Find Your Family Tree

How To Find Your Family Tree

When you set out to find your family tree you set out on a journey like no other . It will take you to places you never knew existed both physically and emotionally. Almost without exception, it is a journey that brings incredible rewards. Time takes on a different meaning. You find yourself grounded in history, a part of the past, the present and the future

When I started to research our family tree, it was to answer a specific question. Years down the line I still haven’t answered that question but I have answered many more that we didn’t know we had. Family legends have been proved and disproved. New family has been found and old family reconnected, and that just scratches the surface.

Starting out to find your family tree is both easier and more difficult than you think. All you need to begin is pencil and paper, and an open mind. The internet has made huge amounts of information available to anybody studying genealogy for whatever purpose. The key thing is never to take anything at face value. You must check, check and check again or you will find your family tree has accidentally been grafted onto the wrong roots.

Whilst the amount of information that is available has made researching your family tree easier it is also one of the greatest problems you will encounter. It is easy to get sucked into the highways and byways of history and make assumptions that have no basis in fact. Instinct does play a part in family research but only when tempered by a healthy dose of ‘Researchers Skepticism’ and it still needs to be proved out before it can be relied upon.

This site will fulfil two main functions, to help you discover your ancestors, with information on how to start the process, solve problems, locate information and to provide resources that will help you find your family tree. It will also show you how you can use the wealth of material, both online and off, and what you can do with it once you have found it, using the real life example of how my family tree has been discovered, and is still being discovered. We will be adding new items to the site constantly so please keep visiting and sign up for our regular hints and tips newsletter using the sign up form in the sidebar. We never share your email details. Please contact us if you have any suggestions or ideas for the site.

Gravestone Photos

by Tricia

I came across a wonderful site the other day, run as a voluntary project by Charles Sale. Charles had made it his mission to photograph old gravestones and catalogue them on his website www.GravestonePhotos.com.

The site, subtitled ‘An International Grave Monument Directory’ is a mine of information, to quote the site “There are now over 1120 cemeteries, 25,000 different surnames, 153,000 graves and 325,000 people indexed from 17 different countries within GPR”. Information is easily searched and if you would like a copy of a photo, it will be sent to you free of charge. I found several that were relevant to my One Name Study and I am sure that when i get to them, there will be lots of others for the various branches of the family.

When you request a photo, you will be sent an confirmation of your request, and the photo will arrive some time over the next few days. Charles does ask for an acknowledgement which sadly, many people do not provide – plain bad manners if you ask me! You also have the opportunity to leave your details should anyone else request the same photo, and to volunteer to help the site.

It is a fantastic resource to help you clear up some of those mysteries and well worth frequent visits as more images and information are added all the time.

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Family Tree News Stream

by Tricia

I’m adding a new section to the site which will be a round of news items. Often lots of little things happen in the world of family history research that may not be earth shattering, but they are useful. This is be the place you will find details of additions to some of the static [...]

Recording Initial Family Tree Information

by Tricia

The first thing you must do when you start to find your family tree is talk to as many family members as possible. The second thing is to make good records of everything they say, however insignificant it may seem. The best way to record this initial information is to split it into two types. [...]

Visiting An Archive

by Tricia

When you are just starting to find your family tree you can do a lot of your research online, but there comes a time when you will have to visit an Archive. It is one of the most interesting and exciting parts of researching your family tree. The best place to start is by visiting [...]

Websites To Help Find Your Family Tree

by Tricia

To find your family tree you will need to make use of many resources, both online and off. With the upsurge in interest in finding your family history there has been an explosion of websites that offer useful information. There are huge international repositories like Ancestry, Genes Reunited and Find My Past which have lots [...]

How To Search The Main BMD Indexes on Ancestry

by Tricia

When you use some of the online sites like Ancestry to find your family tree, you need to search the index in a way that isn’t always obvious. Sometimes you need to actually trawl through the index itself rather than search using a name. The way to do this is not difficult, once you know [...]

Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths

by Tricia

As far as your search to find your family tree is concerned 1st July 1837 is a momentous date. That is that date on which Civil Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths became compulsory. From that point on all Births and Deaths had to be reported to the local Registrar, Marriages were handled differently but [...]

Before You Start To Find Your Family Tree

by Tricia

When starting to find your family tree there are three basic rules that should be followed . They may seem very obvious but many people think these simple guidelines don’t apply to them. It can cause problems later on, especially if emotions get in the way. Start with what you know Never assume anything Don’t [...]