Heritage Album

Family trees, & ancestory?

I would like to trace my ancestors, & create a family tree, could anyone reccomend any reliable sites?

Public Comments

1. Good idea, I've been researching my family for years. OK, first step: write down your information (birth date, location, marriage, etc.) Then go onto your Parents information, then your grandparents information. Now before you make the jump into shucking out your money to Ancestry.com, check out the free web sites (i.e. Family Search.org, Roots Web.com, Genealogy.com, etc.) These web sites may provide further information. There are several family historians out there, so just follow your line or lines. Don't forget to note where you find your information, it can become important later. The golden rule in genealogy is "Confirm, Confirm, Confirm!" Watch the dates carefully, they can come back and haunt you later. If you're going to have your genealogy information on a computer file, you may wish to check out computer programs. I began my research with Family Tree Maker. But have moved onto Legacy 7 Deluxe (which you can find on the Internet). For me, I found some problems with Family Tree Maker. There are genealogy libraries around the country. Just look for a local one, and set up a day to visit it. Good luck
2. Your can build your tree on ancestry.com and it won't cost you a cent, it will only cost you to access their records (after the 14 day free trial which you don't have to sign up for). I have all my data stored on ancestry.com but I source data from all over the place. Data sources are different for each country so it is quite unusual to find everything on one site (unless your family have only ever been in one country). If you go to cyndislist.com you can get some specific sites for each country. There are also general country sites such as genuki.org.uk for UK and Ireland.
3. before you jump into playing on line, go to the library, local genealogical society or local family history center and learn something about genealogical research. If you really want to have reliable information, do your own research and document everything you find that leads you to believe your information is correct. HItting Ancestry.com or any or the other sites with pedigree charts (trees) will give you a bunch of information , most of which is undocumented and means nothing. Just because you find a Bill Cody, doesn't mean he is related to The William Cody as in Wild Bill, nor is every story about being related to Native Americans true. These are two of the current fads, being related to some well known historical character, or being Native American. Oh and if someone tells you that you are related to an "Indian Chief or Princess" run, there are a limited number of leaders, who had a limited number of children, if any and absolutely no "princesses", that is a European term. Most of all have fun with the research.
4. I have found that http://ancestry.co.uk are the best to use.Not cheap but if the site is used properly,reveals a huge amount of information.
5. Ideally, you want to get back about 100 years from family knowledge so that you can look for your ancestors in the 1911 census (the most recent one available). Otherwise you will have to work backwards from birth, marriage and death certificates. So talk to all your relatives, ask to see old photographs, records of birth, baptism, death and marriage, family Bibles, funeral service sheets, etc, and make copies. Find out where all your deceased relatives are buried, visit the graves, transcribe the information on the gravestones and take photographs. If you don't know where people are buried or are unable to visit the graves, you may find them on www.findagrave.com Too many of us family historians regret not questioning the oldies closely before they popped their clogs, so get all the names, dates and places you can and then check these against the official records. Then work back one generation at a time, using birth/baptism, death/burial and marriage records, and the census. The national indexes of birth, marriage and death up to the 1930s can be searched at http://freebmd.org.uk Civil registration was introduced in England and Wales on 1st July 1837, although registration of births was not compulsory until 1875 and it is estimated that up to 50% of births may not have been registered in the early years. Search more recent indexes at ancestry.co.uk, or on microfiche at your County Record Office, central library, or LDS Family History Centre. Some local registration offices are putting their indexes online at http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ When you have found the right entry in the index, the birth, marriage or death certificate costs £7 when ordered online from the General Register Office:- http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Registeringlifeevents/Familyhistoryandresearch/Birthmarriageanddeathcertificates/DG_175628 The census returns for England and Wales from 1841 to 1911 are held at the National Archives at Kew, and the census images and transcriptions can be accessed via the links on their website:- http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census/default.htm?WT.hp=Census Only the 1881 census is available free online, all the others are on paid sites although it is free to search the indexes. Volunteers are transcribing the other censuses to make them freely available and this site has completed some counties for some years www.freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl On the free LDS site you can search the 1881 census, and the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which is a large collection of extracts from parish registers. Many more records can be searched on microfilm or fiche at your local LDS Family History Centre - find out where the nearest one is from their website. You can also download the family history program Personal Ancestral File (PAF) for free. http://www.familysearch.org Before 1837, the only records of the main life events of our ancestors will be found in the parish registers of baptism, marriage and burial. Churches still keep these registers but usually deposit the old ones for safekeeping with the County Record Office where they can be searched on microfilm/fiche. These two free sites are in process of putting parish registers online:- http://onlineparishclerks.org.uk/ and http://www.freereg.org.uk You might like to search the free World Connect project to see if anyone has already done research on your ancestors. View these trees with caution as much of the 'research' is suspect and errors are rife - verify anything you find online by consulting the original records before incorporating the data into your family tree:- http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ If you want more, these are directories of genealogical resources with links to websites, some of which will be free:- http://www.genuki.org.uk/ http://www.cyndislist.com/ www.worldgenweb.com Genuki has a page for each county where you can locate the County Record Office where the parish records will be held, and other resources for that county.