How to do your family tree online

After you have made the first step to start your family tree, it won't be long until you head to the internet to tap into the many online genealogy resources. It's amazing what you can find out from the comfort of your own home.

Which family history subscription website is best?

No doubt you’ll already have come across some of the main pay-per-view/subscription records websites, but maybe not all.

So here are the most popular sites for the UK and Ireland:

• Ancestry
• Findmypast
• TheGenealogist
• BMDRegisters
• Genes Reunited
• FamilyRelatives
• ScotlandsPeople
• Origins.net
• RootsIreland
• Deceased Online
• MyHeritage

Even with those that overlap, such as the 1911 Census records for England and Wales, are worth a ‘play’ as each will have been transcribed differently, so a missing ancestor may turn up on one genealogy website after disappearing without trace on another.

Several of the sites offer free trials, although be aware you may have to give credit card details so you should cancel before the trial ends if you don’t wish to continue your subscription.

What free genealogy sites are out there?

There are endless great free websites out there to aid your research.

They may not be as attractive as the commercial websites aesthetically-speaking, but you will find many of them enormously useful – and they won’t cost you a penny. Here are some of our personal favourites:

FreeBMD

A searchable index to birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales. You’ll need the reference number from here to order your ancestors’ BMD certificates via the General Register Office. FreeBMD is an ongoing volunteer project, part of FreeUKGen initiative, so keep checking back if you can’t find your ancestors listed.

FreeCen

Sister site to FreeBMD aimed at making 19th-century census records free online. Part of the FreeUKGen project, along with FreeReg (concentrating on parish registers).

Family Search

The world’s largest, free, genealogy site with billions of searchable historical records and research guidance via its Research Wiki, online courses and more. Provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon church).

UKBMD

UKBMD includes links to a collection of OPC websites run by volunteers who collect genealogical information about a specific parish and answer email enquiries for free. Counties are covered by individual sites, which can contain a vast amount of parish information.

Genuki

The UK and Ireland Genealogical Information Service is a virtual reference library of genealogical data, with links to all the county record offices in the UK, family history societies and much more.

LondonLives

Delve into the lives of 18th-century Londoners on this fantastic, fully searchable site, run by the universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire. Featuring manuscripts from eight archives, and giving access to 3.35 million names, its sister site OldBaileyOnline is equally fascinating, detailing almost 200,000 criminal trials of ordinary folk at the Old Bailey 1674-1913.

CyndisList

This remarkable site, a labour of love by American Cyndi Howells, is an enormous, constantly updated, categorised index of more than 325,300 genealogical links worldwide. So whether you’re tracing American or Scandinavian ancestry, or anything else in-between, this is a great jumping off point.

UKBMD

Full of useful information and a great base for exploring the records for England and Wales. The site provides more than 2,300 links to websites that offer online transcriptions of UK births, marriages, deaths and censuses, plus a wide range of other indexes and transcriptions, from parish records to monumental inscriptions.

Vision of Britain

Not such an obvious one perhaps, but this website is just brilliant for anyone researching ancestors from 1801 onwards. It’s a national online library for local history and includes everything from historical maps to census reports and travel writing. A feast for the mind. Its free sister maps site, OldMapsOnline, is equally a must.

Special Collections

Another university-run project, this site is a digital library of local and trade directories for England and Wales, 1750-1919. These rare books are essential for filling in details of your families’ lives in-between the 10-yearly censuses. Scottish Post Office directories 1773-1911, meanwhile, can be searched at National Library of Scotland.

GB Names

Family names profiling website based at the University of London that is investigating the distribution of surnames in Great Britain. For world family names maps, visit WorldNames.

National Archives of Ireland

The National Archives of Ireland free Census of Ireland search site: note only 1901 and 1911 censuses are available.

And last but not least...National Archives

The National Archives website for the UK is chock-a-block with advice, blogs, podcasts and even online courses as well as digitised records – some freely downloadable, some for a small fee. 

Research online in 3 easy steps:

1. No single commercial website is best for your research – they all offer something different, so try them all for size, but spend your money wisely.

2. Don't forget, there is an enormous amount of free genealogy data on the web too – ignore the free sites at your peril!

3. Keep up to date with the latest records releases, genealogy software and websites by reading Family Tree magazine

More bitesize family history from Family Tree magazine…

• How to start your family tree
• Birth, marriage and death records
• Parish registers
• The census
• Passenger lists
• Newspapers, trade directories & books
• Army records for family history

Image credit: Research online © ebayink, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).