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NEW TO FAMILY HISTORY?
For the benefit of those who are thinking about tracing their own family history and family tree, the information contained on this page is a brief overview of how to begin, with a particular emphasis on researching ancestors in England & Wales. We have tried to provide a resume of the most important points for the newcomer. However, these notes should not be regarded as a substitute for good old-fashioned books. Especially if you are a beginner you are strongly advised to start by visiting your local library and doing some reading on genealogy and family history.
Genealogy vs Family History
Genealogy is the study of the descendents of persons or families from an ancestor or ancestors. Many people out of interest in their personal and family origins undertake this study. As a hobby it can become pleasantly addictive, at least to the person concerned. However the study is also undertaken professionally, not just in order to provide a commercial service that can be used by people who are seeking help in researching their origins, but also for legal and financial reasons. Thus there are accepted standards for doing genealogy "properly" - standards that we recommend you seek to learn and emulate.
The term Family History used to be regarded as synonymous with Genealogy, but now it applies to biographical research into one's ancestors - the aim typically being to produce a well-documented narrative history, of interest to family members and future generations. Thus the study of family history involves putting "flesh on the bones" that is produced by genealogy - and involves the study of the historical circumstances and geographical situations in which our ancestors lived.
Planning Your Research
Decide what your aim is for researching your family history and develop a plan. Several choices are available to the beginner in ancestry research - Ancestor Chart, Family Tree, Extended Family Tree, and One-name Study.
Many people set out to find all their ancestors through both their male and female lines, and so produce what is termed an "Ancestry Chart". For those ambitious to trace their descent as far back as possible, this is the choice to make, because with every newly discovered generation the number of ancestors doubles; two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on. When the information on one trail dries up or is temporarily difficult to follow, there are plenty of other lines to turn to.
Some people just like to trace their own family with its surname, their "Family Tree", showing their male-line ancestors (father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc.) and the wives, brothers and sisters of these ancestors. It is of course possible to concentrate on female-line ancestors, but the types of records that were kept, and the common practice whereby a wife took her husband's surname at marriage, can make this difficult before the 19th century. However, the maxim "Mummy's baby, daddy's maybe!" shows why concentrating on the male line only is not the most reliable method of recording your family history!
Yet others try to produce what is sometimes termed an "Extended Family Tree". Such a tree shows all the collateral branches of a family, i.e. all the descendants with their spouses of some earliest known ancestor. An extended family tree therefore will grow to include many of your distant cousins.
People with a fairly uncommon surname may decide to trace all people of the same surname, just in case they may be distantly related. This is called a "One-name Study".
Whichever aim you set yourself, it is best to concentrate on just a small part of the tree or chart, at any one time - you can always move to another part when you get stuck.
How Far Back Can You Get?
Leaving aside questions of how patient, resourceful and lucky you are, this really depends on what sources of information are available. The British Isles has very extensive records, which are held in a variety of national and local collections.
In England and Wales you should be able (especially if you are blessed with a set of unusual surnames in your family) to trace your family roots with comparative ease back to 1837 when the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths began. Getting back beyond 1837 relies mainly on the use of parish registers, and with luck, and allied to other types of records, these might enable you to trace your family back to the 16th century. Beyond this can be extremely difficult, unless you can tie in to a well-documented pedigree of royalty or a great land-owning family.
How You Begin
Family history can be an extremely interesting and absorbing hobby. However, if not tackled in a methodical way, it can also become very frustrating and even expensive. To avoid such pitfalls it is important to go through this time honoured list of preliminaries.
1) Note the names of your close family and draw a rough family tree, starting with yourself at the bottom. If you are only able to go back as far as your grandparents, you are doing alright, particularly if you can fill in most or all of the birth, marriage and death dates. A great many people will not be able to get this far back at first so, if you are one of them, don't let it bother you, for some don't even know the names of one or both of their parents. This is where Nene Valley Research can help you get started.
2) Write down the names of all older relatives who are still alive in the family; such relatives can be a mine of information. They may have some birth, marriage and death certificates, in which case, begging copies of these will save you time and money. Perhaps they will also have family bibles containing family history information going back many years, or photo albums or other documents that could help. You may find a relative has already started researching part of your family tree and will be willing to share this information with you. It will pay to contact them, either in person or by phone or letter, as soon as possible. Once a person has died, then you lose a valuable link with the past. Don't be afraid to ask whether you may use a tape recorder; conversations can often be referred back to in years to come, when much of the dialogue will become more relevant.
3) Look in telephone directories for other possible family contacts; this is particularly important if you have an unusual surname. If you are a Smith, Jones, Brown or have a similarly common name, this is less likely to be worthwhile, unless you are sure that you know that certain people have connections with your own particular lines.
4) Visit your local library and see if they have a selection of books on how to trace your family tree. Eventually, it will pay to purchase a good "how to" book of your own but, for a start, read as many of the ones in the library as you can.
Whilst at the library, ask if they have any copies of the Genealogical Research Directory (GRD). This is an annually produced book into which people insert their names and interests. If they do not have one in stock, perhaps they could order one through the inter-library loan system. Alternatively, you can purchase a copy and, if you wish, have your own interests inserted in the next issue. If you can establish contact with someone else who is researching the same lines as yourself, it will be a great help.
5) Locate your nearest family history society. Even if your family does not originate from the area in which you now live, you will find meeting fellow family historians helpful and listening to talks by knowledgeable speakers a bonus. If your ancestral area is a long way from home, joining that local society could prove useful. Each group publishes its own periodical, and virtually all produce a list of members' interests. Membership generally costs about ten pounds a year.
6) There are three British family history magazines published monthly ~ Practical Family History, Family Tree Magazine, and Family History Monthly. W.H. Smith's usually stock copies of these magazines or you can order them from your local newsagent. Reading these on a regular basis will enable you to keep in touch with what is happening in the world of British family history.
After you have exhausted the foregoing sources, the family tree chart you started in (1) above should have gradually expanded, and it is now time to take stock of what you require to fill-in the missing information. This is generally done using four basic sources: civil registration, census returns, parish records and probate documents.
Civil Registration
The first and best source to begin with is birth, marriage and death certificates. You should start with yourself, and if you have never had a "full" birth certificate that shows your parents names, then it is imperative that you obtain this first. Let nothing convince you that there is any other way to begin, because there isn't. You don't want to spend years researching your family tree only to find later that you had been adopted!
Next you need to know the date of your parents' marriage, and then their respective dates of birth, followed by the same details of your grandparents and great-grandparents, and so on. This part of your research is unfortunately the most expensive, that is why it is so important to obtain as many BMD certificates as possible from members of your family.
The civil registration system, from which the BMD certificates are extracted, began in England and Wales on 1 July 1837, in Scotland on 1 January 1855 and in Ireland in 1864. This registration system required all local register offices to supply duplicate copies of their birth, marriage and death registers each quarter year to the General Register Office (GRO) in England & Wales, Scotland or Ireland as appropriate. Each GRO prepared quarterly indexes which records alphabetically by surname, the forename(s), registration district, volume number and page number. From these indexes you are able to extract the information required to order the BMD certificates. Copies of these indexes are available in microfilm format and held by many reference libraries. They can also be viewed at Family History Centres (FHC) run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). There are over 75 FHC's situated around the country, and they are open to the general public.
If you have Scottish ancestry, then you need to go to Edinburgh to search the records or hire the services of a locally based researcher. Alternatively, the General Register Office for Scotland has on-line computer access facilities that can be connected to via the Internet.
Those with Irish ancestry would, in our opinion, be best not to tackle them initially if they have English or Welsh ones to practise on as Irish ancestry can be notoriously difficult to trace. In 1922 a fire at the Four Courts in Dublin destroyed a great many records; some of these have been replaced by duplicates from other sources, but gaining experience by using archives in England and Wales will at least give you a little more confidence to eventually tackle your Irish ancestry.
If you are certain that your family has lived locally for a long time, then it may be possible to use the local register office to obtain copies of birth and death certificates. Marriage certificates are more difficult to obtain through a local register office because you must know beforehand the exact place, either a church or the register office, where the marriage ceremony took place. If your ancestors moved around the country, as many did when they needed to find work, then the General Register Office must be your starting place for BMD certificates.
Always take one step at a time. Information on a birth certificate will lead to details of parents and, if the parents married, their marriage certificate should give you enough information to obtain their respective birth certificates. A death certificate also gives a number of other useful clues, such as addresses, occupation, spouses, and sometimes children.
Census Returns
Censuses have been taken in the UK every 10 years since 1801, except in 1941 during World War II. The early ones were only head-counts, but from 1841 they are a most useful and cheap source of genealogical information. The census returns are subject to a 100-year closure rule, so, at the moment, we are only able to view those for 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 & 1901. Ancestry.co.uk has transcribed and indexed most of these which has proved to be a great boon to researchers.
From the census returns you are able to learn the names, addresses, ages and relationships of your ancestors, plus occupations and places of birth. Once you are able to get into the period covering the census returns, your family history will really start to come alive!
Parish Registers
The names of most, but not all, of our ancestors should appear at some time or another in church registers. Church of England parish registers began in 1538. It should be remembered that birth and death certificates give precisely that information, whilst from parish registers, unless the incumbent has noted otherwise, you will obtain baptism and burial dates. Although burial information is generally straightforward, children were not always baptised in infancy and often, whole families were baptised together in one ceremony. Sometimes people were baptised more than once, particularly when becoming members of nonconformist religions.
Some parish registers are still held by the local church, but most are now kept at the appropriate County Record Office. Due to the deterioration of the registers, caused by constant handling by researchers or the environment in which they were kept, the majority of these registers are now available for viewing only on microfilm. This also applies to a great many other types of records. The plus side to this is that copies of the microfilms are available in many local reference libraries and other repositories, and the LDS FHC's as previously mentioned.
Many ancestors were Nonconformists, i.e. Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Quakers, etc, which possibly complicates things a little in some families, but that is a bridge that needs to be crossed when you reach it.
Probate Documents
Wills are frequently a good source for family history information. They often provide the names and relationships to members of the family, the details of the property the deceased owned, and to whom this was bequeathed. Until after the First World War, most people had little property so did not bother making a Will. Wills were generally made by the rich and by professionals, and also by many people who were not wealthy, such as shopkeepers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and farmers, and sometimes by labourers. Copies of most Wills made after 1858 in England & Wales can be obtained from the Principal Registry of the Family Division (PRFD) at First Avenue House, London.
Other Sources
There are a growing number of indexes produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and hundreds of other dedicated family historians who willingly share them with fellow researchers, some for free and others for fees. The LDS Church produces the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which contains millions of parish and other record entries. It can be viewed in all the Family History Centres belonging to the Church. County Record Offices and local studies libraries generally hold their own county section and it can also be found at the Society of Genealogists and many other places. It must be strongly emphasised that the IGI is by no means complete. Some counties are very well covered, such as Cornwall and Yorkshire, but others are poorly covered, such as London, Middlesex and Northamptonshire.
It is very important to remember that whenever indexes are used it is always essential to check with the original sources, for indexes are not always 100% reliable or complete.
Recording Your Information
While researching, always document and reference your sources of information. You may need to review your sources again, someone may want to verify your research, your work may imply something to someone who will need to access the same records, or someone may need to pick up where you left off. Too many people underestimate, or never consider, the importance of documentation and source recording. If you have found information in a reference book, make sure you keep enough reference material to enable you to walk back into the same place five years later, locate the book and find the reference again. When you publish the results of your research, cite the exact sources (e.g. particular census returns, probate records, etc.) which you have used and on whose accuracy you are relying.
Keep a careful record of what searches you have done so far, even if you found nothing. It may well save you from searching the same record or source again in the future. And sometimes you may need to use so-called "negative proof" (effectively a list of all the unsuccessful searches you have done) in order to convince yourself that, because of the absence of evidence to the contrary, some particular supposition should now be taken to be correct.
Make appropriate use of computer-based systems to help you with the problems of storing, analysing and presenting information in the form of reports and charts. A vast number and variety of shareware and commercial software programs now exist for genealogy, some of which are extremely helpful - to the point where it is difficult to imagine how one might conduct a lengthy genealogical research project properly without their use.
On the Internet there are genealogy forums organised by the various Internet providers, family history societies and individuals; these enable you to "talk" to fellow family historians and can help you solve any puzzles you have on your tree or swap information. A great deal of information and ideas are exchanged online. Also, there are thousands of web sites containing world-wide family trees, transcripts of parish registers and census returns, street indexes, lists of churches and cemeteries, lists of old occupations, timelines, historical material, etc, which can be very useful when compiling your own family history.
Recommended Books For The Beginner
We cannot emphasise strongly enough the need to obtain a good textbook. Nowadays, there is a very good selection available to suit all pockets and stages of progress.
Some recommended books for the beginner:
Tracing Your Ancestors: an Illustrated Guide to Compiling Your Family Tree by Christine M. Morris ~ a lavishly illustrated book explaining simply to beginners how to trace their family tree. Includes a copy of the Family Tree program on CD-ROM.
Ancestral Trails by Mark D. Herber ~ a complete guide to British genealogy and family history. For both the beginner, and experienced researchers. Highly recommended.
In and Around Record Repositories in Great Britain & Ireland by Jean Cole ~ lists most record offices and libraries, with the main classes of records, addresses and phone numbers useful to the family historian.
Tracing Your Family Tree by Jean Cole and John Titford ~ an excellent general manual, covering a vast range of subjects.
Beginning Your Family History by George Pelling, First Steps in Family History by A J Camp and Tracing Your British Ancestry by Colin Chapman ~ three reasonably priced books for the beginner.
Nene Valley Research
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Northampton
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e-mail: admin@nvresearch.co.uk
Tel No. (UK): 01604 470 830
Tel No. (International): +44 1604 470 830
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