Discover your family story

For millions of people around the world, Irish ancestry is more than just a line on a family tree, it’s a deep, emotional connection to place, culture and identity, and so finding the right guidance really matters. Here’s how one family-run community is helping people reconnect with their Irish past

Taking a DNA ancestry test can transform your understanding of the past, helping you to smash brick walls and find long-lost relations in your family tree research. Discover why you should take a DNA test to enhance your family history....

Discover useful ways to grow your knowledge about using DNA for family history, and get to grips with the DNA jargon in our useful glossary too.

What do you do when the paper trail for an ancestor suddenly dries up? Where did they go? What happened to them? How will you solve this family history mystery? Phil Isherwood provides some useful strategies for tracking down those elusive ancestors who appear to have completely disappeared from the records.

Finding your ancestor's grave can be an emotional experience, but can also help your family history research, potentially revealing new information about your ancestor and adding context to your research. Discover how to find a grave, and what to do to ensure you make the most of a churchyard visit.

Curious about the origin of your surname? Whether your family name comes from an occupation, location, or ancestral trait, this guide will help you understand what your last name means and how to trace its roots.

A maiden name is a woman's surname before marriage, and uncovering it can reveal hidden branches of your family history. It’s not merely a detail to be remembered when researching, it’s a connection to her origins, her family, and her identity before her life changed through marriage, and it's vital for family history, as our guide to maiden names reveals.

Getting together with relatives sometime soon, or looking forward to a family catch up on Zoom? It's the perfect time to record more of those family stories! Find out more about the best ways to interview your relatives, how to record the stories, and much more with our in-depth guide.

Follow this straightforward four-step plan to start your family history with confidence – learn where to begin, how to uncover vital details, where to find essential records, and how to build your family tree online.

The 1921 Census for England, Wales and Scotland is available for family history research. Search it on Ancestry and Findmypast (for England and Wales) and on ScotlandsPeople. Find out how to get the most from this resource with our comprehensive guide to the 1921 Census.

How can a family history program help you? Read on to learn how leading UK family history software Family Historian, version 7, from Calico Pie, can help you as you work on your genealogy. Guide by Phil Isherwood.

Irish genealogy can be challenging, but it is far from impossible. This step-by-step guide to Irish genealogy explains how to trace your Irish ancestors using church registers, census substitutes, surviving census records, land records, and modern online resources.

What is a second cousin? Or a third cousin once removed? Such relationship terms can often be very confusing, but they don't have to be. Work out who’s who on your family tree and don't forget to claim your free Family Tree Relationship Calculator.

In this guided tour to MyHeritage we show you tips to build your family tree on MyHeritage, how to find useful records, what you can get for free, unique MyHeritage tools, DNA pointers and more.

David Annal explains how a small percentage of census returns have been lost, damaged or destroyed over time, and how to establish whether a return we struggle to find has actually suffered this fate

Join Family Tree Plus and enjoy impartial expert advice, easy-to-follow tutorials, and friendly support so you can research your family history with confidence. Find out more about the popular online membership in our special guide.

Curious about your UK ancestors and their lives? Census records are a treasure trove of information, offering snapshots of your family’s past every 10 years. Learn how to unlock details like their birthplaces, occupations, and living arrangements using this essential guide to the census returns covering the UK.

Are you looking for a way to share your family history findings with family and friends? Writing down your discoveries is a great way for relatives to enjoy your family history now, and in the future. Our step-by-step plan takes you from the planning stage through to a written family history you will be proud to share.

Discover how to use maps as a key part of your family history research to plot where your ancestors lived and worked, to discover crucial clues and to make so much more sense of your family history findings. Using historical maps is a truly useful way to visualise the evidence, identify clues - and find research solutions.

Discover how you can learn so much more when you use DNA in combination with traditional family history. DNA advisor Karen Evans explains

DNA Advisor Karen Evans tells us how shared matches can help us to solve genealogical puzzles and knock down stubborn family history brick walls!

Are you one of the millions of people around the world with Scottish roots? Discover the best Scottish genealogy websites and record collections to trace your ancestors in Scotland, from parish registers to clan records, with this in-depth genealogy guide with advice from experts Kirsty F. Wilkinson, Dr Bruce Durie and Veronica Schreuder.

Newspaper archives are a goldmine for family historians: millions of digitised pages packed with notices, court reports, local news, and adverts that add colour, context, and crucial facts to your tree. On this page you’ll find the best newspaper archives (free and paid), what each one covers, and expert tips to search smarter and overcome OCR issues.

Time spent deciding which family history subscription website (or websites) you need will help you save money and maximise your search time. Read on for pointers to consider when choosing which family history websites you need and what they offer to subscribers.

How can parish registers help you trace your family history? What genealogy information can you learn about your ancestors from the baptism, marriage and burial records that have been kept for centuries across the British Isles? Dig into the parish registers to find out more with Helen Tovey's guide and get further tips on using parish registers for local history research from Stuart Raymond.

If your house is more than a few years old, the chances are you’ll have wondered who used to live there, what it used to look like and how the area has changed. Discover how to uncover clues that can tell you when your house was built, who lived there before you and even what stood there before it was built in our house history guide.

Old family photographs are a vital part of genealogy. They not only show us our ancestors’ faces but also preserve social history, clothing, and context. Find out how to organise, preserve, store, date and identify these precious pictures with our in-depth guide.

Discover much more about using death records for family tree research, and how these key resources can help you find your ancestors, with our in-depth guide.

Artificial Intelligence is already transforming the way our ancestry can be explored. In this introductory guide to using AI, genealogists John Beaumont and Carole McCulloch look at how Generative AI can be used by family historians to speed things up, brainstorm ideas, free us up for more analysis and interpretation, and generate output in the form of family history narratives, slides and more.

Find out how passenger lists can help you find ancestors who travelled to the UK from overseas, or who left Britain for a new life in another country. This guide will help you trace your ancestors on the move.