Tracing your Family History - Where do you Start
Tracing the family history is great fun but where do you start?
This is Moonfleet's suggestions for some interesting resources as well as useful advice on how to get started.
Collating what you know already
First of all get all the information together that you already have access to. Write down what you already know and ask other family members what they can remember. It's vital to organise the information so that whatever you learn is recorded. Get family trees organised for each branch of your family you are planning to research.
Download the family tree ancestral chart to make keeping a record easier.
Starting the research
This is when it really starts to get interesting. One of the best online
resource is www.Ancestry.co.uk.
This lists all the census returns for 1901, 1891, 1881, 1871 and 1861
and the return for 1851 is due to be added before the end of 2005. Our
timeline will give you an idea of what was happening when each census
was taken.
www.Ancestry.co.uk also provides information on births, deaths and marriages from 1837
as well as several other resources that are useful once the basic work
has been done.
Tips for using the census resources
Once you start researching the census returns you will soon get a feel
for how they work. Start with someone you know something about. You
may find that grandparents or at least grandparents of a living relative
feature in the 1901 census
and this will give valuable information to get started with.
The most important information a census entry gives is often the place of birth. However, this can be confusing especially in London where a listing of say Kensington can include Hammersmith, Brompton, Chelsea, Fulham and Paddington as well as Kensington. Also be aware of the way towns are listed in their historical counties. Woolwich used to be in Kent although we now think of it very very much as part of London.
The census entry will also give the approximate year of birth and this coupled with the place of birth is often enough to identify a person in the census 10 years previously. Of course, finding someone in the previous census is likely to yield further information about other members of the family.
Another point to be wary of is the way people used to change their given names, and probably still do. In one census, there is an Elizabeth F, but in the next one she is listed as Fanny, although there is no doubt that it is the same person. In the earlier census perhaps her father filled in the form using her baptismal name, whereas later on either she or her husband used the name she was known by.
Finding information in a mass of entries
If you are looking for say an ancestor who was born in Hull but whose date of birth you are unsure, wading through the census records can be very labourious. Try using the control key on your keyboard together with the f key and this will open up a window at the bottom of the screen. Type in "Hull" and then "next" and this will hightlight each mention of the word "Hull" on the screen. Much quicker than scanning through by eye.
Marriages
Many resources including acnestry.co.uk only give the name of the person in the marriage entry and the year and which quarter of that year the marriage took place. There are no details of who they were marrying, their address etc. This can make it difficult to identify if you have found the correct entry. However, by checking "other entries on the page" will show usually two women's names and two men's names. If you know the name of the spouse, or part of the name, then you will be able to detemine if you have found the correct entry. You can then go further and request the actual marriage entry from the relevant archive source which will be listed in the record.
Numbers of ancestors
A generation is usually taken as being 33.3 years, which means that it takes 24 generations to get back to the twelth century. The number of ancestors doubles each generation so that means we should each have nearly 17 million ancestors who were alive in the 1300's. But the population of England was only 2 million at that time! The only way this apparent paradox can be reconciled is by intermarriage. Many of our ancestors are duplicated so that we are actually descended from a particular relative through more than one line. The corollary of this is that many of us must be related to each other, at least distantly.
Tracing your family tree is addictive!
Beware, once you start looking at census records then time seems to just disappear. Unless you are happy for your researches to take over your life, organising a timetable is a good idea and limit your researches each day.
Happy researching and may all your ancestors be interesting!