When I started tracing ancestors (way back in the early 80s) the internet had not yet been born, and the computer was yet to become a household item. So when I started getting interested in my own heritage my first port of call of St. Catherine’s House near the Aldwych in London where you could search the civil registration indexes and order certificates. Luckily for me I was living in London and working near the Aldwych at the time so I used to pop over in my lunch time and spend an hour going through the indexes which were in large, heavy books arranged in date order along lines of shelves. It was hard work, and my arms used to ache after continually pulling down those heavy tomes and returning them as I searched for my grandmother’s birth details.
Tracing English ancestors in the past generally meant that you had to travel. Either to London, or to the relevant county record office to look at census records. Many parish registers were still held at the relevant church so you often had to travel to remote villages in order to find your rural ancestors.
Genealogists today have it easy. Anyone with internet access can sit in the comfort of their own armchair with a laptop, choose out of several genealogy sites and search the civil registration indexes with a few clicks. You can view all the census records, and if you have difficulty deciphering some of the writing there are often transcripts provided for you. While you still need mostly to search parish registers in local county record offices (where they now have to reside), you can use the online International Genealogical Index provided by the Church of the Latter Day Saints to help with your parish searches.
It is no wonder that genealogy has increased in popularity over the last couple of decades.
However, there are so many genealogy sites now that it can be difficult to know where to start with your family tree.
Personally, I use three main sites for my searches, and occasionally use others when I want something more specific (such as Irish ancestry). They provide me with the main information that I need.
If you are just starting and want to use an online site to start your searches, you need to decide whether you are just going to dabble a bit or whether this is going to be a full time hobby.
If you are going to do this seriously and spend regular time I would suggest you take out a subscription to Ancestry.co.uk. You don’t need to subscribe to anything higher than the basic subscription to start with and this will give you the freedom to search the civil registration indexes, census records (1841-1901 at present) whenever you want to.
You can also search military records, passenger lists (though you will have to upgrade your subscription to view the records), and add your family tree to the One World Tree, and see if someone else has your ancestors on their tree.
My one warning about using Ancestry is that there are numerous errors in the indexes and transcriptions. Names and places have been spelled or “guessed” wrongly and so may not turn up when you use the search tool. You may need to try several spellings of your ancestor’s name, and use different search criteria when searching if you do not find the person you are looking for straight away.
If you just want to try out a few searches to see what’s there, or you think you will only be searching your ancestors now and then, I would suggest you start with Find My Past. Here, you can buy credits for a one-off payment and then use those credits for your searches. At present you can buy 60 credits for £6.95 or 280 credits for £24.95 with which you can search all the civil registration indexes, all the census records (including the 1911 census), migration, military and other records.
At the moment, Find My Past is the only site where you can view the 1911 census, though in 2011 this should also be available on Ancestry.co.uk as well.
The other site that I use a lot is Family Search. This is where you can search the International Genealogical Index which attempts to list baptism, marriage and some burial records from parish registers. This is a very useful tool if you are searching an elusive ancestor or you cannot get to the county record offices to view the parish registers. However, any information found here should always be backed up by a proper search at the appropriate parish register. Also you need to remember that this is not a full index. If you cannot find your ancestor here it does not mean the documents do not exist. Some areas are better covered than others. If you do not have access to the local county records offices, you need to back up your findings by using local genealogists.
If you want to find out if someone else has some of your ancestors on their tree, I recommend Genes Reunited where you can add your own tree and get in contact with people who have common ancestors.
There are many other genealogy sites (you can see some more links on the right hand panel), but those I have described above are the ones that I use most of all and are probably the best place to start if you are just starting out with tracing ancestors.
Good luck!
