Starting Out

Free Information Forms and Charts

We have many resources that will help the budding genealogist or family historian get started on the right track. 

Genealogy v's Family History

Genealogy is the charting of a family's descent through a chronological record of births, marriage and deaths; in short it is the bones of your research.  It consists of a record of names, dates, places and relationships through which one can compile a pedigree chart of a family tree.

In the process of your research you will amass a lot of other information. 

This is the stuff of Family History, which will fill out the lives of the people you are researching, and the conditions under which they lived.  This is what puts the flesh on the bones of your research.  It changes your ancestors from a set of facts into real-life, interesting individuals.

Information Sources

The main sources of data needed to fill in your forms and charts are shown below. 

STEPPS - Hints for Researching your Family History

The STEPPS acronym was developed by one of our FHWA members. It is a methodology designed to help you focus, and a useful way to remember, the context of your research. It is also the Why, When, What, Where, Who and How of your genealogical research.

Information Shown on Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates

The following tables show what information that you can expect to find on Australian, New Zealand and UK certificates.

Genealogy Relationships Chart

Many of us struggle with knowing where distant relatives fit into our family, especially when working on our family history, the following descriptions and the Relationship Chart below will help you to identify the relationships.

Repair and Maintenance of Graves

In our vast State of Western Australia there are hundreds of old cemeteries and thousands of lonely graves - all landmarks in the development of our country. The general humble standard of many old graves was indicative of the deprived conditions which prevailed in isolated regions, but all have valuable heritage significance.

In many old gold mining ghost towns the cemetery is the only remaining landmark - all evidence of buildings having long been removed. In some instances, what appears to be a lonely grave could be the last visible remnant of a burial ground.