Family Trees

lynseydee

I am interested in tracing my family tree and was wondering whether anyone had done this and if so the best sites to use. I have been looking at all the websites to do with family trees but the ones I have found all require you to pay a subscription and I was wondering whether there were any where you could find out the information for free (true moneysaving style). Also where is the best place to start with doing a family tree?

Sorry meant to say I don't know if this is the right board to be posting on so please feel free to move it if necessary.

Astaroth

The misses has done hers.... as soon as you can get back to 1901 it becomes a hell of a lot easier because you then get the online census from the likes of ancestry.co.uk who do free trials.

there is also a lot of free/ cheap software out there too but it depends very much on how you like to present the data. The misses likes seeing a big sprawling tree but wants to be able to add a lot of data behind the scenes so as there doesnt seem to be any programs that do both I bought a cheap program that did the giant tree diagram and created her a wee website that holds all the other info she wanted

Other than that then you have the joys of parish records - some people have put them online but as you are often reading very old documents with their style of handwriting some of the transcriptions are fairly poor but you can normally view them free of charge at where they are currently kept

For us the website has been great.... when it went up it went back to something like 1708 with about 100 people but with others finding the site it now goes back to 1560s and over 500 people - of cause the difficult is validating other peoples findings as some are very strict on evidence others are much more lax

lynseydee

Astaroth, did you find out any information free for before 1901 or did you have to wait until you got back to then to get all the free information. I found one website with parish information on but I had to pay subscription on that too. Want to try and do it as cheaply as possible as I don't have any spare cash to use for paying subscriptions at the moment.

Do you know the names of free programs I could get hold of? Mind you hubby is a bit funny with programs on the PC due to viruses etc so I'm not sure if he would let me put programs he's not familar of on there.

hardpressed

I took out a free trial with Ancestry, you have to give your card details but they don't take the money till the free trial is up, just remember to cancel a couple of days before it runs out. I did it when it coincided with a week off work so that I had plenty off free time to look up the census etc. Found out a lot of info. Well worth doing, I might try and see if I can get another free trial, has anyone done that? The LDS is a free site which is good but not always 100% accurate, you need to double check anything you find on there.

Astaroth

For before 1901 I used the free trial at ancestry.co.uk and then the parish records - thankfully the group that are doing the transcriptions for the ones we need arent charging but then they arent that accurate.

Post 1901 is much more difficult as records are still private but thankfully the misses knew her history well enough to get back before then

http://www.genopro.com is the program the misses uses and with the weak dollar it is currently £25 but there is a free trial and it does export to the universal family history format so ultimately you could keep switching between different companies free trial software.

november

For programs to record your information http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/ is free (standard edition).

Free BDM lets you search for births, deaths and marriages http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/

For free advice and assistance (and possibly more ideas) I highly recommend joining the Rootschat discussion board http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php

halloweenqueen_2

www.familysearch.org
www.freeBMD.org.uk

lynseydee

Thanks for everyones replies. I will try and get myself sorted to make a start. Can I start with my dad or should I start with my grandparents?

Astaroth

It is up to you and what you want to do with it. Normal thing would be to start with yourself and go up (and down if you already have kids). Some people who are publishing on the web however choose not to include anyone who is alive or only start from grandparents back etc

lynseydee

Thanks Astorath, I think I will start with my dad then as hopefully it might make things easier with finding out more details to do with my grandparents and so on.

Tomthumb

Hi, I've done mine and my husbands tree. I still have a subsription to ancestry and I haven't used it for a while so if anyone needs anything looked up just pm me I'd be happy to help. Jen