I thought that I should describe my actual method here, since building a family history is not a piece of cake. Building a family tree and figuring out where to start or what needs to be done to fill in missing gaps can be hard, especially if there are dozens/hundreds/thousands of other people already working on the "low hanging fruit" and leaving the more challenging parts undone. I think of family history as broken down into three parts:
1) Record preservation
2) Tree building
3) Building a kinship through stories and temple ordinances
Record Preservation
This is the part where you might go on FamilySearch.org and become an indexer, transcribing the old handwritten or typed information into a searchable electronic database. These databases become the means for people to identify which pages or documents contain pertinent information about their ancestors.
You might become a cemetery stomper and contribute to FindAGrave.com by taking pictures of headstones and footstones and providing this data for people to piece their families together from.
You might collect your grandpa's old journals and scan them or transcribe them. You might gather up the letters, postcards, and photographs and take high resolution scans of them as well. You might digitize your old reel-to-reel videos or slides.
I would highly recommend that you create new records by interviewing and recording audio/video/written family stories of the elders in your family. Once they are gone, the stories will go with them if they remain untold.
All of these records can be added to the Family Tree on FamilySearch.org. Once they are shared there, it makes it a bit more permanent. Your brother, cousin, parents, wherever they may be, will be able to review these treasures that you have helped attach to the profile of your beloved relative.
Tree Building
This is "the mechanics" of piecing together the movements of your family and discovering the dates, places, and names involved. The records in the above section are a fantastic resource. I've found that at FamilySearch.org, using the Census, Birth, Marriage, and Death records for families in the United States are very well suited for family members back to about 1800. Beyond that and things start to become more sparse as far as documentation goes. I try to use the Source Linker tool, because that way I can automatically add new people to the family tree if they didn't have a record number before. (It only takes a few tries to get a knack for the process-- and merging the duplicate you might have just accidentally created is a painless process. Un-merging two people that someone incorrectly put into one entry, on the other hand, is a royal pain.)
When the records and tools in FamilySearch reaches a dead end, I sometimes peruse other sources, such as Ancestry.com, or whatever books/message boards/pedigrees might contain information after a quick search via an internet search engine.
There are a host of good hints on how to search, and I think I'll leave that to the other websites to detail, but keep in mind that special characters (*,?) are important, as are alternate spellings and broader and slimmer estimates of date ranges. Sometimes looking for a sibling's records is a faster link to parents than your own ancestor. Sometimes you'll find conflicting but close, or conflicting and blatantly incorrect information already posted on the web. We fix what we can. It's a good mental exercise, too, to build this big puzzle of information!
Getting your blood line established is important, but it's certainly not the end-goal, from where I stand. Those members of your family only constitute the contributors to your genes. There are many others that are part of your family (cousins!) that had a different combination of genes. Therefore, iteratively marching back in time, then forward in time, then back again helps to get the most thorough picture of how we are all related. Sometimes for interest's sake, I'll keep building the tree down an in-law path, not because I feel especially connected to these people, but because I know that my cousins feel connected to them, and building out the tree for them helps build the order out of the chaos of information.
Kinship through Ordinances and Stories
I haven't really delved into this part of family history yet, and consider myself a bit of a novice here. The closeness you get with your relatives can go beyond just knowing the dates and places of where they've been. It becomes more about knowing who they were. In familiy search, in addition to the details tab where you can add a life sketch, research notes or discussion, there is a MEMORIES tab to discover and store pictures, stories, cherished documents, etc. This has been part of my effort this month-- to go beyond the facts and get some of the descriptions of these people from their biographies and journals. Even if the personal memories are lost and there's noone left to tell the stories, I find it valuable to spend time learning at least what it was like to live in that part of the world, or have that job title, or what the current events in that town were during their lives will bring a greater appreciation for each ancestor. Knowing that you are descended from a record-breaking wheat farmer, or a prize duroc pig farmer, or a gifted stone-mason, jelly-maker, lace-maker, pineapple picker. Knowing that they were so poor during the depression that three families were living in one house. Knowing that they kept a hired man and his family employed, and lived well. Knowing that they were the only people in their family to emigrate to America, against all odds. Knowing that they mourned the loss of children, or continued having children until they were 47 years old! Knowing that they were known far and wide for generosity. Honestly-- these are the treasures that I want to find out about my ancestors and relatives.
Knowing the ancestors is what can continue to give their lives meaning. Allowing their experiences to shape my own thought process lengthens their legacy. In turn, feeling linked to them through temple ordinances returns goodness and hope to them. From my religious perspective, it binds us together in a link stronger than the cords of death, and cements our intention to right the wrongs that might have happened while alive. Temple ordinances provide both closure and hope for a bright reunion together based upon the merits of an infinite atonement and universal resurrection provided by Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
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