Heritage Album

tracing family tree?

anyone know of any good free websites which can help me search for my ancestors im in the uk so will need uk records ty

Public Comments

1. I don't know what it would be in UK, but try googling geneology and lds. They have the best and most complete records.
2. "Free" is not really a word that sits well with family history research. There ARE free sites, but generally speaking to get the best out of places like FreeCEN or FreeBMD or even the huge Mormon database at familysearch.org, you already need to get back to 1901 at least. And in order to get back that far, you'll need to spend money and buy a bunch of birth, marriage and death certificates. Don't kid yourself that it will be cheap, especially if you are starting from scratch. We can all tell you where to look, and in some cases people will look in the indexes for you, but you can't ask strangers to do too much for free, and if they do find an index entry, it will still require that you use that information to purchase the necessary record yourself. Actual birth, marriage and death certificates are not online - only the indexes, and they are just finding aids to ordering the real thing from the GRO. Searching your family tree is not rocket science, but neither is it quick or easy. You won't get all the answers in two weeks flat (plenty of people don't get all the answers after twenty years!), and it won't come cheap. At least not if you do it properly. The first thing to do is ask the family. Talk to granny while she's still alive and has all her marbles. The one thing I regret is that when I began my tree, all four of my grandparents were dead and I had no-one to ask. All we're left with is a bunch of old photos and no clue who half the people in them are. Start asking around now, while these people are still alive - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Some of them might not want to help you, but the fact remains that you need to have the basic outline of your tree somewhere before you even start going online to try and find records. Don't enter into this hobby lightly. It's not nearly as quick and easy as that BBC show would have you believe.
3. Hey Beta Max, When you need records to prove the connection, you will have to pay. The websites may be free, but they will get money for proof. Best of luck with these, don't overlook the LDS site, they have extensive british records. I keep my English, Irish and Scottish sites seperate - let me know if you need the IRISH and Scottish ones also. Here are some sites that should help you:
4. I think Ancestry.Com has the most records online but it is not free. However, your public library might have a subscription to it that you can use. They have all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They also have U.K. censuses. Just don't take as absolute fact everything you see in their family trees or family trees on ANY website, free or paid. The info is subscriber submitted and mostly not documented or poorly documented. You might see different info on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will frequently see the same info over and over from many different subscribers on the same people. That is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying. Use the information as CLUES as to where to get the documentation.