Starting Out?

Family history starts at home.

Begin by recording the details of your own birth, christening (where appropriate), marriage, divorce(s), subsequent remarriage(s), and the dates of birth (and death, where appropriate) of your spouse(s), children and grandchildren.

Now you have the start of a family tree, work backwards, never forward, testing each link in the chain as you go. If you've had an eventful personal life, this exercise will introduce you to the complications of assembling even basic data on the lives of some of your ancestors.

Unusual surname?
Your task will be easier. Frequently occurring surname? (We never say 'common', because we're not.) Take heart: most of us are in the same boat.

You could begin with an ancestor who intrigues you, and try to find out as much as possible about him or her. Don't know which line to follow - dad's or mum's? Select one, and stick with it until you get stuck (you will, then you'll get unstuck, but meanwhile you can have a look at the other lot).

Next, spread your net wider
Talk to older relatives: record their memories of sisters, brothers, mum, dad, grandma, granddad's job...
Has anyone drawn a tree up in the past? If so, copy it.
Is there another family historian in the family? Co-operate.
Ask to see birth, marriage and death certificates and photocopy them.
Search out family photos, Bibles (which often contain family information), old
books, heirlooms and stories. Copy, photocopy, photograph and record as appropriate.

Benefit from the experience of others
Enrol in a family history course: ask at the library or adult education college.
Join your local family history society (see www.genuki.org.uk) or ask at the
library). The best ones organise trips and talks, have libraries, publish indexes
and issue magazines containing lists of members' interest names.
Buy a beginners guide to family history. (click here) .
Read magazine articles: note tips, shortcuts and pitfalls.
Think about joining a one-name society (see www.one-name.org ).
Visit a big family history fair.
Collect leaflets from the General Register Office
(GRO; Southport, Lancashire), the Family Records Centre (FRC; London) and The National Archives (TNA; Kew, London).

Coming unstuck
Many of us have moved far away from our 'ancestral' home. Don't despair: even before the internet and email improved communication you could join a family history society in that neck of the woods, get help from fellow members and employ a professional researcher when the going got tough. You still can. Family history is a co-operative hobby; those who receive should also give. Helping someone else with their tree is the best way to unstick your research. In our publications, Family Tree Magazine and Practical Family History (subscribe) we publish lists of websites at the end of most articles computer sections are devoted to helping you to get the most out of your PC, from using street directories on CD-ROM to the census online. We also review family history software programs. Storing your genealogy data on a computer in a form in which it can be exported to relatives or fellow family historians makes sense, but you may prefer paper, which remains a good back-up for data stored in electronic form. More and more data is being published on websites, some free, some pay-per-view or subscriber-only. This is where you will need to learn to discriminate and be both sceptical and critical of what's on offer. It's vital to appreciate the difference between an index (a finding aid; often arranged alphabetically by surname) a transcription (a copy, possibly of an original document, but perhaps a copy of a copy of a copy) and a digital image of an original document. Errors and misinformation may occur in indexes, transcriptions and original documents for many different reasons, but they can all lead family historians astray, just as ancestors whose names change over time can make us scratch our heads. Will it be Hayes, Heyes, Hays, Hay or Haynes?

Registering interest
Up to the beginning of civil registration (1837 in England and Wales, 1855 in Scotland) there are usually copies of certificate information in registers - or
even the certificates themselves - to confirm dates and act as cross-checks on identity. As a rule, the further back you go, the harder research becomes as fewer records have survived. Earlier than the GRO civil registration records and 10-yearly censuses from 1841 to 1901 there are church and chapel registers. However, our ancestors also left other traces of their lives - often to do with their work - and there is great fun to be had in searching through lesser-known records and local newspapers, looking for a glimpse of a forebear at work or play. As your knowledge and expertise increases, you will want to visit libraries, the FRC, county record offices, specialised archives and TNA (formerly the Public Record Office). Plan each visit carefully to achieve at least some of your objectives. There are good printed guides to using, for example, the FRC and the myriad collections of records at TNA, both in book and (free) leaflet form. The TNA also has an online catalogue at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/searchourcollections. A well-planned visit to TNA,
for instance, might be to look up the service records of four or five relatives who were soldiers in World War I. Focusing on one class of document for multiple look-ups rapidly increases expertise. Free tours and behind-the-scenes visits are well worth joining: check archive websites for details.

Keeping records
Note down what (and where) you've searched, especially if the result was negative. Specialised record keeping systems for family historians such as Genfile are a great help here, and come complete with pre-printed forms. There's no need to feel completely stumped if you find yourself looking for Irish or Scottish ancestors because there are equally good printed guides - if less of them - to researching in Ireland and Scotland, while some English family history societies have strong Irish or Scottish groups. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of Wales. The internet will guide you towards help with Gypsy, Jewish, German and Italian ancestry. Google is one of the most popular search engines among family historians. Stick with family history and you will acquire some new skills, such as how to use libraries and archives efficiently, zip around websites and read all sorts of handwriting. You'll also learn all about old counties and their boundaries and more about the organisation of parishes and the church than you thought possible.

Read more in our guide to starting to trace your family tree.