| Brief Guide to Tracing your Family History |
| Who are you, exactly? |
| Regardless of your fame, fortune or standing, you are the result of an immensely complex and intricate mixture of genes, history, culture and geography that has taken place over generations - in fact, since the beginning of life on Earth. By researching your family history, you dip your toe into this fascinating ocean of past events, and discover something of the unique place that you and your family hold within it. |
| Define your goals |
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Family history is utterly absorbing. Family history is like an onion: uncover one layer and you find another layer beneath it. Be warned: what starts out as a hobby can easily turn into an obsession!
At the outset, family history can seem scarily complicated. Family trees can rapidly become completely out of control: to cover every member of every generation, and their ancestors and offspring, you'll need a piece of paper the size of a roll of wallpaper. If you trace back your ancestry over ten generations through only your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so forth, you end up with a list of 511 people - and that does not include any brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts. Then there is the barrage of documentation that you might have to sift through - all the things that genealogists need and thrive on: certificates of birth, marriage and death, census records, parish registers, military records, wills, and so on. But don't panic! What you have to do, first and foremost, is to define your goals. Ask yourself: what exactly do I want to know? Do you just want to find out a bit more about the lives of past generations: what they did for a living, whom they married, how they fit into the family tree of your close relatives? Or do you want to discover your ancestry deep back in time - to take your family tree as far back as you can get? Or do you perhaps want to check out a link to some famous (or perhaps notorious) ancestor, to whom - according to family legend - you are supposed to be linked? Each of these tasks requires a slightly different approach and focus. Limit your task, and remember your original objective as you go forward. It is very easy to become bogged down by detail. (But bear in mind also that your researches can lead you to unexpected places or people, so if you are too focussed or prescriptive you can lose out on some of the fun!) |
| Genealogy and family history |
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Genealogy is essentially about tracing your ancestry, or what is also called your 'pedigree'. Family trees (or 'pedigree charts') provide an easy-to-follow visual aid to your ancestry. They show parents and their children up and down the generations. One kind of family tree can start with a pair of ancestors at the top and show how generations succeeded them: if laid out horizontally, such 'extended family trees' will be cone-shaped, with you among the broad spread of cousins of later generations. Another sort (also called a 'birth brief') takes an individual - perhaps you - and traces ancestry backwards in time through grandparents and great-grandparents: if laid out horizontally, such family trees will be funnel-shaped, with you alone at the bottom.
Family trees have traditionally followed the male line only. This is a product of the rules of succession and inheritance in the Western world, part of which meant that women changed their surname on marriage. There is nothing to stop you following the female line as well; after all, this represents half of your genetic inheritance. However, the way that records have been kept make this more difficult. Genealogy is not quite the same as family history. Genealogy is primarily about charting lines of ancestry. Family history is concerned more about who your ancestors were: where they lived, what they did for a living, how they met the person they married, how and when they died and so on. It is a richer, more complex subject, far more open to interpretation. It is often said that genealogy (the family tree) is the skeleton, and family history is the flesh on that skeleton, but of course one is barely imaginable without the other. |
| Start with what you know |
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You and your relatives already know far more about your family history than any other source. You can very quickly start to build up a picture of both your genealogy and your family history by speaking to members of your family - especially the older ones. Show them old photograph albums and ask them to identify the people pictured, and note down what they say. Talk to them about what you've heard about relatives of the past. Their answers may not always be entirely accurate, but you can always check the details later against records. Ask them if they have their own records that you can look at: more photos; family bibles (often the place where family records were kept in the past); certificates of birth, marriage and death; letters; diaries; newspaper clippings. Where are the family graves: what is written on them?
At an early stage you should start sketching out your family tree. The traditional form is called a 'drop-line family tree' and shows bare essentials: full names parents (with maiden names), and their offspring; the dates of birth, marriage and death. Use a large piece of paper, and leave plenty of room for additions. As a rule, when researching, work backwards in time, from what you know of the present and immediate past. If you start with a supposed distant ancestor and work forward in time to try to prove a link with yourself, you are likely to end up researching someone else's family history. |
| Assemble your material |
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Remember that your research is valuable: it is legacy that you can pass down to future generations (they will appreciate it one day!) So make notes; keep records of where and how you found bits of information; make photocopies of any relevant documents. Note also the bits of hearsay that may or may not be true; and the false leads (to save fruitless duplication of effort in the future.)
You are likely very soon to acquire a mass of materials. Some of this can be stored on computer (including family trees). But for the rest of it you'll probably need files and boxes (for documents, photos, postcards and so on). Remember that tracing family history is an on-going project: the task can never be fully completed. So assemble your material in a way that is both flexible and accessible. In other words, use a ringbinder rather than a bound scrapbook. And don't wait to produce a definitive family tree and write up a conclusive family history narrative: start these early in the process, with a view to adding to them and amending them later, as and when you can. Print up your work-in-progress from time to time and send it to relatives: you'll be amazed at the further memories this inspires. |
| Has it been done before? |
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It is possible that much of the legwork for your family history has been done before - by some forebear sharing your curiosity. If so, you could save yourself a huge amount of time and effort. Ask your relatives if they know of any such work. Lists of family histories (such as privately printed histories, or manuscripts) are held by various bodies, and are catalogued in books such as 'The Genealogist's Guide', which may be available in your local public library.
There may well be someone who is currently doing a family history that covers the same ground as yours, or which overlaps. Again, you could get wind of this by contacting relatives. Or you might find this out by using the most powerful modern tool in genealogy: the Internet. |
| Use the Internet |
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Genealogy and family history studies have been transformed by the Internet. Through the Internet you can very quickly spread your network of family contacts - anywhere in the country, or around the world. Try setting up an email mailing list of relatives interested in family history and genealogy, so that family members can share and contribute information, and copy each other in. Or you could set up your own dedicated family history website. Relevant online newsgroups and message boards can spread the net wider.
In addition, there are numerous first-rate websites that can put you in touch with other budding genealogists, who may well be researching linked family trees. Through the Internet, you may be able to get in touch with them directly and immediately. The Internet may show you that there is Family History Society in the locality where your family originated; see the website of the Federation of Family History Societies (www.ffhs.org.uk); or the Scottish Association of Family History Societies (www.safhs.org.uk). The resources of the Internet are colossal - and grow by the day, as more and more people interested in family history and genealogy link into them and allow access to their research. One thing you quickly learn: it really helps to have an unusual surname. Things are not so easy for the Smiths, Browns, Jones and Masons - but middle names, and dates of birth and death and place-names can quickly narrow the field when conducting searches. On the subject of names, keep an eye out for alternative spellings of surnames; remember also that first names are often misleading: Great Aunt Betty may in fact have been baptised Henrietta. The genealogical websites are also powerful sources of archive material, as well as invaluable advice, and software to help you assemble and record your family history. The following websites will give you a good start:
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| Public records |
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Despite the scale of Internet genealogical material, it still represents only a fraction of the totality. Ultimately, if you want to pursue family history to the next level of detail and precision, you are going to have to look at original records. You may be able to see them on microfilm or microfiches, or you may have to seek out the real thing, such as original parish registers - wonderful historic documents, hand-written in copperplate script, and redolent of the past.
Britain has an extraordinary depth and breadth of public records. For family history, the most important are the records of birth, marriages and deaths. A key date here is 1837. This is the date that the formal 'civil registration' of births, deaths and marriages began in England and Wales. Before 1837, baptisms, marriages and deaths were recorded in parish registers; some of these go back to the 16th century. (It is hard to trace back family history beyond this - unless you belong to a well-documented line of nobility or royalty.) A similar system of civil registration was inaugurated in Scotland in 1855. In Ireland the records are more patchy, because much of the national archive was destroyed during the Civil War in 1922. Such civil records will help you to fix the precise details (if not always 100% accurate) about your ancestors: dates, occupations, where they lived - the bare bones of their histories, if not much else. You can consult the indexes to births, deaths and marriages and order photocopies of the certificates; for English and Welsh records, you can do this through the Family Records Centre in London, by going in person or via the Internet (www.familyrecords.gov.uk). A large proportion of the indexes for England and Wales has been transcribed, and is accessible through www.freebmd.org.uk. You can get further details of your ancestors from the census returns. A national census has taken place in Britain every decade since 1801 (except 1941). Census returns provide a fascinating snapshot of households, the names and ages of the residents, the relationships between them, their occupations and where they were born. The census returns are released to the public after a century has elapsed. The 1901 census can now be consulted (for a fee) on www.1901census.nationalarchives.gov.uk. You can see census returns for 1851 through to 1901 on microfilm at Country Records Offices, or, for a modest fee, you can download them from licensed websites; some of these records have also been transcribed into print. There are many other forms of records beyond this, any of which could help you to fill in vital gaps in your knowledge (military records, wills, tax records, company records, electoral rolls, overseas civil records, and so on). Most of these cannot be seen on the Internet, but you can find out where they are located by using websites such as:
Another useful source for all those many families who lost relatives in the two world wars is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission: www.cwgc.org Try them. It's amazing what you can find out… and you'll soon be hooked! |
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