Ancestry® helps you understand your genealogy. A family tree takes you back generations—the world's largest collection of online family history records makes it easy to trace your lineage.

The higher a result is in the list of search results, the more likely it is to be about your ancestor, while lower results may be less relevant or less likely to be about your ancestor.

You can do this by searching for records for the sibling of the oldest ancestor you've found and then looking through the sibling's records to find their parents.

Ancestry Hints® connects you to more stories. Once you start your tree, Ancestry® will begin to comb through our collections and add possible details and discoveries to the tree. These Ancestry Hints® …

Learn what you need to know to locate family graves. Identify a cemetery and plan your trip. Before you visit, find out what to look for, where to find it, and how to record it.

That chain of parents and children are your ancestors. This means that not every older relative is your ancestor. For example, your aunts and uncles are your relatives but not your ancestors, because you …

When you learn the name of a possible ancestor, investigate how closely they're related to you. Use the predicted relationship to estimate the ancestor's generation in the tree you created; for example, a …

If you’re having a difficult time locating your ancestor, try searching using only given names and other details like birth year, residence, family members, place of birth, etc.

Finding Military Records How to Find Loyalists in the American Revolution Popular Military Collections Criminal Find Your Ancestor in Criminal Records Guide to Convict Records in Australia Probates …

This helps us pinpoint the likely ancestor (s) you share. Together, these details allow us to identify your shared ancestor—or the specific ancestral couple—with very high confidence for close matches.