Family History Resources
There is usually something that first triggers the start of a search into your family tree. It might be that you find a family photograph, or an old birth certificate suddenly turns up, or it might simply be a chat with another member of the family. Whatever it is, then this is where you will have to start and it is surprising how quickly one thing often leads to another. Make sure you learn as much as you can from every bit of evidence.
Let’s take a simple family photo as an example. We’ll assume you know that you know that the woman in the middle is Aunt Maud but that is all you know. How many other people are there in the group and is it of one family or of an extended family. It is usually fairly easy to identify a family portrait, and this may give you an idea of how many siblings there were. The style of dress will also give an indication of the family’s station in life. Once you start researching archives, these sort of details can be invaluable in identifying the right person.
A document can prove a very fertile start to creating a family tree, a birth certificate will contain details of parents as well as the date of the birth and where it took place. A marriage certificate will provide of course the maiden name of the bride – invaluable in getting further back into your family’s past.
Recording your findings
Being systematic is key to successful family history research! It might sound dull but developing a system that works for you is a must.
Some researchers do everything online and use spreadsheets to record information. Others prefer to write things down. Some choose a combination of the two. Personally, I like to write my findings down – it is much easier when you are actually looking at an archive and means that you don’t then have to transfer the information onto the computer in order to record it.
A well tried and tested system is to divide your paper into two columns. The left hand column (the wider of the two) is used to record the information, the second column records the source of the information. A second sheet of paper is used to note down all the questions the information raises, eg who were her parents, did she have any older siblings?
Planning the family tree search
We all have a lot of ancestors! The number doubles every generation. So if we assume that there are three generations per century, by the time of William the Conqueror, each of us can claim approximately 1,342,177,000 direct ancestors. It is difficult to make an accurate assessment of the population at the time of the Norman Conquest but it certainly wasn’t more than a few million and even now is only about 60 million, somewhat short of the 1.3 billion ancestors we all supposedly have.
The apparent discrepancy shows of course how inter-
So it is important to plan what sort of family tree you want to create. Which side of the family are you going to research? Is your aim simply to go back as far as you can – in which case you will almost certainly choose to stick to the male line all the way back. Or is there a particular person who interests you. Perhaps there is a family legend that the family comes from exotic lands, or you have a surname that suggests foreign origins.
My aim when I first started looking into my family tree was to find out how my family ended up in West London. I knew my grandparents were all fairly lowly and lived in the Acton and Hammersmith areas and it seemed likely that some at least of them had come to the area sometime during the Industrial Revolution – and eventually I found some farmers in Buckinghamshire!
So the keys to starting to create your family tree:
* Pick a starting point – a document, a person or an indicent – and make sure you glean as much as you can from it.
* Organise how you are going to record your findings.
* Plan your research.
Asking relatives, especially older members of the family is always the best place to start any family history or genealogical researches.