henry VIII created. Have found fasinating stories that makes me appreciate the strength of character my forebearers had.
For those of you who are just getting started, I noticed that “ssnare” has offered to help anyone looking for help and I would like to offer my services also. I am not a great genealogist but can get you started right or at least in the right direction. There are numerous websites that offer all resources necessary for getting started for free.
http://familysearch.org has great information and in their products section (see bottom of the page - you can download Paf 5.2 for free. This will enable you to get started immediately and if you wish to move on to one of the other family tree programs you can transfer what you have entered in Paf with no problems.
http://genealogy.about.com/ ,
http://rootsweb.com, and many others are free and available to use - If you do not choose to use Paf and want to do things by hand then I recommend you use the pedegree chart available on about.com - it is interactive, allowing you to enter info (sorry, you can’t save it but it does allow you to type and print forms, which is always a plus. As for other forms necessary I recommend that you enter “Free genealogy forms” into
http://dogpile.com (My favorite search engine) and there will be page after page of different sites offering forms - just be sure to look for the interactive ones - they help keep things looking good once you get started.
REMEMBER: No tree is considered valid without documentation! So get forms, fill them out, (Pedegree charts, family group sheets, etc) as best you can, but then start accumulating the documentation to go with the facts - if your Nana tells you something, note that the info came from Nana, No matter how small, all notes of this sort are important. Good Luck!