Researching your family tree

[bristolseagull]

I'm thinking about doing mine- but not sure where to start. There are plenty of websites offering help but i'm not sure which to use.

Has anyone got any experience of doing theirs?

 

[SeagullRic]

My Gran has done a lot of work on our family tree- she's got as far back as 1704!!

I think she searches marriage, birth and death certificates.

 

[Easy 10]

My dads been doing his.
Costs a bloody fortune in retrieving birth/death/marriage certificates.

 

[Trigger]

Don't use the facebook we're related thing... Apparently I'm a 4th cousin of Barack Obama...

 

[The Grockle]

I'm thinking about doing mine- but not sure where to start. There are plenty of websites offering help but i'm not sure which to use.

Has anyone got any experience of doing theirs?

Not very useful for making a family tree but pretty interesting if you want to see the distribution of your surname.

If you have a particularly unusual surname it probably won’t work.

All about surnames - soFeminine.co.uk

 

[The Large One]

Don't use the facebook we're related thing... Apparently I'm a 4th cousin of Barack Obama...

You as well?

That means... *gets calculator*, um, er, *thinks*





















































DADDY! :yahoo:

 

[coventrygull]

Found mine on the internet by typing in my surname

 

[Mellotron]

you as well?

That means... *gets calculator*, um, er, *thinks*





















































daddy! :yahoo:

sonny boy?!?!?!!

 

[Trigger]

After the shock reveltaion I am indeed the Large One's father I am just waiting in the middle of the road for Janine or Frank Butcher to come speeding round the corner.

 

[bristolseagull]

Found mine on the internet by typing in my surname

do you know what a family tree is?

 

[The Daddy]

A useful free search can be got by googling MORMON, and clicking their geneology site.It is quite comprehensive.I currently pay£12 a month for ANCESTRY which has got me back to 17th century ancestors. Brighton registry office (very helpful) will charge £7 for copies of birth , marriage, death, which contain extra info.They will also give you addresses for further afield offices.Brighton history centre (Dome) is also free and informative.

 

[SirDouglasLoft]

My grandad done it, try Genes Reunited – Family History Records and Family Trees

 

[Aspinal's Body Double]

I've done my tree-going back as far as 1770.

It's been an on and off projects, and it was a lot slower and harder when I first started. It was also a bit pricey because I bought all the certificates to check my tree (although you can now pay a £3 per certificate checking fee to get the GRO to check certificates for you and only send if it's right.)

You can now get a bit of software called Family Tree Maker which does all the searches for you. I don't know what it costs new-quite a bit I think but I got a free older copy with the Sunday Times. Maybe check on Ebay for one of these cheap?

You then need to take out a subscription to Ancestry.com in order to take advantage of all the online searches and see the census records et.c. Again, very expensive if you sign up for a year but best way to do it is wait till you've got some time and then sign up for a month. The software is so good you should be able to do it all in that time. Better still even the free FTM I got came with a free one month subscription.

There is another low tech very cheap option which is to find out your nearest archive library when you can search the Catherine's index on microfiche (this is the complete register of all of all Births, Deaths and Marriages). They are organised by annual quarters so it is slow and hard on the eyes.

There are a couple of free sites where you can do some of the work, but you may not be able to get all the information you need. One is a free searchable database of all Births, Deaths and Marriages (not all years have been transcribed either). This is at http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/

You can also do free searches for some census records (1841-1891 only) at http://www.freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

PM me if you want to know more, or have any problems.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

The important thing about a family tree is recording what you find in some sort of logical, structured way.

You can achieve this by using Genes Reunited – Family History Records and Family Trees
or by downloading the free software called Personal Ancestry File (PAF) from FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service

Alternatively, you can pay good money for products that claim to do everything, but neglect to tell you that you won't really want most of the features that they are selling you.

As far as finding out about your family is concerned, the best site (by far) is Genealogy and Family History Records - Ancestry.co.uk - but this is a subscription service. It does, however, give you unlimited access to all Engand and Wales census records between 1841 and 1901, as well as access to all the births, marriages and deaths indexes from 1837 to 2005.

A free search of the births, marriages and deaths indexes from 1837 to the early 1930s is available at http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl

And the Genes Reunited site is a good way of contacting other people who are researching the same family that you are chasing - most members of Genes Reunited are only too happy to pool information.

The latest resource to go online in the census of England and Wales for 1911 - available on a cost per record viewed basis at Welcome to the official 1911 Census website - although records for some of the English counties and the whole of Wales are yet to arrive on that site.

If you can push your family history back before 1837, you can delve into transcribed parish registers (of births and marriages) at FamilySearch.org - Search

 

[bristolseagull]

Excellent!

Thanks for all the help, i'm going to get cracking......

 

[Lord Bracknell]

The other question to ask yourself is "Am I only interested in my direct ancestors or shall I seach for cousins, second cousins, third cousins, in-laws, etc?"

Once you get into family history reasearch, the distant cousins can start to get very interesting. My latest line of research is into a photographer from South Shields, James Henry Cleet, who married my grandad's cousin. Strictly speaking, he's no relative of mine, but his work is fascinating.

He took some of the photographs here:- Mauretania - Photography - Amber Online

And his widow, my first cousin twice removed, gave all his negatives to a photographic club in Durham who are gradually assembling a major collection of photos of the history of the area between the two world wars.

 

[Don Quixote]

I have a family tree going back to 1564, beyond there we aren't exactly sure.

 

[coventrygull]

do you know what a family tree is?

Yes of course I do. I was lucky enough to find that someone had done it and put it up on the net. Saved me doing all the work. I did find out that my grandparents did not marry until a year before my granddfather died. that was a shock

 

[Golden Oldie]

Excellent!

Thanks for all the help, i'm going to get cracking......

It's probably stating the obvious but before you start searching the Internet ask around your relatives to see if anyone has done a tree already, and also to get as much info as possible from older relatives in particular (before they forget, or worse still go to the big Family Tree in the sky!)

1 - Get hold of a Family Tree software programme such as Family Tree Maker so you can start recording things immediately.
2 - Record the source of each entry (e.g. a relative, a website etc). As this is only a secondary point on software it's easy to miss, but you may well need to cross refer at some point in the future.
3 - DON'T take everything you find on the Internet as gospel. For example if you use the Mormon/Family Search site you will often find entries that contradict, and a lot of what is online is only as accurate as the transcriber's interpretation.
4 - Hopefully you will also find links to existing trees, but again try and double check the info. Some people just "fill in" the easy option, and others then copy the same thing into their tree and compound the error!

Sorry to preach, but I speak from experience! Good luck!

 

[Rambo]

I use Ancestry.co.uk with Family Tree Maker. I have traced back to the 1700's with the internet only. Its opened up a fascinating world for me.

Beware, it gets very addictive and very expensive when you take all into account. You do find some little gems though. My Great Grand Aunt was the Nanny to Lord High Chancellor (current Jack Straw), I wrote to his daughter (ex Director General of MI5) and got an excellant letter back.

I have surprised my family with some excellant research. Its great fun, enjoy...