'Cheap & Free Ways to Trace Your Ancestry'

NEH

RAS wrote: »

Hi

You can do quite a lot of family history at very little cost, if you can access libaries near where your family come from. It rather depends on the area but the central library in my local area has the census records for the whole county, St Catherine's (BMD) Index and parish records (baptisms, marriages and burials) for the district. The one near work has all the parish records I need plus local census records and St Catherines index.

All my family have moved around a lot including me.....It's a very complicated family history covering from Devon in the south to the Borders of Scotland in the North.

Just found out i can't use Genes Reunited anyway as i don't know all the dates of birth and as for knowing where they were born i have no idea of some of my great grandparents and it doesn't let you save them without, going to try ancestry.co.uk which doesn't seem to need as much detail for now.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

RAS

Can you access the St Catherines Register anywhere? If your library service have a family history library anywhere localish, because this covers the whole of England and Wales for births deaths and marriages.

It does depend how common your family names are and whether you have full first names for your grandparents. I was given the wrong date of birth, the wrong location and the wrong name for the father and still found my grandmother quickly, despite her having a common surname.

If you know someone died in the last forty years, their date of birth is listed next to their name in the register of deaths.

That was one of the few certificates that I had to buy.

So go from what you know, verify it and then when you get to 1911, you can use the census data.

Bronnie

NEH wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place...apologies if it isn't...

I am interested in finding about my family history however we don't have the money right now to investigate it...

Anyway my husband recommended Genes reunited so that I could put all the bits I do know into a family tree and it isn't scribbled in a notebook that way.

I have one silly question though, my husband has put me in his family tree under my maiden name yet when i do mine Genes Reunited puts me under my married name. My husband says that i should put it back to my maiden name is this right?

Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to identify yourself on a fairly public family tree ....can be too much personal info in a public domain.
Better to describe yourself as "Living Relative" and your children in the same way. It is against the rules of Genes Reunited to add the name of any other living person to your tree without their express permission! They should just be identified as "Living Relative" or else omitted.

HTH

Grumpelstiltskin

Please as already been said do not put any details of living people on any website ie. Genesreunited.

Also don't use Genes to access any census and BMD information as their charges are over the top.

What you need to know is that the system for getting hold of BMD certificates is different in Scotland to England and Wales.

To access BMD information for Scotland you need Scotlandspeople website. It is pay to view but you can download certificates something you can't do for England and Wales, you have to buy paper copies of them.

The golden rule is to start with yourself ( or your husband) and work backwards.

You must see certificates as you go along, what you have always been told by family members is not always true.

There is a lot of information available to view free online and many libraries have free access to Ancestry library edition.

Join free forums such as Rootschat.
http://www.rootschat.com/

The BBC also have a family history message board which is free to use.

Don't go spending a lot of money until you know what you are doing, you can waste money that way.

Oh and one final warning about Genesreunited, beware of name collectors. You will get messages such as 'can I see your tree' with no indication as to how you are connected. Chances are you aren't connected but you have a John Green in your tree born in London in 1900, they have a John Green born in Glasgow in 1850 but that's enough for them to grab your tree and add it to theres.

scottish_lassy

I would echo the rootschat forum as they are very helpful. Two others I use before I think of paying for anything are
http://www.freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl and
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=igi/search_IGI.asp&clear_form=true always putting in a 20 year range means you'll catch all there is in the database.

Another useful site is http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm

all of the above are free. My starting point was the cemetery in my grandparents birth village - hint, take a camera rather than having to note any stones of interest!

SL

RAS

scottish_lassy wrote: »

My starting point was the cemetery in my grandparents birth village - hint, take a camera rather than having to note any stones of interest!

SL

or video it, but be warned, the names on the stones do not always relate to the bodies inthe ground!

I had one daughter buried in grave A but listed on Grave B and a grandchild, unrecorded on the stones in one of the graves.

scottish_lassy

'....a grandchild, unrecorded on the stones in one of the graves. '



OOOhhhh, how did you find out the grandchild was in the grave???!

SL

Grumpelstiltskin

It has been known when people get a list of occupants of a burial plot that a complete stranger has been buried in the grave.

You have to be prepared for the unexpected when you do your family history research.

To the OP don't believe the myth that in Victorian times everyone was prim and proper. You will find illegitimate births somewhere along the line

RAS

scottish_lassy wrote: »

'....a grandchild, unrecorded on the stones in one of the graves. '



OOOhhhh, how did you find out the grandchild was in the grave???!

SL

From the burial records which had been held by one local family since about 1850. They were eventually persuaded to let someone photocopy them.

RAS

Grumpelstiltskin wrote: »

You have to be prepared for the unexpected when you do your family history research.

To the OP don't believe the myth that in Victorian times everyone was prim and proper. You will find illegitimate births somewhere along the line

As a rule if the first birth is more than 9 months after the marriage, I start looking for children born prior to the marriage.

The ones that threw me were the couple who baptised three children at the Methodists in a job lot in their married names. I made the mistake of assuming that the marriage preceded the birth of the first child.

Err no - they had the first two outside marriage and only married just before the third was born, shortly after the women had her 21st birthday.