About

Hi Everyone and welcome to The Newbie Genealogist.

My name is Tracy Minsterman and I am a newbie genealogist.  I started seriously working on my family tree in January 2015, and made all the classic rookie mistakes.  I dove right into the deep end without any understanding of what I was doing and ended up with a very messy, undocumented and most likely inaccurate (at least to some extent) family tree.  It took me several months to discover this so I started this blog to try to help prevent others from making the same mistake.  Or, if I'm too late, at least help you figure out how to re-do your tree as I am having to do myself.

I know from my own personal experience that it can be intimidating to try to learn from professional genealogists or more experienced researchers.  I'm always afraid of asking stupid questions or taking time away from other students because I need the basics explained to me.  I'm hoping that this site can become a community for all newbies to feel comfortable asking questions and eventually helping your colleagues (and sometimes cousins) answer those questions.

Much of the fun in genealogy comes from networking with other people.  We all share the same goal and many of the same struggles.  You may find that there are groups of you from the same geographical area, or on the flip side, you discover friends here who live halfway round the world from you but who are researching the same surname.  Together, we can all become better genealogists and have a wonderful time along the way.

If you have any comments or suggestions about this site, please feel free to comment below or send email to contactus@newbiegenealogist.com.

Thanks for participating in our community.  Good luck with your research.