Maria Dahlberg - Four Generations 1960s. Via Wikimedia Commons
Identify a relative to research
Talk to elderly relatives. Ask
open-ended questions. Identify your subject. Focus on an event about which you
have some details, or some date parameters e.g. a birth, marriage or death.
Join a Genealogical Website
Buy a
membership to one of the online organisations below. They have different
packages for different purposes. They also have different specialisms.
Look for Civil Registration Records
of Births/Marriages and Deaths (BMD RECORDS) from 1837 onwards on one of the above sites.
Find the BASIC record of these events for the ancestor in whom you are interested.
GET THE SPECIAL REFERENCE NUMBER FOR YOUR BIRTH, MARRIAGE OR DEATH FROM THE ONLINE SITE
Go to the
General Register Office (GRO) website at www.gro.gov.uk For a fee, certificates can either
be sent to you through the post or as an email attachment. These certificates will have much
FULLER INFORMATION about your family event, eg who registered the death, the church where the marriage took place, the occupations of the fathers of the bride and groom.
Want to Go Further Back? Look for Parish Records (Of Baptisms,
Marriages and Burials)
Many, but not all, can
be found on the online sites; more are being added daily. It’s more difficult
to find Non-conformist and Catholic records, but again, more are being added
all the time.
Information will back up that on the Civil Registration
Documents from 1837.
Information potentially goes much further back to 1538.
Look at the online Census Records (1841 – 1921, every 10 years)
Find your
family in the 10 yearly censuses from 1841 onwards online at the family history sites. Each of these
censuses gives slightly different information. Compare information about your family on one census with information about the same family ten years later/earlier. Did any children die between the two dates? How did the household change shape over the course of the decade? Would more or less money be coming into the household in the later period? Would there be more or less room for the family?
Take a look at the households next to your family on the census. What kind of jobs did these people do? Did they have roughly the same income as your family? Were the families roughly the same shape as your family, or was your family unusual in some way?
1841 :
Generalised information including rounding down of ages to nearest 5 years
1851:
1861:
1871:
1881:
1891:
1901:
1911 :
SO-CALLED ‘FERTILITY’ CENSUS. Asks how many children were born into the family and how many survived. Asks for Nationality, infirmity and more information about number of rooms in the house in addition to questions asked in earlier censuses.
1921:
1931: THESE CENSUS RECORDS WERE DESTROYED IN A FIRE
1941: NO
CENSUS TAKEN DUE TO WORLD WAR TWO
1951 : NOT TO BE RELEASED UNTIL 2051
Look at the 1939 Register
Search 1939 Register on the online family history sites for details of your family in this nationwide survey taken just before World War II.
Look at these other kinds of record available at the family history sites. Search by name (and dates if you have them) NB: information in these areas is patchy and varies from site to site.
· Education e.g. school attendance records
· Jobs
· Passenger Lists
· Military
· Wills
· Newspapers ( via www.findmypast membership only)
7Look for other useful documents that may tell you something about your ancestors’ life. You may find these amongst family papers, with relatives, or sometimes in Local or County Record Offices. Search for the location of these via the National Archives Discovery Site : www.discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk
These include: Diaries Letters Passports Commonplace Books Poor Law records Documents relating to Properties Vaccination Records Minutes of Church Meetings Naturalisation Records Ships’ Logs Muster Records....
The list of possibilities is endless……
The site will tell you the name of the County Record Office or other archive in which these
sources can be viewed. You need to contact the relevant record office and book
an appointment to view.
Research other aspects of your
ancestor’s life more generally using keywords online:
· Places/ Maps
· Occupations
· Religion
· Photographs
· House History
· One-Name Studies
Useful Magazines and Books
· Who Do You Think You Are ? magazine (Who Do You Think You Are Magazine - Who Do You Think You Are Magazine)
· Discover Your Ancestors (Online Periodical) Discover Your Ancestors | Bringing Past Lives to Life
1 Search for relevant book titles at www.amazon.co.uk.
My family history books are:
Ruth A Symes, Unearthing Family Tree Mysteries, Pen and Sword.
2016. [Reprint of an earlier title]
Ruth A Symes, It Runs in the Family: Understanding More About Your
Ancestors, The History Press, 2013
Ruth A Symes, Family First: Tracing Relationships in the Past, Pen
and Sword, 2015
Ruth A Symes, Tracing Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings,
Pen and Sword, 2016
Facebook: Search My Ancestry; Family History Flotsam; Family History Gifts
Keywords: British, Britain, UK, England, English, history, family history research, genealogy, genealogical, family tree, who do you think you are?, nineteenth century, twentieth century, relatives, ancestors, ancestry, ancestral, births, marriages, deaths, censuses, certificates, parish records, dummies guide to family history, simple guide to family history, beginners' guide to family history, basic guide to family history
