Josh Taylor assists Parker at the New England Historic Genealogical Society

What Sarah Jessica Parker learned in a one-hour TV show, I’ve been tracking for years.

I, too, have been on a search through my past, and it’s one of the best journeys I’ve ever taken.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional genealogist.

But I do recommend you try this at home.

It’s great fun and it expands your world.

All you need is the Internet, an adventurous spirit and some persistence.

In the first episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, the new Friday night series where celebrities track their past (8 p.m., NBC), Parker learned her ancestor was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Mass. She also learned of relatives who clamored to California for the Gold Rush.

Like Parker, I’ve found interesting relatives as well.

Two great-great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War. And my great-great-great-grandfather Samuel Maxwell’s first wife, Sarah, evidently hanged herself. If that wasn’t bad enough, a coroner’s inquest (all men) deemed her “not having the fear of God before her eyes, but being séanced and moved by the instigation of the Devil” to kill herself “with a certain flaxen rope of the value of six cents.”

Samuel’s second wife, Jane Fulton and my direct great-great-great-grandmother, was first married to a relative of Robert Fulton of steamboat fame. It’s by marriage, but I’ll count it!

Some of my relatives in Elgin, Ill., didn’t quite end up with a “Wonderful Life.” Charles Ripp-berger built a real estate and loan field in the late 1880s. Not long before his death in 1915, he admitted a son, Walter, and a son-in-law, Sam Peterson, as active partners. The Charles Rippberger Company advertised that it was “governed by a code of ethics dealing only fairness to all concerned.” On Dec. 24, 1925, Peterson and Rippberger were arrested after accounts had been doctored to cover heavy losses in farm land investments in South Dakota.

I found Uncle Walter on the 1930 Census in prison in Joliet, Ill.

Across the Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope, great-grandfather Charles Henry Maxwell and his wife, Katherine, were missionaries in the wilds of South Africa and Mozambique in the early 1900s.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother told me stories of our relatives. I imagined how my family lived in South Africa or the hills of Tennessee or the Midwest or even Germany, and it made me feel like I had connections deep into the past.

It’s really fun detective work that you can do whenever it’s convenient. And there’s always more to learn about more people in your family. It’s endless and, to me, a treasure trove of fun that I can uncover.

Pictures found on acenstry.com-John Wesley and my great-grandfather Alcert C. Ketron

WAYS TO TAKE A LOOK BACK

1. Hire a professional genealogist: Rates vary from $20 to $130 an hour, according to ProGenealogists, which worked with Ancestry.com to do the histories of Parker and others on Who Do You Think You Are?

2. Get some software or take classes at the local library or read tons of articles on the Internet about how to begin and then proceed. Free sites such as the Mormons’ Family Library LDS have charts and research sheets so you know exactly what you’re finding and what you need to do to find more.

3. Do a DNA test on a male relative. The test costs from $99 to $149. I’ve found a Maxwell site that shows my line without having to do the test. I just matched up some family members.

4. Or, just meander through it like I did. The one part I’ve paid for is Ancestry.com . It’s the granddaddy of genealogy sites with databases galore and more going up all the time. It will help you build a tree and each time you get enough information on a person, it signals you that it has links that might lead to another document. It helps you build the basics quickly.

Other free sites

Google books — Lots of old history books are digitized and they often are written close enough to the time your relatives lived there that they mention them by name.

GenWeb — Every state and every county in the country has a GenWeb site, some better than others. There are lots of great useful links and history about any places you know your family has lived.

Cyndi’s list — This has the largest number and most organized group of genealogy links — national and international — and they’re all free.

Family from here? Check out The Palm Beach Post’s new digitized newspapers all the way back to 1897. historicpalmbeach.com

ose enough to the time your relatives lived there that they mention them by name.