Kick Start Your Family History Research With This 10-Point Plan

Whether you always wanted to build your family tree but never found the time, or started one and got stuck, you might find something here to take your research forward. And if you’ve never been interested in the idea…think again!

1) Getting the Basics Right

You’ll need to decide which ‘side’ of your family you’re going to investigate: your father’s or your mother’s. This will save on confusion further down the line. However, if you hit a brick wall, as they’re called in family history circles, you can always swap and start on the other side further down the line. Keep them separate is all I’d say.

Theoretically you don’t need to subscribe to one of the many digital platforms to build your tree, you could just use paper and pen. However, pragmatically, it makes a lot more sense to make the outlay of a subscription. Perhaps it could be a gift? For Christmas, maybe? Prices vary and subscriptions can be annual or month to month. If you let your subscription lapse, you can still see what you’ve achieved in your research.

So, which platform to use? Well, I’ve used most of them over the years and I like Ancestry the best. My sister on the other hand prefers FindMyPast. I know fellow researchers who swear by Geneanet and it has some good features. The truth is that each platform has different strengths and weaknesses, but subscribing to more than one is expensive! Your County Record Office will have computers where you can search these and other platforms for free - that may be a convenient and cheaper solution for you, and they have archivists on hand to help.

There are free websites you can use, and I’ll come to them in (2) below, but in my experience they are no match for the paid-for equivalents, certainly in terms of building your tree. Where searching for records is concerned that’s another matter - see below.

Whatever you decide about a digital platform, keep a pen and paper to hand. I keep hand-written notes as I go along online so that I can remember hunches I’ve had, or leads that are inconclusive, but might bear fruit later. Sometimes I’ve gone back to these notes later and it’s led to a break-through.

By now I have a concertina file, organised by surnames, where I keep and occasionally re-visit all my scribbles.

2) Know Your Key Resources

Dates, dates, dates - that’s what it’s all about. Time and again I would ask my partner, “If I’m 36 in 1871, when was I born?” just as an example. You have to brush up your skills of subtraction, because in family history we are always working backwards.

So, resources with dates are the most important ones for you - to begin with at least. Records of births, marriages and deaths are the ‘holy trinity’ of genealogy. From September 1837 onwards there are certificates available for these which you can search for free here: https://www.freebmd.org.uk/ This won’t give you exact dates - the year is divided into quarters. If you want the exact date you need to order (and pay for) the relevant certificate here: https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp

If you’re just beginning, this probably isn’t too important, for now.

Before that date, we rely on parish registers which can be searched for free here: https://www.freereg.org.uk/

and sometimes go back as far as the mid-1500s. Each county also holds its own parish records and most of these have now been digitised, so you don’t need to visit the record office in person, just search the website for the local authority in question.

3) The ‘Rule of Thumb’ and The Census

You will find the ‘rule of thumb’ principle useful: generally a person will get married in their 20s and start having children a year or so after that, because there was no birth control. We might reasonably expect them to live until they are about 70 - the classic ‘three score years and ten’ spoken of in the Bible. Of course, there will be frequent exceptions to this for all sorts of reasons, but when you are starting out there is such a mass of material that the ‘rule of thumb’ can at least narrow things down a bit.

The next most important resource in my opinion is the census return. The first UK census was taken in 1841. The census is a record of all the inhabitants residing in households on a specific night of the year. At first ages were rounded up and down, so only provide a rough approximation but, as the census continued to be taken every ten years it evolved into a more sophisticated and accurate record.

From it we can learn the size of families and the predominant occupations in communities. We can see when individuals were forced into the workhouse or incarcerated in prison. By 1911 we can see how many rooms there were in each house, a good indicator of economic prosperity, or not.

The beauty of the census is that you can see families growing and changing every ten years at a glance. If you are missing a particular record e.g. a death date, the census can help. If the person in question is listed in 1861, but not in 1871, they either died or moved. You are narrowing it down and this is the ‘rule of thumb’ principle in action.

4)‘How Far Back Have You Got?’

This is a common question that gets asked once people start researching their family history, as though it is some kind of race into the dim and distant past. It’s tempting to buy into it and you may find it relatively easy to trace at least one branch of your family tree back through the generations. Farmers, obviously, tended to stay in the same place because of the land they owned and this can be a great help. An unusual surname - if it is spelled consistently - can pay dividends.

The obverse also applies: if you have a number of John Smiths, you are likely to struggle. Families that became transient, probably in pursuit of more secure employment or better wages, are more difficult to track. Illegitimacy closes the paternal line down completely, except in the unlikely event that the father was named on the birth certificate.

There is a sort of satisfaction in getting back to the Elizabethan period, but, beyond that, unless you have aristocratic connections, you will probably reach a dead end.

Ultimately, I found the joy of the process was not in how far back I had got, but rather in the wealth of information I was able to uncover about my individual relatives.

If you get back to your great-grandparents - that’s three generations - then you might decide that you want to look at some of them more closely using a wider range of resources, rather than simply racing back to the year dot!

5) Share Nicely

So we are advised to do as children by our parents and the same applies with family history research. The platforms discussed in (1) offer the opportunity to share your discoveries with any other subscriber to the platform. In the early days you will gain a great deal from this, as other people will be farther ahead in their research than you.

Even so, you do need to be cautious because their research may not be as good as yours and assuming their information is accurate, without checking yourself, could send you up a blind alley. I will say more about this in (4) below.

The beauty of this process is that you can gain access to documents you would never be able to otherwise. Families often keep photographs, for example, or there might be inscriptions of birth dates in the fly leaf of a family Bible. Without this sharing facility you would have zero chance of accessing these resources unless they were already in your possession.

I will give you an example from my own research to illustrate the pros and cons of sharing.

The heroine of my historical biography is my great grand-aunt, Christiana Whitfield. I had established that she had two illegitimate children in her teens, Anthony Atkinson Whitfield (1887) and Irene Whitfield (1888) using free sites which allowed me to search for birth records.

On someone else’s family tree it said that Christiana had been in domestic service when Anthony was born. It also said that Irene was born in a workhouse in Carlisle. How did they know this? I was puzzled.

The answer lay in purchasing the birth certificates. Once I had done so, the details were confirmed. I could have just taken it on trust, for it was correct, but as a researcher, if cash allows, we want to find out for ourselves and the certificates were not shared on the tree - my point being, the sharing process isn’t necessarily fool-proof!

Meanwhile, that same family tree claimed that the first wife of Christiana’s father was a woman named Hannah Coulson. The dates seemed to fit and it looked plausible, but it was wrong. John Whitfield’s wife was a woman named Hannah Herron.

I assumed on the ‘rule of thumb’ principle that John married Hannah before they had children, but I couldn’t find a marriage record that fit. After many hours of fruitless searching I found that, when John married his Hannah, the groom’s surname was recorded as Whitefield rather than Whitfield. The maiden name of the bride was recorded as Herron, not Coulson. And more to the point, they already had three children together before they wed!

So sharing is great and will take you a long way, but you need to keep your wits about you, because, in the end, it’s only your own research that you can truly rely on.

6) The Power of Triangulation

It’s tempting, when you are gifted a break-through by the sharing process, detailed above, to think that you have got it made. This family research malarkey is a piece of cake, isn’t it?

Well, no, it isn’t.

I can’t remember how many times I got carried away, thinking I was on to something amazing, only to have my hopes dashed and to be sent back to the genealogical drawing-board. It is for this reason that triangulation is so important.

To explain this briefly, one record might not be enough to substantiate what you believe to be true. You need another piece of evidence, or even two, to be fully confident that you are on the right track. Otherwise, you can end up following a false trail that could set you back.

Christiana Whitfield’s third baby - the first legitimate birth - was William Christian I’Anson in 1890 in Stockton-on-Tees. On the face of it this looks dodgy. She hails from Crook in the north west of County Durham, miles from Stockton in the days when such distances were real obstacles to such contact.

But, lo-and-behold, there is a marriage certificate that confirms Christiana Whitfield marrying William I’Anson in June 1889. The ‘rule of thumb’ principle then happily applies.

That’s the process of triangulation in action!

In 1892 a daughter, Christina, is born to the couple in Leeds. Leeds? This looks suspect…William is a police constable in Stockton, isn’t he…?

This time newspapers come to the rescue. An advert is placed by William I’Anson for a general servant at The Grapes, Bramley near Leeds. The successful candidate must be ‘Used to children’ it states.

The child-care will be taken care of and the couple are in the pub trade.

That second record, the newspaper advert, brief as it is, confirms I’m on the right track.

7) Stop Press!

Newspapers are brilliant resources for researching family history, once you have established the basics. Again, they’d only be free if you were working in the record office or perhaps an academic library, but you can pay as you go, literally one search at a time if necessary. Here is the link: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

The search engines are so powerful that if you put a name in with even a wide date range it will produce the articles and notices that contain the name. If the name is unusual, like the heroine of my novel, Christiana Maydwell, then so much the better.

In the past births, marriages and deaths were reported in the newspaper for a small charge. Beyond that you were more likely to end up in the news if you had done something wrong, for example, made a court appearance. When Christiana’s divorce came to trial at the High Court of Justice in London in 1910 it made headline news, particularly in Birmingham where they lived as a married couple, and in New Zealand, where she eloped with her lover.

On the other hand, all sorts of events were reported in local papers, so it might be a sporting achievement that got your name in the paper, winning a prize of some sort, attending an illustrious gathering…the possibilities are endless. Chrissie’s son, Tony, bred prize beef cattle, which was reported in the press, and her grandson, Leonard, appeared as a champion cyclist in his local area. Or your relative might have placed an advert, like William I’Anson did - see (6) above.

The beauty of this is that it really starts to personalise the individual you are researching. You can pin them to a place and time very specifically and start to gain a picture of them. This was very important to me when I wanted to turn my research into a novel.

8) R.I.P.

The idea of walking around a graveyard looking for a specific memorial might strike you as morbid or bizarre, but gravestones are another important resource in family research. They are also generally beautiful, peaceful places so pick a nice day and you could do worse for an afternoon outing, rounded off with a pot of tea and a scone!

If the relative you are seeking is not close to where you live, or possibly even on the other side of the world, all is not lost, thanks to the platform Find A Grave. By searching this website: https://findagrave.com you can see a memorial for a relative, if there is one and it has been photographed - and it’s free!

As an aside, you can also volunteer to photograph and post memorials in your local area for the benefit of others. A good way to give a little bit back and, according to my daughter, ‘just the right level of cookie’!

So, what do gravestones tell us that is different from other resources? There are a few points to consider here. Viewing them is free and gives you an exact death - and birth date, which might not otherwise have had - useful for triangulation. You might learn unexpected things from who is buried with them, for example a child, or, more usually a spouse. The inscriptions are sometimes quite distinctive too, revealing the esteem in which the relative was held or how greatly they are mourned. Ian Maydwell is buried with his mother, Christiana - they were devoted to one another in life and also, apparently, in death!

Alternatively, you might be able to confirm the burial plot but find that there is no memorial - or not anymore. This might just be a case of the effects of time and weather meaning the stone was unsafe and had to be removed. Or it may be that a memorial was never commissioned, leaving a bare plot.

Let’s take Tony, the breeder of prize beef cattle, mentioned in (7) above. Tony was a bachelor, a loner and became something of a recluse. He died in a hut on his farm in Australia and wasn’t found for five days - I know this because it was reported in the papers. He didn’t make a will, and so, despite the fact that he had the asset of the farm and the proceeds of the prize cattle, he was buried in an unmarked grave. His younger brother came forward as his closest relative and inherited everything, but didn’t pay for a memorial, which I find rather sad.

9) I Have Hereunto Set My Hand

Whilst we are on the subject of death, wills deserve a special mention, because they are such fascinating documents, which give a unique insight into the thinking of the person who makes the will. The will might have been written years before death, or days before it, depending on the circumstances.

In the UK wills are not too difficult to get hold of as there is a government website where a copy can be purchased for a small charge. Here is the link: https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/

You will need to know the date of death and the place where the death was registered. The genealogy sites will help you find this out.

A different system applies to older wills, pre-1858, which alters between local authority areas. In County Durham, for example, these wills are a special collection of the Durham University archive and you can, by arrangement, attend in person to view a transcript of wills dating back several centuries.

Wills tell us exactly what property a person owned at the point that the will was made. In my family we had lots of farmers so they had land to bequeath, which they sometimes doled out to more than one person by naming individual fields! Next most important to land is money and, again, this can be distributed entirely according to the preference of the will-maker, known as the testator. Wills don’t necessarily reward all family members equally.

I will use John Whitfield as an example, Christiana’s father. He died of influenza and pneumonia aged 65 in 1892 and he had a range of assets to bequeath and a number of beneficiaries. John had five children with his first wife, four of whom survived into adulthood and then there were two children from his second marriage, one of whom was my Chrissie.

The farm is bequeathed to the two sons, Ralph and Jack. Two of the sisters receive the cottages they already live in on the farm and a shared garden. His widow receives twelve cottages that John owned, the rents associated with them providing her with an income. But if his wife remarries the cottages go to Chrissie. And, Christiana is the only child upon whom her father settles an annuity: £20 a year for the rest of her life. Not a fortune, but certainly not to be sniffed at. The cash residue from the estate is then shared between the other children.

I was able to read - and eventually write - a great deal into this division of the spoils. It is irresistible to speculate on the whys and wherefores of the choices John made and it is this, more than anything, that makes wills such a rewarding resource.

10) Smash Some Brick Walls

Sooner or later you will get stuck. So stuck, that you will feel like there is nothing more to be done. And you might be right - there is such a thing as a dead end! However, that is probably only true in a minority of instances.

So, what to do? You could hire a professional or so-called ‘expert’ genealogist, though I doubt they come cheap. You could give up, but there’s no way that I’d advocate that. Or I would recommend that you call on www.rootschat.com

This platform is a genealogical ghost-buster!

A world-wide and free forum, rootschat seeks to solve family history problems based on local knowledge or some very expert researchers, who are prepared to share their considerable skills for simply a fulsome ‘thank you’.

There were two scenarios in my own family research where, without rootschat, I’d have considered myself well and truly up a gum tree.

Both concerned relatives in Australia, where I wasn’t so familiar with the recording systems, so that element of local knowledge proved crucial.

A false name proved to be the problem in one case, and a liaison without a marriage was the problem in the second.

If only people would ‘play by the rules’, I thought to myself, with some exasperation. But, of course, sometimes they don’t, and then the thrill becomes to find out how they broke them, and even to conjecture why…hence my novel about Mrs Maydwell.

Happy searching!.