Family tree help please.

Goldiegirl

I use Ancestry, I know it's expensive, but it has been very helpful.

I also found the Mormon's site https://www.familysearch.org very useful

tizerbelle

On the free to access sites, I would recommend the Online Parish Clerks for the county you are interested in e.g. google "online parish clerk" or "online parish clerk lancashire" for example - this is the lancashire one and it's great!!. These are volunteer produced transcripts of actual parish registers and can provide loads of information plus they go back further than 1837 when civil registration began. It depends on how active your county's OPC is as to the quantity of records available.

Also there are Local BMD sites (http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/ gives links to them all) which again can provide more information than the FreeBMD site - often will list the actual church a ceremony was performed in and the Registration Sub-District whereas FreeBMD just gives the Registration District. Again the availability of records depends on how active the volunteers are.

Melonade

Wow, thanks for all the replies

I'm going to stick with the free sites for now and see how far I can get before I get a subscription. But I'll keep my eyes open for the 14 day trials too.

I'm finding it really interesting, mainly my OH's fathers side. So will have to quiz OH's mum to see if she knows anything that can confirm what I think I've found

tizerbelle, I'll check out the parish website too, the Lancashire link is exactly the area I'm looking for, Thankyou

Linda32

Hi, I use The Genealogist which I find quite good. Have a search for discount codes, I got my subscription quite cheap.

It can be addictive

duchy

megan01 wrote: »

This is random, and sorry if I am insulting your intelligence! But have you tried finding your boyfriend on the birth index, his mums maiden name should be on there? And then if you try search her maiden name with his dads name you should find their marriage on the marriage index which is often quite easy to narrow it down, and then that should tell you her full name, and then you can go on 192 dot com and search her full name and see if there are decent results on there. Just wanted to chime in, I'm obsessed with ancestry!

All done ....quite a lengthy job as there wasn't a marriage to his father .....and a very very common maiden name made her subsequent marriages plural tricky to find. We actually already had all the details of parents/siblings etc-Social services were a incredibly helpful starting point and even now we've found her and met her the adoption social worker has stayed in touch and continues to offer support (my boyfriend is in his fifties I'm amazed they support but they do even though for now it's all good if a little overwhelming).

The Lithuanian side of my family remain a challenge however

dannny_2

Ancestry is FULL of chinese whispers, and blatantly incorrect information posted by users. ALWAYS check information you get from there. Its a useful tool for certain things, but taking things as gospel just because someone else has said it is a waste of time.

Mojisola

dannny wrote: »

Ancestry is FULL of chinese whispers, and blatantly incorrect information posted by users. ALWAYS check information you get from there. Its a useful tool for certain things, but taking things as gospel just because someone else has said it is a waste of time.

As you say, it's important that new users don't confuse the information that Ancestry provides with the stuff that ancestry members put on their own family trees. There are some wildly inaccurate personal trees on the members' side.