So you've finally decided to track down that long lost relative. Or maybe you want to know who your ancestors were. Genealogy is one of the most popular pastimes on the Internet. But first you have to do some basic detective work. Talk to people. Your family, friends and neighbours may know the names of the people you are wanting to know about. It's vital to start backwards and to focus on which area of your family you want to research.
Jenny Adams-Barbaro found the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain was invaluable.
For others, the National Archives is a good place to start.
Genuki has some great guidelines on how to get started in geneology.
If you need to search outside the UK, Ancestry.com has a powerful search engine broken down by country.
Cyndi's List has over 115,000 genealogy links for you to explore.
Look4them is useful for finding lost people.
RootsWeb has a powerful search engine for names.
FamilySearch also helps you search for ancestors.
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Rab Sutherland - 13 June 2012 10:57pm
I have been asked by family members to try and source my family history, any notable periods, specific persons, Military Records etc, and as I am currently tied up with course work, it was suggested to me, that I ask for suggestions on this forum. I am unemployed and disabled so funds are tight. I am therefore unable to pay to have the search done for me.
It has been told that there may be Genealogy Students that may use my family as course work. Thus benefiting both me and them. Is there anyone at all that would be able to help, or to point me in the general direction of someone who can.
Ideas of cost for complete search, as far back as 1100's.
Jeremy Gosselin - 21 June 2012 2:01am
Robert,
You should perhaps think about exactly which ancestors you want to investigate first, starting with recent relatives and then working your way back in history as you go. Is there a specific person (for example, a deceased grandfather) whose background is a bit of a mystery? What do you know already about this person? Do you know their exact date and place of birth and the names of their parents? That definitely helps. If you don't know this then do you know when and where that relative was married and to whom, as a UK marriage certificate should contain the name of the father of both the bride and groom, with the father's occupation. It would also tell you their ages and their residence at the time of the marriage. Does the family possess any birth/marriage/death certificates for this person?
If that person was alive in 1911 or earlier then it should in theory get a lot easier to discover more about them and their family because they should hopefully appear on the ten-yearly censuses, stretching back to 1841. If you can find them on there, you will hopefully discover the names of any siblings, plus the ages of their parents and where their parents claim to have been born, which will then enable you to start investigating the previous generation of the family. The most recently available census records are for 1911 (except, I believe for Scotland, where I have only seen records up to 1901 so far). If you can't access the census records for free in your local library then ask them if, by any chance, they have a subscription to either findmypast.co.uk or ancestry.co.uk available for the benefit of library users. Both these websites are subscription services but they allow you to search and view (most notably) census records and birth/marriage/death indexes stretching back to 1837. You can't actually view the birth/marriage/death certificates themselves or the details on them, but you can find out the approximate date when the event was registered, with the location and then separately purchase a copy of that certificate from the relevant registry office if you think that the certificate might contain information of use to you.
Personally I registered with ancestry.co.uk during one of its promotions several years ago, which gave me free trial membership for two weeks. I made great use of it for those two weeks but after that, I could not afford to take out an annual subscription and therefore could no longer view the historical records. However, I can still post messages on the bulletin boards and I am also able to construct my own family tree. The boards could be of great use to you as other members may well be able to find out something about an ancestor for you. The link to the boards is here:
http://boards.ancestry.co.uk/
If you are thinking about taking up the offer of a trial two week membership (presuming that it is still available), I would personally build up a list of things about several different relatives that you would definitely want to search for, otherwise you might end up wasting your precious two weeks without actually making much use of it. If you have any relatives who served in the First World War, I believe that ancestry.co.uk also contains either service records or medal cards (can't remember which) that you can download and keep (that is those records that actually survive, as many were destroyed during a Nazi bombing raid in the Second World War). If you know a relative who actually died in combat, you can do a search for them here:
http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead.aspx
There are also various free websites such as FreeBMD where you can search for birth/marriage/death records:
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl
I would go back to your family and ask them specifically who they would like to learn more about and what they do and don't know about this relative already. Personally I would be reluctant to plunge fully into family history research at a time when you are already studying, as it can become quite absorbing and time-consuming in itself and might affect your studies. When I was studying with the OU several years ago, I put the genealogy completely to one side in order to concentrate fully on my course.
I hope this helps,
Jerry.