Your Family History

We are an ordinary British family who were surprised at the ease with which we could trace our ancestors back to the 1700's. The journey has been fascinating and full of surprises. We are Genealogy novices but know that more surprises await.

The internet has made family history research accessible to most with a wealth of resources available. The important thing is to just make a start and then to keep good records as you proceed. Begin by talking to family members about their memories, build a picture of your parents and grandparents lives. Attempt a family tree and then fill in the gaps. Assemble copies of family documents; birth certificates, marriage records, family photographs and so on. Was your great grandfather a military man, were your ancestors richer or poorer than you, are there any dark secrets ?

Once you have gathered immediate family memories you may want to visit your local family history group or to join one of the many internet based genealogy services. When getting started we found two internet resources particularly useful; the ancestry site and the Cyndi's list site. A short duration trial membership of the the ancestry.co.uk website (there are equivalent versions of the site in other countries) swiftly gave us access to birth, marriage and death records. Similarly when faced with 'how do I find out about' questions we found the enormous list of resources collated at the Cyndi's List Website to be invaluable.

For our record keeping we used the freely available 'Personal Ancestral File' software that can be downloaded from the Familysearch website. It's not the prettiest piece of software but it's idiot proof and very reliable. Finally, we created this web site from the above records using the free and easy to use Google Sites service.