Researching Your Family History

Getting started

The aim of this site is to provide you with access to the research tools you need to create your family history.

Using information gleaned from your relatives you can search for births, marriages and deaths and order certificates of these events from the GRO. The birth certificate will give you an exact date and place of birth, the father’s name and occupation, and the mother's maiden name. The marriage certificate will give the date and place of the marriage, the forenames and surnames of the couple, and their ages (before 1855 it will only show either ‘full’ if over 21 or ‘minor’ if under). It also lists the residence and profession of the father plus the names of the marriage witnesses.

You can then use these facts to search the census. Search for the known family members and you will often find the whole family listed with their ages (using our family button). This information can be used to search for further births and marriages, so you can work your way back through the generations. The census will allow you to work back down the tree and help you to find any living relatives.

See our paleography/handwriting section for help with interpreting difficult writing.

It’s helpful to record the information you find in a family history program such as RootsMagic, which will enable you to print trees and create a family history.

As you work back, ask relatives if they can provide stories or information about particular family members.

Parish records and directories can help you research the years before 1837 when civil registration started.

The Genealogist

The Genealogist houses a collection of essential records for your family research, with the resources being especially useful for investigating the lives of your 19th and 20th century ancestors. In this introductory guide we take a brief look at each area of research that you can carry out using the resources of TheGenealogist website, finding out what the records are and how to use them.

The Genealogist online service offers a wide array of material, but its main strengths lie in the accurate census indexes and transcripts, combined with access to the complete General Register Office BMD indexes. These are what have particularly attracted many subscribers, although there is a wide variety of other material to explore and this is constantly being added to. Other material includes Parish records, Land Records, Army, Navy and Trade Directories. Other new material is regularly added from the extensive S&N publication catalogue, adding further value to this useful resource.

Follow the links below to find out more about the wealth of records that can be accessed by subscribers to the TheGenealogist’s all-inclusive subscriptions, the most economical and cost-effective way of using the service.

SmartSearch™

SmartSearch™ is a way of searching the birth, marriage and death data for 1984 onwards. It utilises an intelligent search system to perform a reverse look-up:

Search for the children born to a couple using the father's surname and mother's maiden name
See the details for either partner in a marriage
Find the birth record from the death record at the click of a button

SmartSearch™ can also be used in census transcripts from 1851 onwards to: