Julie, maybe you should look at this or some other beginners guide to genealogy: http://www.findmypast.com.au/articles/articles-and-guides/beginners...
I see that you have been on Geni since september 2016 so you have a few months on here, how much experience in genealogy you have before joining Geni I do not know.
But by mentioning your relationship to persons supposedly living 1300 years ago, you are setting a pretty high standard. Beginners usually try to get control over their close ancestors instead of their 30th something ancestor.
As a beginner I would advice you to:
1. Talk to your living relatives, specially the older ones. Get their stories before it is to late. When they are dead it is to late and the stories are gone.
2. When you have a pretty good overview of your close ancestors, move on to the ones living in the 19th Century. Get their vital data from the archives such as birthdates, baptisms, confirmations, wedding dates, number, names and dates of children, date of death and burials. Get census datas.
3. Then get som more meat on the bones: Look up Letters, Family bibles, photographs and other memorabilia. Find School protocols,, wills, probate records, real estate registers, tax records, protocols of legal proceedings, court journals and prisonregisters, address books and a lot of other primary sources.
4.Use secondary sources (sourced books, articles, internet sites, ie.) and tertiary sources (unsourced internet sites, books, article, ie.) carefully. They have a lot of wrong and untrustworthy information in them. Allways try to check the information in these sources with primary sources. Never trust what is written in them unless it is sourced with a trustworthy source. When in doubt ask or start a discussion.
5. Getting back to the medeival age (people living in 1537 or earlier) is extremely difficult. After doing this for more than 30 years, I have only 2 ancestral lines that have people living before 1537 with the use of trustworthy sources, please keep that in mind.
6. It is not a goal to get as far back in time as possible, it is a goal to get a correct tree as possible, and when we are in doubt, our tree stops there. We do never publish uncertainties or wishful thinking unless it is clearly marked as such. Our other goal is to get as much history about their lives as possible. It is boring to read a book that only have the names and vital datas. The histories and photographs are important.
7. Our working theories either belong in the About me section on Geni, in documents kept on your own computer or in public discussions on genealogical discussion forums.
After doing courses in genealogy for beginners for a couple of decades, these are my advice.
Good luck with your research. This is a fun and interesting hobby, allthough timeconsuming.
Regards
Remi