Step 1: Talk to relatives.

The first thing that you will need to do is establish what is known. Talk to relatives, especially older ones who can provide names, perhaps dates, places and back stories for people in your family. You could record everything they have to tell you on audio tape or video, but at the very least, write it down. If possible, write down family connections in the form of a pedigree chart. Write down the details of the most recent generation along the bottom of a large sheet of paper. Draw a line up to the parents and enter their details, then do the same again; the further back you go, the higher up the sheet their details will appear. And don't forget to make a note of where you obtained each piece of information. Much of genealogy can be vague and the more firm evidence can you account for, the better.

Step 2: Check the attic.

And if you don't have an attic, check the cupboards, check shelves, look in boxes, search out old photos, letters, invitations, anything where you might find details about family members and events. Again, write it all down with a note of where you found the information. Keep as much of the evidence and all your written notes together in a safe place. There is nothing worse than having done lots of research, only to forget where you put half of it (believe me, I known what I'm talking about). Do not ignore anything. A certificate for 25 metres swimming, an old christening invitation, even a newspaper clipping about a family birth can provide information that is not only interesting, but may prove useful later on. For example, if you don't know when that granddaughter was born, you may find that certificate records her 25 metre swim in 1967, aged 14. Take away 14 from 1967 and you can be pretty certain she was born in 1953 / 54.

Step 3: B, M & D Certificates.

The Family History Centre in Myddleton Street, London, is home to all Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates for every British national since 1837. Its indexes are available for searching (you may find your local record office also has copies for your locality). The indexes are colour-coded and divided. Red volumes are for Birth Certificates, black for Deaths, and green for Marriages. They are free to look through and will provide you with the basic information you need to order copies of the certificates. However, the more information you have to begin with, the better.

For Births, all you really need are a full name, the district (usually the parish) that they were born in and a rough idea of the date. Indexes are divided into quarters of a year with the alphabet broken down into sections. So if you were looking for the birth of Doreen Flowers born in Mitford, about March, 1909, then you would have to look in a volume marked something like E-K for the March quarter of1909. The March quarter volume would contain all births of people with surnames beginning with E to K born in January, February or March of 1909. Look up the name Flowers, carefully search down the list and look for a Doreen born in Mitford. Pick up a Birth certificate application form and fill in all the details you know of along with the volume and reference number given alongside the entry. Place your order, pay your money and in a short time, you should receive a copy of her Birth Certificate. Of course, in some cases, it is possible that there was more than one person with that name born in the same district, for example, James Cook is very common. In this instance, you would have to decide whether to order more than one certificate or wait until you can specify more certain information. Searches can be made for matches to your criteria as part of the ordering service however so always take advantage of this service if you need to.

Death Certificate indexes can be searched in much the same way. Marriage indexes are a little trickier. You need to search for one half of the couple first in the same way as explained above. Once you have found, say, Ernest Todd, married at Luckham in 1869, you need to make a note of the reference number that is given. Next, you search for the other half, in this example, we'll call her Elizabeth Cooper. Searching the C volume, look up Cooper, run down the list for Elizabeth. Hopefully you will find she was married in Luckham too. If the reference number there matches the first, you have your married couple. If not, then you have found an unrelated Ernest Todd and Elizabeth Cooper (and believe me, this sort of thing happens more often than you might think).

Once you have a birth certificate, you can begin working out your next move. A Birth Certificate will contain the date and place of birth, the name of the child, the fathers name, his occupation, the name including maiden name of the mother, the signature and residence of the informant (usually a close family member, not always the mother or father), and when registered. Armed with the parents names including the mothers original name, you can reasonably expect to find a marriage certificate for the pair shortly before the birth - take note however; children are sometimes born out of wedlock and older families often had larger numbers of children, resulting in marriages taking place long before the birth of some of the children.

If you are starting back from a marriage certificate, the easiest thing to do is take the married persons age away from the year of the marriage. This should give you a rough estimate of when the father, whose name is provided on the marriage certificate, was married. In unison, birth and marriage certificates can act like stepping stones. Remember however that indexed records for B, M & D's only go back as far as 1837. After that, you will have to explore the area of Parish Records.

Step 4 Making Sense of the Census

With the information given on B, M & D Certificates, you should glean a fairly good idea of where a family was living at a particular moment in time. Using this, a fuller picture of the family can be sought by searching the Census Returns. Any letters, trade directories and other documents you have found may also provide this information.

Many family history societies and other organisations have collected Census Returns for their locality and you may find this held at local register offices. Record officers there will show you how to make your searches, sometimes from folio books, often and microfiche readers and more increasingly on PC.

Basically you need to know the city, town or village where the family was living. With cities, it is important you know the area or street in which they lived - this is less important with small towns and villages which can be searched more quickly. Once you have found it in the indexes, you need simply to search for the name of the family you are interested in. Bare in mind however that families of the same name often lived in close proximity so check to make sure you find the right one. Once you have, you can place your order for a copy of the Census Return. Censuses for different years (every year since 1841 except 1941) contain varying amounts of information. Because of privacy laws, you can only search Census Returns that are a hundred years of older (for example, by 2001, the returns for 1901 will become available for searching).

You generally find a list of family members in descending order or age. The householder first, along with sex, age, occupation and place of birth. Next the wife if she isn't the householder, then the children, and finally, details of any lodgers or servants, or anybody who happened to be in the house at the time the census was taken. This can help you find family members like brothers and sisters that you otherwise wouldn't have known about. Do not ignore other families sharing the same surname - they may well be related. For example, if you have George and Edward Duggan, the heads of different households aged 24 and 22 respectively, then search for the Census Returns of ten years previously. You may well find them living in the same household with their parents but now aged 14 and 12.

One quick word of warning though - the census enumerators didn't always record information accurately, that is, the spelt the way things sounded. The name Duggan may have been recorded as Dugan, Dugon, Duggen or any other alternatives you can think of. If ages weren't known ( they didn't always celebrate birthdays the way we do today), the term "full age" may have been used. This simply meant they were over the age of 18 or 21, though how much older you won't know.

Where next?

This brief guide has given you a few ideas on how to begin rooting about into your family' past. There are other avenues you can explore and numerous other repositories such as Will and Testaments that you can search. Like a giant jigsaw, its an endless quest to fill in the gaps and no matter how far you go, there will always be pieces missing. It is worth joining a local family history society to help maintain enthusiasm during the times of drought which will be often. You could always subscribe to a magazine which can provide more thorough background information on aspects of genealogy and social history. And there are thousands of web sites dedicated to different areas of family history research, including sites relating to particular names.