Will I have to combine both paternal and maternal sides of my family tree to get accurate information?

Will I have to combine both paternal and maternal sides of my family tree to get accurate information?

You should think about doing both sides of your family tree because at the end of the day, you are the distillation of both sides of your family tree. One side is not going to be more valid than any other. Of course, that's quite a momentous task. Each time you go back a generation, you double the number of direct ancestors you are going to find. You are going to have 8 great grandparents, 16 great grandparents, 32 great grandparents and you can't feasibly do all of those lines at one go. It is worth just pausing and thinking okay, which of these ancestors interest me the most, and focusing on that line, taking it back as far as you can and then coming back and doing the same with another. Otherwise you are going to have hundreds of names and you are not going to be too sure where they relate to your family tree.