At 12:56 PM 01/12/1999 EST, you wrote: >how do a person get started researching their tree First, you start with yourself and your immediate family. Interview your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Find out as much as you can about their lives....dates, brothers, sisters, where they lived, what they did. It isn't a bad idea to take a course. Many Community Colleges offer courses in beginning Genealogy. Go to the Library. Ask questions. Seek out books on the county and state your ancestors lived. See if anyone has done a family history on your family. Learn how to look up census records, then methodically go from 1920 census, to the 1910, and so on, back in time and trace your ancestors. Go to Cindy's list on the Internet and check it out thoroughly. Buy a good software program for entering your family data. Visit Courthouses, Archives, and Cemeteries. Enjoy your hobby. Double check on all the information. Carol > > Carol Pridgen Martoccia 903 East Fifth St. Greenville, NC 27858 PRIDGEN Homepage : http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/6297 PRIDGEN Archives: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl List manager for the Pridgen Family and for Wilson County, NC (NCWilson)