Family History Research

Whether you're young or old, family history research (genealogy) can be enjoyable, enlightening and sometimes shocking as well as giving you some sense of who you are and where you came from. It doesn't have to cost a fortune either, not when you have google and many old and new free online websites. Also genealogy mailing lists and forums with plenty of experienced people only too keen to help new researchers and share information they have already gathered over the years. There is also a good chance you may even make contact with living relatives you never knew you had.

If you're young, then your family tree might be the last thing on earth you're concerned about... unless you are really into history. If you're anything like my children you'll be thinking "BORING!" and I guess I won't convince everyone to take up their journey into family history. What I will say is, there's no harm in giving it a go or gathering and filing information and/or old documents away for possible future use.

What about talking to the older members of your family? Your parents and, if you're lucky, your grandparents.You'll find that most older people love to talk about their history and the old days. I could argue that not only will you be finding out about your family history but also maintaining a good, healthy bond with your older relative. It doesn't necessarily have to be your Gran, it could be your mum or dad's aunt or great aunt, any older person in the family.

One thing I regret more than anything is not getting enough information from my family members and now it's too late to do so. With the high-tech world we're living in today you don't even have to do a lot of writing, you could use a small tape recording gadget and store your recordings away and back them up on your pc or memory stick. Questions you could ask are, where were they born?, who were their parents? and where did they come from? they might even know who their great grandparents were. You might also ask about the professions of your ancestors and if they know of any outstanding members of the family, maybe they were decorated in WWI or WWII or maybe one became a Lord or maybe one was convicted of a crime and sent to Australia as many were years ago. Basically the more information you can gather now the less work you will have to do later on.

Whether your family members were famous or infamous, just think of the fun you'll have finding out. Whether your research is in England, Ireland, America or the Caribbean, there will no doubt be skeletons in the closet, maybe kissing cousins, maybe one of your ancestors was a criminal mastermind. Things that the family will have taken great trouble to forget or hide away. You will take these revelations in your stride as you follow the journey of your ancestors, smile and remember things were so different even as recently as the 1960s, so imagine what it would have been like back in the 1800s and before.

A not so distant cousin of my own immigrated to USA from Ireland as a very young child and became the Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina back in the mid-1800s. He was the confidante of Jefferson Davis. Another direct ancestor of mine, on my mother's side did the catering for Queen Victoria's funeral. Had I not got into genealogy, I probably wouldn't have known that ex-President Clinton claims his ancestors came from Roslea, Co. Fermanagh (where my ancestors came from). Considering what I have found with ancestry in Roslea, it would not surprise me at all if Clinton and I ended up distant relatives. A good friend of mine can lay claim that one of his ancestors on his Grandmother's side was in fact Elizabeth Stride. For those who don't recognise the name, Elizabeth stride was one of the victims of Jack the Ripper! My friend is going to send me an account of how he came by this information and I will post this and other stories here.

I have made some family tree charts for anyone who wants to print them out. Why not try them out and see how much your parents know to start with. You could also make rough notes around each name You may of course prefer to make your own and these may give you an idea of how to set out your chart.

Family Tree Chart 1

Family Tree Chart 2

Family Tree Chart 3

Hints and Tips

Being Prepared - The first thing I would do is get organised. Get yourself a half decent notepad (you will be using it and referring to it often so you'll want it to stand up to the strain). It wouldn't do any harm at this stage to get yourself a storage box. You will want somewhere to store all your documents and old family mementos. If you don't have the funds right now then why not use an old cardboard box for now until you do.

Where do I start??? - This is the question that you will probably be asking first. This is where you will get your notebook and pen out and start gathering information from your parents, Grandparents and/or other family members. Bear in mind that they might be busy so try to arrange a time with them when they will be able to sit down with you and give you the attention and information that you need. You could also give them a sheet of paper so they can write down what they know in their own time and you could write them up into your notes or attach the sheets and keep them.

I'm aware that not everyone will be fortunate enough to be able to ask family members so my advice to you is to work backwards from your own birth Certificate and what you can remember yourself. Your birth certificate will contain your parents names, occupations and address. You can then set about finding their birth records/certificates and, if they were married, their marriage certificate. Their marriage certificate will have their name, their ages, addresses and their parents' names as well as other info such as their occupation.

When you get back far enough you will be able to look at old census records going back from 1901 (at present) to 1841. Censuses were taken every 10 years in the UK and there is a 100 year rule that prevents disclosure of census records until 100 years after that census was taken. This is in order to best protect those who are still living. There were censuses taken from as far back as 1810 but until the 1841 census they only recorded the number of people living in a household, with no names so they would be no good for us family history researchers.

It would be a good idea to take notes of everything you can and just as important to document your sources for the information you have got so you know if you need to follow these up... i.e. if you were told something by "Aunt Ethel", you might want to follow that lead. Not to say Aunt Ethel is wrong.... she might be right about the occurance of an event but the dates might be a bit out. It's always a good idea to get confirmation from official records if you can. Having said that, don't underestimate the good information that can come from people like "Aunt Ethel". Older generations often have such great information and stories and it is sometimes from these stories that you will hear of notable people in your family tree.

Working with old records - I have found, in 11 years of researching my family history, that it is important to have some sense of the times we are dealing with and how they might affect the information in a record. I think we can safely say that birth and marriage records are probably the safest means of confirming these events. However, there are many sites sprouting up with births/deaths/marriages/census materials and these will be transcribed from original documents. You have to be aware that the information is only as good as the ability of the person transcribing them. We are all human and as such are open to making mistakes. By all means you can make notes of these records but that is where making notes of the source comes in handy. You cannot be as sure about something when it has been transcribed as you can by looking at the original yourself. An example of this is where the transcriber does not have knowledge of the area the person came from...

I have seen many cases of this when looking at census material in particular. My father's family came from Roslea, Co. Fermanagh, Ireland but a person who does not know the area might not realise that in a census record it might come up as Roslay, Roslaith (the Gaelic form) or some other variant spelling according to the census man who came knocking at the time. This works the same for most areas so it's a good idea to keep an open mind.

Death records are another example of where mistakes can be made and even in this day and age. Basically, whoever registers the death of a person has the responsibility of giving the register office their details to the best of their knowledge. This information is not verified. In 1998, when my father died, I had that responsibility and gave what I thought was the correct information for my father. I had everything correct, his birth date, death date, apart from his name. I had always known my father as Ernest Patrick and that is the name I had given. It was only later on, when looking closely at his birth certificate, that I realised he had no middle name at all. On checking my own birth certificate and then his marriage cert. I realised what a blunder I had made. I'd had no reason to question his name before that.

Websites, forums and mailing lists

Rootsweb - This site is probably one of the best sites for mailing lists and message boards. Mailing lists for specific countries, counties and surnames can all be found here. You can subscribe and either get every post or in digest mode where you get a roundup of all the posts (less emails). Mailing lists, especially active ones and forums are probably the best places for getting help from other more experienced researchers and for hearing about new databases or special offers and free access periods for paid sites.

Familysearch pilot seach site - The Search section of the Web site includes a number of record collections you can search to find a specific ancestor. You can then read a summary of the information found in records about the ancestor and view digital images of the records.

The Browse section of the Web site includes collections you can browse to see digital images ofrecords from a specific city, town, or church parish.The data available through Record Search is transcribed by thousands of volunteers world wide who participate in FamilySearch indexing. These volunteers donate a little time each week ormonth transcribing select information from digital images of original source documents usingFamilySearch’s online indexing program.

Family Search - Another search facility which is part of the site above. You will find births, deaths and marriages, some extracted from actual records and others submitted by members. These records are from all over the world so if your family originated in France, USA or Jamaica, you may find your ancestors on here. It is important to bear in mind that the extracted information is subject to errors as with all transcription material and that submitted information is only as good as the person who submitted it. Therefore, my advice is that you should aim to subsequently confirm the information by getting hold of actual records. This site is no doubt a good starting point, a way of maybe pointing you in the right direction.

Freebmd - A completely free site where you can search for the births, deaths and marriages of your ancestors who lived in England and Wales. Freebmb are in the process, with the help of many volunteers, of putting together a complete searchable database of the indexes. It's not completed as yet and there is some way to go so this is a site you might want to come back and check regularly. Whenever someone is born, dies or gets married, the details are entered into a book and signed by the registrar as well as the parents, bride and groom/witnesses, etc. These books are called Volumes. What the freebmd indexes will tell you is the volume number and page number of the entry for that event. Once you have that information you can then set about sending off for the certificate. A certificate will cost you £7 as opposed to the £10 if you do not have the volume and page number. Another good thing is that you can cross check. If you know the name of your GGG Grandfather and manage to find him in the indexes but you don't know the name of his wife, you can then do a search without entering names, only using the year, volume and page number. You will get a list of all the people on that page. It is certainly a good way of narrowing down the possibilities.

FreeCen - Along the same lines as Freebmd, FreeCen is aiming to give us the Census data from 1841 to 1891. Since the census began in 1841, every ten years every person in the U.K. has had to give an account of every person living in their home. The person considered to be the head of household, i.e. the father or husband, would have to give the names of everyone in his household along with age, occupation, marital status and their relationship to the head of household. Also if they were disabled, could read and/or write in some censuses. It's something that takes place in other countries too but every country will have its own setup, i.e. USA did theirs every ten years but instead of say 1871 they would have had theirs in 1870, 1880, 1890, etc. This is an ongoing project and will take time to complete as they rely on volunteers to transcribe the material. This has to be done in order to have a searchable index where we can search by name and filter by county or city and we should be grateful to these volunteers who do this in their own spare time and for no pay. This is what makes it possible for us to access it for free.

National Archives at Kew - A site containing many official military and government records. You can search the indexes and order records online. You can also arrange to visit the National Archives where you can view and get copies of original documents. You can find out more here

I will add more links as I go. In the meantime why not have a look at the links page which you will find in the menu on the left.