The best place to start your research into your family history is with your own details and family knowledge.
· Where were you born?
· When were you born?
· If you are married, when and where were you married?
· Can you get copies of your birth certificate?
· Can you get copies of you marriage certificate (if your married)
Once you have this information, you can get together similar information for your spouse, their parents, your parents and grandparents. Talk to your oldest living relatives and get as much information from them as you can. Try to check the authenticity of this information by asking for birth, marriage and death certificates. A family rumour or the wrong detail can cause you wasted time later! Ask if anyone else has done ant research at any time in the past, it could save you a lot of work. Keep written records of your work or enter them onto a Family Tree Computer Programme. There are a number of them available to use. Remember to do regular backups though, as you don't want to loose all your work if you have a hard drive failure.
When you have as much information that you can gather from relatives, it is time to use the services of The Family Records Centre. If you wish to trace the record of your grandfathers birth, for example, but do not know when he was born, you will have to first search for the record of his marriage by searching backwards from date of birth of their eldest child. A certificate of his marriage will give your Grandfathers age and the name of his father. This will provide you with a starting point to trace his record of birth. When you have found his birth record that will give you names of his parents and his mothers maiden name. Using this process you can search for proceeding generations.
The Family Records Centre keeps records from 1st July 1837 only. Before this date records of births, christenings, marriages and deaths or burials where kept in Parish Registers of The Church of England. Most of these have now been housed in one location in the relevant county. Contact the local Council Offices for the county to find where you can search for them. For example parish records for BerkshireCounty are kept at The Berkshire Record Office. 9 Coley Avenue, Reading. Berkshire RG1 6AF. The International Genealogy Index ( IGI ) can be viewed at the FRC, County Records Offices, Family History Soc. and at your main library on CD-ROM or microfiche. Information on Census Details can be obtained from the FRC or your FHS. A persons first name, surname, place of birth and age can be found by searching under their known address at the time. Details of all persons residing at that dwelling will be given. These records are held from 1801 onwards at 10-year intervals. Recent census data is not available until it is 100 years old, so it will not be long before we can view the 1901 census.
If you wish to employ the services of a professional researcher to undertake any of the above mentioned work for you the contact the Association of Genealogists for a list of reputable researchers.
Nigel Matthews. Surrey. .
England. May 2000
Last update 16-May-2000
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nigelmatthews@matthewsfamilytree.co.uk
Copyright © Nigel Matthews UK 1997-2000
