Who's your daddy's daddy?
Family history website TheGenealogist.co.uk has teamed up with Trees for Cities, a charity dedicated to planting trees and re-landscaping public spaced to produce a six-month subscription allowing people to trace their family history, as well as improve their local area.
The membership to TheGenealogist.co.uk, gives members unlimited access to more than 500 million names through birth, marriage and death records, census transcripts, parish records, trade directories, landowner and military records as well as many more right back as far as the 12th century.
The site can help families trace back their family history for generations, and piece together missing family information.
To help get you started, TheGenealogist.co.uk has these top ten tips
1. Work backwards in time. It is easier to work methodically from a fact such as the date of birth or a marriage of a relative rather than a person you do not know much about.
2. Ask the family. Ask relatives what they remember about their families. Make a note of any nicknames or name changes, family stories, what your ancestors did for a living and what they looked like. Also be conscious that there might be conflicting stories about an event.
3. Take notes. You never know what information will come in useful in your research so get into the habit of taking notes.
4. Check out the web. The internet can be a useful tool for contacting relatives and finding data. There are some superb websites that will help you start your family history such as www.TheGenealogist.co.uk.
5. Meet other family historians. Family historians are an incredible help to each other. The Society of Genealogists www.sog.org.uk is the largest genealogical society with a remarkable library and education programme of talks, workshops, seminars and tutorials on all aspects of ancestry. The forum at TheGenealogist.co.uk allows members to share stories and get advice on how to continue with research.
6. What’s been done before? It is worth checking if anyone else is doing research into your family before you start. Your local family history society may hold talks and have relevant indexes to help you. The Society of Genealogists library collects published and unpublished family histories and research notes. Genes Reunited and TreeView on TheGenealogist.co.uk may also have relevant family trees.
7. Read up on the subject. Family history is a popular hobby but it might seem hard to get started. There are many good books, websites and magazines devoted to discovering the subject. Your local library will have a wide selection and dedicated magazines have tips and detailed accounts of records and sources.
8. Ask questions. Who are you dealing with? Where did your ancestors live? When were they alive? What did your ancestors do in their lives and will that affect what information you can find? Finding answers to these key questions will help you build up the family story.
9. Get some documentary evidence. Your family history will be drawn from myriad of sources throughout history. Birth, marriage and death records, censuses, wills, church records, occupational records, education, military service, tax records, criminal records, poor law, newspapers, trade directories, ecclesiastical licences, church court records and tombstones might all reveal valuable information.
10. Stay focussed. It is easy to get overwhelmed with all of the information available. Remember to have a clear idea of what you are looking for and why you started the search in the first place. Family history is fun and thoroughly absorbing. If you like detective stories and have a mind for solving puzzles then it is definitely the hobby for you. Happy hunting!
£49.95
www.TheGenealogist.co.uk/FamilyRoots