How to find Lincolnshire ancestors at Lincolnshire Archives

Discover how to find your Lincolnshire ancestors with our guide to family history resources held at Lincolnshire Archives.

Chances are if your family is from Lincolnshire, then we might have a bit of your story held within the walls of Lincolnshire Archives. One of the reasons that a lot of people visit us from all over the world is to research their family tree. Genealogy is generally acknowledged to be one of the fastest growing hobbies and anyone who has spent time researching their family tree will tell you that it can become a consuming passion.

Lincolnshire Archives has numerous resources available to help with your research. Among our holdings are:

• A vast array of church registers for Lincolnshire
• Lincolnshire census returns
• Wills
• Monumental inscriptions
• Probate inventories
• Court records 

If you feel the urge to find out who your ancestors were and what they were doing, come and visit us. We have a free searchroom which is open Tuesday to Saturday 10am until 4pm, and we have friendly and knowledgeable staff available to get you started. Have a look at our website or give us a call for information about visiting us. Alternatively, if you don't want to, or are unable to do the research yourself but are still burning with curiosity, we can undertake the research on your behalf for a modest fee.

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As well as genealogical research, people also come to try to find other things such as the history of their house or local area, as well as specific academic research. Original documents which are held by us can generally be retrieved on the same day as your visit from within one of our six repositories – no mean feat when you consider that we have a total of 6.5 miles of shelving hidden within the building.

A WEALTH OF RESOURCES

One of the questions that we often get asked is 'What is the oldest document at the Archives?'. Well, it's part of a document containing extracts from the Bible dating from the 9^th century which is in surprisingly good condition. It's amazing to think how documents like that have survived for over 1,000 years and it's fair to say that some of the more recent ones (and by that we mean 18^th century!) haven't survived quite as well, falling victim to water damage, fire damage and in some cases being eaten by mice!

Each and every document tucked away within our repositories has played a small part in the lives of the people of Lincolnshire. Whether it records their arrival into the world, what their job was, or even just what they were doing at a time in their lives, each one provides a snapshot into a single point in someone's existence, giving us a glimpse of our ancestors and their life stories.

Sometimes they even provide a glimpse into a person's character with little doodles in the margins of books. Come and see us – you never know who or what you might find...

Lincolnshire Archives, St Rumbold Street, Lincoln LN2 5AB; tel: 01522 782040; website. Open: Tue-Sat, 10am to 4pm.