Rick Crume is a veteran genealogist journalist, and a contributing editor for Family Tree Magazine, specializing in online research, genealogy software and British genealogy.
Rick has developed a new genealogy website called InsideGenealogy.com where Inside Genealogy’s United States Checklist is an interactive research tool designed to help genealogists stay organized and ensure they don’t miss key sources. It covers over 350 U.S. record collections, research strategies, and tools—from Ancestry and FamilySearch to smaller, lesser-known websites—and it works as both a to-do list and a research log.
Here’s a quick look at what sets this checklist apart from other genealogy checklists:
- Organized into 35+ categories with clickable links
- Includes expert tips for using record types and modern tools like AI chatbots
- Designed for digital use: check off sources, add notes, and track your progress
- Available as a PDF that works with any standard viewer
The screen below shows a sample page and the features of the two different Checklists:
How the Checklist works:
- Make a copy of the Checklist for each person or family you are researching.
- Open the Checklist withy the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, a web browser or another PDF reader.
- For each page for a record provider or a record type, check off when you have completed the task for the person or family.
- Make notes and sources as you wish.
The screen below shows the two download options - the 70 page FamilySearch Checklist is Free and the Full United States Checklist with 160 pages costs a one-time $9.95 payment.
The United States Checklist has over 35 categories - first the four major providers - Ancestry, FamilySearch, Findmypast and MyHeritage) - and second record type categories in alphabetical order. Here is the first page of the Table of Contents:
Be sure to read the Introduction pages and review each section for the Part I - Big Genealogy Sites and the Part II - Other Resources.
The first page of the FamilySearch Checklist Table of Contents is similar.
In both of the checklists, Page 3 is a chart to fill in the genealogy details of the specific person that you are researching - you can type the information right into the boxes on the PDF form. Here is one that I filled in for my 2nd great-grandfather, Devier James Lamphier Smith (1839-1894):
I filled in the form for several record collections, including checkmarks and links to the specific person on "Individually managed" and "collaborative" family trees. Here is the Collaborative Family Tree chart:
My first impression is that the checklists are very complete. This system acts like a research log for one person. It is very well thought out. However, there are no "source" columns, but the user can add a web link to online records or reference pages in a private, government, or published work using the Notes column (as I did above).
The best feature of this Checklist is that you can type right in the boxes and save the PDF file for your person. Be sure to save the "Master PDF" that you downloaded from Inside Genealogy. When you open it to add content for a specific person then RENAME the file before you download the file.
The website is https://www.insidegenealogy.com.
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