'Cheap & Free Ways to Trace Your Ancestry'

bargainhunterss

Resurrecting this thread.....

I'm about to start seriously looking at my family history after a discussion at a family gathering over Christmas. I have information my Grandad collated before he died on my mum's maternal family tree (back to C16th!!). Unfortunately, he's not here to ask how he did it, so I'm venturing out on my own.

Luckily I still live in my family and birth county, which will hopefully make it easier to track down records. I have looked on a couple of sites (FreeBMD etc.), and they seem to only hold record lists rather than more specific information. I am worried this is going to become an expensive hobby, paying for certificates etc. If I go to my county records office, will I be able to look at certificates for free?

TIA!

Norman-B

Good luck with your searching.

Mojisola

bargainhunterss wrote: »

Luckily I still live in my family and birth county, which will hopefully make it easier to track down records. I have looked on a couple of sites (FreeBMD etc.), and they seem to only hold record lists rather than more specific information. I am worried this is going to become an expensive hobby, paying for certificates etc. If I go to my county records office, will I be able to look at certificates for free?

Many libraries have a subscription to Ancestry so you can give that a go and see what info you can gather.

Both Ancestry and Find My Past have offers like 'free for a month' so watch out for those.

Find out where your local archives are - you should be able to see many of the parish records and lots of other useful research material there.

Also check out RootsChat - free site with lots of helpful people who are happy to guide a beginner.

Grumpelstiltskin

I second Rootschat, a brilliant free site.

This is the link to the Lancashire forums. ( I am guessing Lancashire from your address )

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/lancashire/

greyfox

bargainhunterss wrote: »

I am worried this is going to become an expensive hobby, paying for certificates etc. If I go to my county records office, will I be able to look at certificates for free?

TIA!

I'm afraid there's no way of seeing Register Office birth, marriage, death certificates for free. They only began in 1837, too. However, you may be lucky & find the Parish Records of baptism, marriage or burial, & these go back much further. Quite a few of these are online & on Findmypast and/or Ancestry (it varies from county to county).

If you enjoy solving puzzles it can be a fascinating hobby but I should warn you that it can become obsessive!

Good Luck!

Mojisola

greyfox wrote: »

I'm afraid there's no way of seeing Register Office birth, marriage, death certificates for free. They only began in 1837, too. However, you may be lucky & find the Parish Records of baptism, marriage or burial, & these go back much further. Quite a few of these are online & on Findmypast and/or Ancestry (it varies from county to county).

If you enjoy solving puzzles it can be a fascinating hobby but I should warn you that it can become obsessive!

bargainhunterss - The information on the certificates is a copy of what's in the Parish Records so, if can find your relatives in the PR, you don't need to pay for certs. You sometimes get little notes written in the margins of the PRs that don't get put on the certs which can add colour to the history - but those usually refer to the vicar's views of his less conventional parishioners.

I agree that it's an incredibility addictive hobby.

fitnessguy1

i want to search my ancestry back a few hundred years. would this be possible online? if not, where would i need to go to find out?

Mojisola

fitnessguy1 wrote: »

i want to search my ancestry back a few hundred years. would this be possible online? if not, where would i need to go to find out?

There is an online paper trail back to the 1841 census and, before that, parish records for births, marriages and deaths.

If you can't get back to the 1911 census through personal knowledge of your family, you may have to buy BMD certificates to make sure you're following the right family line or travel to the areas they lived in to search records in the local archives.

Grumpelstiltskin

fitnessguy1 wrote: »

i want to search my ancestry back a few hundred years. would this be possible online? if not, where would i need to go to find out?

A lot depends on which country they were living in.

England and Wales records are different from Scotland and again Ireland is different.

You cannot do it accurately without spending money.

Whatever you do do not copy someone else's research without checking it first, there are fantasists who put their family trees online when they are “convinced” they can prove their family back to Adam and Eve.

bargainhunterss

Thanks everyone for the advice!