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Politics and economics aside, I believe that we have much to celebrate and enjoy in this country – and I actually include the weather in that!  I’m writing this on a day of rain, wind and low temperatures, so I am not seeing things through rose-tinted glasses – they wouldn’t do me much good today anyway!  But I do get tired of those who continually complain about this country, whether it’s the weather, politicians or prices.  I believe we should feel privileged to live in a place that has such a wealth of history, culture and beautiful scenery.

To start with, let’s be thankful for our climate.  I know it’s difficult on a day like today – but if it wasn’t for our high rainfall, there would be no such thing as the English country garden, and we would not be able to enjoy our green fields and variety of trees.  And would we really feel so great when the sun shines, if it shone every day and became commonplace?

What always astounds me about this relatively small country, is its infinite variety – of countryside, of history, of culture, of people.  I know that I don’t have to travel very far to enjoy mountains, green valleys, sandy beaches, craggy cliffs, forests, rolling hills, panoramic vistas, great rivers, babbling brooks, lakes, glades, glens and greenery of all kinds.  I know that if I drive north, within 2 hours I could be in the stunningly beautiful Peak District; west, and I could be in the mountains or valleys of Wales.  For romantic coves and craggy rocks we have the south-west coast from Somerset to Cornwall.  For waterways and sandy beaches we have East Anglia.  For wide open spaces we have the national parklands of Exmoor, Dartmoor and the Yorkshire Dales.  For isolated beauty we have the Scottish Highlands.  And of course, for all these things and green, green, green, we have Ireland.  And let’s not forget my own birthplace, The Isle of Man, for its unique mix of mountains, shady glens and spectacular coastline.

And all of these places are studded with history.  Whereever you go in Britain, you will find castles, stately homes, gardens, architecture, museums, bridges, towers, follies, churches, pubs, villages, towns and cities – each with its own unique story to tell – and someone who is willing to tell that story.

And if that wasn’t enough, we have an extraordinary heritage of great writers, poets, artists, architects, musicians, scientists, engineers and philosophers, most of whom have their own special places in Britain where the visitor can learn more about their history and character.  If we wish to we can visit the homes and work places of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Thomas, Joyce, Chaucer, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Burns, Byron, Blake, Spencer, Turner, Constable, Adam, Brown, Nash, Britten, Tallis, Lennon, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Newton, Darwin, Priestley, Kingdom Brunel, Stevenson, Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Stuart Mill, Russell….. to name but a VERY few.

We are, in fact, a very rich country.  Forget economics – what’s really important is the richness of our culture and the diversity of ideas and artifacts that we have contributed to the world.

I could never live anywhere else, and I wouldn’t want to.  I love holidaying here and I am always happy to visit somewhere in the UK where I can visit a castle, garden or historic house, enjoy the local scenery or just relax by a riverside or in the beer garden of that most English of hostelries, the country pub!

I have been thinking about all this so much in the past week, that I am inspired to set up a website/blog that would celebrate the great British heritage – our culture, history and countryside.   It would be a mix of articles (guest posts would be welcome), quotations, biographies, pictures and reviews of historical sites.

Those of you who read this post – I would love to have your views on this.  Please leave a comment below, or on my Facebook page.

Here is my guide to tracing family history on a budget:

• Set Yourself a Monthly Spending Limit. Genealogy is – or can be – a lifelong hobby, and your spending will no doubt fluctuate in line with your available income.  When money is short, it’s important that you give yourself a monthly spending limit and try not to go beyond that.  For example, you might allow yourself to buy one birth/marriage/death certificate per month on top of a monthly subscription to a genealogy site.  This is not such a bad thing – it will make you prioritise which documents you really need, and which will give you the best information.

• Subscribe To At Least One Genealogy Site. Most of the big genealogical sites have monthly subscription rates that are not too expensive, and once you are a subscriber you will have the freedom to search that site and view any online documents they may have.  Some sites also have free trials so you can try the service out before committing yourself.  Ancestry offer 2 weeks for free here:  Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com (USA).  Other good subscription websites that I would recommend are Find My Past,  Origins.net,  Genes Reunited (useful for finding living relatives & you can register for free).  These are the ones I use mostly – but there are others which you can easily find by searching Google.  If you really find the monthly fees more than you can afford, you could ask another interested member of your family if they would share the cost with you.

• Use the International Genealogical Index – it’s Free!  You can find this at FamilySearch.org.  The IGI (and its new pilot site) is one website where you can search baptism & marriage records and view results completely free, and it is an extremely useful resource.  However, it should always and only be used in the knowledge that it is not a complete, nor always an accurate database.  Any information you find here must always be backed up by viewing the original records – usually at county record offices – or sometimes at online subscription sites.  If you live nearby the CRO you need, then you are lucky – but very often this will involve hiring someone to look at the records for you.  Again, you can budget for this.  Keep a list of the IGI records you want to confirm, and follow them up when you can afford it.

• Search for any published online Parish Registers. More and more parish records are getting published online, and it is worth doing a search to see if the parish you need has been indexed or published – not just on the subscription sites but sometimes on individual parish sites which are sometimes free.  The Online Parish Clerk project is a great scheme run by volunteers, and aims to get parish records online.  For example, I have used the Lancashire OPC site quite often and found it very useful.

• Take Advantage of Free Searches - but always be aware that you will need to pay if you find what you’re looking for!  Very rarely will a search result give you the information you need, and if the name you are looking for is quite common, you will usually not be able to tell if it is your ancestor without paying either a subscription or a temporary credit or pass.  This can be extremely frustrating!  Always make sure that the information you are seeking is not already available on the site you already pay a subscription for, otherwise you could end up paying twice for the same information.

• Search Documents Online for Wills. You can search for PCC  and other documents at the Documents Online section of the National Archives.  If you are nearing the end of your monthly budget, you won’t have to spend too much if you find a will here.  At present it costs £3.50 to download a will.  You can also search for other wills at Ancestry and other places – and they are usually not expensive to order.  See my blog post on searching for wills here.

• Talk to Your Genealogist! You may think that you cannot afford the services of a genealogist, or that your current one charges too much.  As a professional genealogist myself, I know that the hourly rates can sometimes look prohibitive – but we have to earn a living!  But we are generally a very friendly and understanding bunch, and if you are on a tight budget, then I think most of us would be happy to keep to a low spending limit, or spread the searches over a longer period of time.  Sometimes it’s necessary to carry out several hours of work in one go – but I know that I would be happy to arrange payment in instalments from a trusted client, and I have offered this in the past.  So, don’t be afraid to ask about different payment options – we don’t bite!

• What If You’ve Used Up Your Budget? When you’re out of genealogy funds for the month – then spend some time organising your files, writing up reports and setting out a plan of action for the following month.  By doing this you will be less likely to overspend the next month because you will have organised your priorities and won’t waste money on chasing dead ends.  Why don’t you start writing up a book or folder on your ancestry for the rest of your family to enjoy?

Tracing family history can end up being a very expensive passtime if you are not careful.  But when money’s tight you really don’t have to give it up!  All it takes is some careful planning, organisation and a bit of patience and you can still continue to enjoy this fascinating hobby!

There are 4 main ways of ordering my genealogical services.

You can either use my hourly service, which gives you a minimum of 2 hours of research up to whatever spending limit you want to set.  This leaves you in control of your budget and means that the research can be done in stages.  It is also the best option if you just require a record look-up in the local archives.

Alternatively, there are also 3 packages at varying levels, depending on your budget and requirements.  You can either decide to pay in advance, using the Paypal buttons, or email me for further details.

Whatever your research needs, feel free to email me at info@tracingancestors-uk.com to discuss what kind of option will suit you.

For more details on my genealogical research options CLICK HERE.

The most frustrating situation is where you have an ancestor with a common name, and do not have a specific area of origin.  Unless you can gather more information from other sources, this is always going to be the worst scenario.  A “John Smith of England”, born about 1827″ is not going to get you anywhere!

All the same, even if you have a definite place of birth, and/or an uncommon name, there are some ancestors who just don’t seem to want to be found!

Here are a few tips that have helped me get past many a sticking point in the past, both for myself and for my clients:

• Siblings can be very useful in tracking an elusive ancestor.  Brothers and sisters of the person you are searching may be found on census records or may be witnesses to a wedding.  If you are unable to find your direct ancestor, then try searching for their brothers and sisters, not only back in time, but forward in time.  You could find that your missing ancestor was living with a brother or sister, and the name has been badly transcribed therefore not turning up in index searches.   If you can’t find a baptism for your missing ancestor, then try looking for the baptism or birth record of their siblings.

• Witnesses on marriage certificates – even if they don’t look like siblings – could be useful.  Try finding them on the census and working out how they are related to the subject.  Sometimes witnesses are church officials, but often they are relatives or friends of the people getting married.  A female with a different surname may be a married sister, or they could be nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts or cousins.  Researching these people could provide you with clues as to where your ancestor was living or where he came from.

• Relatives and Visitors on the census should also be noted and researched.  Any extended relation who is living in the household on the census should be thoroughly researched.  Sometimes widowed parents-in-law lived with their married children, as did unmarried brothers or sisters.  Visitors and boarders are not always un-related and quite often turn out to be relatives by marriage, so should also be checked out.

• Phonetic searches are not always reliable, so don’t rely on your search engine to come up with every possible variation of a surname spelling.  Try as many different spellings of the surname as you can think of .  Think of how a surname might sound (could that “n” sound like an “m”?) – or how it might look when written down.  Not only were name spellings not standardized, modern transcribers make many errors when writing the indexes, so use your imagination when searching and keep trying different spellings.

• Search Engines in many genealogical websites can have very useful search criterias, and you can try searching with all kinds of different information to try and locate your ancestor.  If your ancestor’s name is fairly uncommon, and you are fairly confident you know where they came from, you can try searching for a Christian name without surname, or vice versa, using the place name as an exact search.  I found my own grandfather this way – his name was Francis Manley, but I could never find him in the 1881 census.  When I tried searching for Manley without the Christian name, with a definite year and place, I found his name had been written as “Fracis” – which never came up in the index search!

• Military or Maritime ancestors might have been away during the census, so if you think your ancestor might have been a sailor or involved in overseas military campaigns, this could be why he does not show up on a census.  Some military and shipping records can be seen online at the National Archives Website Documents Online Service.  Other records of this nature can only be seen by visiting the National Archives at Kew, but you can still search some indexes online.

• Baptisms & Marriage Records of the parish registers can be useful if you are unable to find a birth or marriage certificate.  Of course, you need to know where they were likely to have been born or married.  Only a few parish registers are online at present, so you will either need to visit the relevant county record office, or hire someone to do this for you.

• Wills can be very useful if you cannot find an ancestor in the parish registers or other records.  If your ancestor was fairly wealthy, and held property in more than one county, he is likely to have left a PCC (Perogative Court of Canterbury) will, which can be downloaded at the National Archives Documents Online website.  However, if he only had property in one small area, it is more likely to be an archdeaconry will – and you will need to have an idea of where he was living when he died.  It is always worth looking for wills of possible relatives of your ancestor – as they may mention him or her in their will, and this can help you establish parentage and origins.  Looking for wills can be time consuming and sometimes expensive – but if you do find a will, they are well worth the search as they provide very interesting information about our ancestors’ lives.

• Land records can also be useful if you have an idea of where your ancestor lived.  Sometimes these can provide family information if, say, an ancestor was passing a piece of land to a son, or transferred land as part of a dowry, for example.

• Ancestry.co.uk allows you to make a general search at the bottom of their home page, and if you have come to a full stop this search engine can be very useful for finding any other possible sources of information and documents.  I have on occasion come across baptism records and criminal records for clients’ ancestors that I had not found before.

• Know Your History! Having a bit of knowledge about the history of the time can help you to understand your ancestors’ possible movements and his possible actions. For example, a factory worker in mid-19th century Manchester or Liverpool could be an Irish immigrant.  If your ancestor worked as a gardener, he may have worked on one of the large private country house estates, and there could be local land records showing employees and salaries.

Remember that every single piece of information you have about your ancestor is a potential clue.  Never dismiss anything, and always follow up every bit of information you have.  It may lead to a dead end, but it could also lead to a real breakthrough.

Some of these tips will be more useful than others, depending on how much you already know about your ancestor, and what kind of person he was (e.g. a factory worker is unlikely to have left a will – though you should never rule this out).

My overall advice is to never give up and to keep looking.  Sometimes, if you really are completely stuck, it is a good idea to leave it and work on another line for a while.  Often, when you come back to this ancestor, you will have a new idea for how to go about your research – or more information may have become available online.  More and more information is being published on the internet, so it’s always worth checking what’s available every so often.

Find an elusive ancestor can be frustrating, hard work and ultimately disappointing – but on the other hand, when you do make that breakthrough it is so exciting that it will have been worth all that hard work.

Happy hunting!

The family tree of Herzog Ludwig I of Württemberg (ruled 1568-1593

It is only in the past 5 decades that tracing ancestors has become a popular past-time for all members of society. However, it is not a new idea. In times when it mattered to be a part of the upper classes, many wealthy people felt it was important to be able to prove their lineage and validate their standing in society. 

However, it was not something that was of interest – or even possible – for the middle and lower classes. It was not thought to be of any benefit to trace your family’s history, and even if it was possible to do so, there would have been no pride in tracing a line of agricultural labourers or tradesmen. Family history was for the noble classes.

Times change, and so do attitudes. In the last century, professional historians have come to realise that social history is just as important as political history, and an interest in family history has grown alongside the growth of interest in the history of the common people.

Tracing your family tree became more popular in the latter half of the 20th century as records became more accessible to the general public, and parish registers had to be held at County Record Offices rather than at the church itself.

However, in the last few years, the internet has made some records even more accessible to people on a global basis, and while some documents still need to be seen in situ, records such as census returns and birth, marriage and death indexes can be searched for and viewed online.

Along with TV programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are, this accessibility of records has made it far easier for anyone interested in their roots to trace back several generations quite quickly.

But what is the attraction of tracing your ancestors? Why is it such an addictive and fascinating past-time, despite being, at times, incredibly frustrating and disappointing? Is it just because, as human beings, we have an inbuilt curiosity, or is it more than that?

I believe it has something to do with our need to establish a personal identity, to understand more about ourselves, and why and how we are who we are. It also gives us a sense of continuity and belonging. We are not totally alone. We are made up of the genes of those who came before us, and our genes will be continued in those who come after us.

Genealogy connects us with the past as no history lesson can ever do. I personally became more interested in history through an interest in my own family history. It had never interested me at school. Now I have a degree in it.

History, whether family, social or political, tells us where we have come from and teaches us that while fashions, attitudes and technologies may change, basic human nature does not. Yet it also teaches us to avoid the mistakes of the past so we can choose a better path.

Nowadays, we are more likely to be fascinated (if a little discomforted) rather than shamed by finding we have a criminal or a workhouse inmate in our family history. It’s interesting. We want to know more about them.

While there are still those who would like to find they are related to royalty, I find that the ancestors I have (tradesmen, factory workers, fishermen, labourers, railway workers) are just as fascinating as any royal – if not more so. I am proud of them because they worked hard, suffered and survived, and because they are a part of me.

Tracing ancestors is a hobby that is never finished – that is both the beauty and the frustration of it! Once started, it is almost impossible to stop. You will be caught in its grasp and it won’t let you go. You have been warned!