How do you find out about your Brettle or Brettell ancestors? There are many free and paid for internet-based resources for anyone searching for their Brettle, or any other, ancestor for that matter. A simple web search may turn up many leads but after a while you may find it necessary and useful to look at some less obvious websites particularly those relating to the Black Country origins of the Brettles.
Listed below are some sites I have found especially useful, I hope that you find them similarly so, they are all free to use.
Perhaps the most useful site is one called Family Search provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), more colloquially known as the Mormons. Because of their particular beliefs in joining with family members in the afterlife (1) they dedicate a lot of effort to genealogy and have a very large database of information (2) relevant to those researching family history. To access it you have to create an account to use the information but it is important to note that you do not have to be a member of the church to access their records. Their site is large and complex as it serves all types of search worldwide but it is certainly worth time studying and using all the features of the site as it is the most comprehensive free site available.
Free UK Genealogy (3) provides free, online access to family history records. Its team of volunteers create transcriptions of public records from governmental sources, parish churches, and other similar institutions. As a charity it relies on volunteers and is funded through donations. It works through three sub sites:
(Just click on the box to follow the link to the relevant subsite for Births Marriages and Deaths, Census returns, or parish registers)
Free BMD covers births, marriages and death records derived from civic records. The recording of births, marriages and deaths started in 1837 and Free BMD contains index information for the period 1837-1983.
Free CEN is an online database of the 19th century UK census returns which provide the name, age, relationship to head of household, sex, occupation, parish and county of birth, medical disabilities and employment status of an individual. The first full national census was taken in 1841 and 10 yearly thereafter, the earlier censuses may be thin on information and the 1841 version may seem odd in that adults were required to round their ages down to the nearest 5 years. The 1911 census is particularly valuable in that the original census forms completed by the head of household are available rather than the abstract derived from them which was completed by the census enumerator. The census information in Free CEN is incomplete but you can get more idea of its coverage here (4). Note that the 1901 and 1911 censuses are not covered by Free CEN but may be available from one of the many "paid for" family history sites as is the exceptional 1939 census (strictly speaking the 1939 register) which was carried out for WWII state planning purposes. Generally there is an embargo on publishing information until 100 years has passed to protect the privacy of the living therefore the 1921 census has more recently become available from Find My Past (5) family history website for a fee. You will also find that details of entries in the 1939 register may be omitted depending on the age of the individual.
Free REG covers parish and nonconformist church registers of baptisms, marriages and burials. These non-civic registers go back as far as 1538 and are separate from the civil registrations which began in 1837 and therefore can take you further back in your ancestry than the civil BMD registers; again it is incomplete, although having 37 million records.
UKBMD (6) is a site which provides information and many links to websites which have online transcriptions of UK births, marriages, deaths and censuses as well as a wide range of other indexes and transcriptions for most UK counties such as parish records, wills and monumental inscriptions.
Dustydocs (7) provides links to free sources of UK parish records.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (8) provides information on tracing Commonwealth war dead and their resting places.
The British Newspaper Archives (9) can provide information if your ancestor appeared in the press; searching is free but you have to pay a fee to look at the details of an entry you have found in a past newspaper.
One name studies and information left on the message boards of genealogy sites by other family history researchers can provide valuable leads: one by Mary Brettell at rootsweb (10) is particularly useful as is the Brettle message thread at Ancestry.com (11)
Forums and message boards allow you to read information which has been deposited by others and also to post your own information, comments and replies to other family history researchers. You will normally have to register on a site to use it and replies are "public" to other site members but some have facilities for private communications with a specific member you want to talk to. You can search these by particular names and I have found the following sites of particular relevance to Brettle and Brettell searches:
With Geneanet (12) you can search for Brettle and Brettell family trees; many of the creators have contact details which are available via Geneanet, some are available to "free" users but many are available only to "premium i.e. paid for membership". You can receive email alerts from Geneanet when someone deposits new information on names of interest to you.
The RootsChat (13) site, after you have registered as a member, has the facility under its search tab to search its forums by name. You cannot contact existing contributers with the same name of interest privately but you can contribute publicly to the forum, add information or ask questions.
RootsWeb (14) has no registration requirement and has a useful collection of family trees, mailing lists and message boards.
Ancestry.co.uk (15) has a member connect network but you need to deposit a family tree at Ancestry to find another Ancestry member who might have information on a common ancestor. Ancestry message boards (16); click Help then Boards tabs from the main site header to access, is useful as you can search for message board threads on particular names and post questions or contribute to the message posts other have left.
Genealogy Forums UK (17) is a forum for family history enthusiasts with many posts on specific names. After having registered you can deposit posts or reply to posts on specific names. A large site with many relevant posts and an enthusiastic membership.
WikiTree (18) is a collaborative site for family history researchers, you do not need to register but can search by name which may put you in contact with others interested in the same name. After registering on the site you can collaborate or comment publicly on an entry or simply send a private message to the member who has contributed information to the name.
A site which may be of particular interest to those searching for Black Country Brettles and Brettells is BBC, Black Country Connections (19) which is hosted by TribalPages.com, (20) an organisation which is the home for 450,000 Family Tree Genealogy sites with over 80 million names and 2 million photographs. BCC is a very good source of tracing Black Country names and family trees as is Halesowen and Leicester Families (21) similarly hosted on TribalPages: just enter a name in the search box on these sites and see what comes up.
Two other sites which are particularly good for family trees are My Heritage (22) and Genes Reunited (23). Sites which host family trees can be useful to view other family trees who have Brettle or Brettell in them. You may then be able to find common ancestors. You can deposit your own family tree on an online site and let others view it. You can see then compare entries and communicate with other tree owners in a reciprocal way.
Two valuable sources of specific information on Brettle families (and many other Black Country families) are Black Country Connections (19) and Halesowen and Leicester Families (21).
Information from a number of parish registers in the Halesowen and Cradley Heath areas can be found here (22).
There is information on the Nottinghamshire branch of of the Brettle family on the Thurgarton History website (23)
When you have exhausted these you might want to wander around the very extensive Cyndi's List (24), a site which, to quote their words is:
a categorized & cross-referenced index to genealogical resources on the Internet.
a list of links that point to genealogical research sites online.
a jumping-off point to use in your online research.
a "card catalog" to the genealogical collection in the immense library that is the Internet.
a genealogical research portal onto the Internet
You can find this site (25) (the one you are currently looking at) listed there.
Family History Software
You may be reticent about making your family tree searches visible online before it is better developed and you have ironed out some of the more obvious mistakes which you make early on but it is certainly worthwhile using some family history software to record all of your findings; a great advance on bits of paper and hand drawn charts. You can keep all your work private on your home computer until you wish to publicise it more widely on a website as a family tree (see above) using a format called GEDCOM. If you want to try some family history software I can recommend the free version of Ancestry Quest (26), it will do much of what you want and if you need all the features of the complete program you can buy it online at a reasonable price.
Directories
Trade directories can provide information on any ancestor who had a trade (sometimes the trade can be found from census entries). A valuable source is Leicester University’s special collections online (27) which provides access to digitised trade directories listed by county for England and Wales from 1760 to 1910.
Wills and Probate
You can search for probate records and wills from 1858 to 1996 for England & Wales (28). There are similar systems for Northern Ireland (29) and Scotland (30).
Local Black Country Information
Listed here are sites with more local sources of information for the part of the Black Country from where the Brettles originated. These sources are relevant to both to tracing your ancestors and to the local history of the area. The relevance of local history should be clear after looking at the page on “The Black Country”.
A useful source of links to information on the Black Country counties of Staffordshire (31) and Worcestershire (32); as to all other England counties, can be found at Genuki.org (33). Both Worcestershire (34)and Staffordshire (35) County Councils also have lists of their relevant collections. The Black Country Society (36) is a source of great deal of information on the history of the Black Country, the searchable index (37) of its magazine can be especially valuable. A more academic approach to the Black Country can be found at the Centre for West Midlands History (38) which is based at the University of Birmingham.
Much more local information on the Cradley and Cradley Heath areas where Bredhill was situated can be found at Cradley Links (39), an excellent site which is in its third version. The web site now contains some new content as well as content from the earlier versions called "Original Links" and the "2007+ Links".
Similarly information on the broader Rowley Regis area can be found at Rowley Village(40) and the relevant Family Search Wiki page (41) and a partial transcription of Brettle and its variants in Halesowen parish registers by Malcolm Platt- Grigg (42)
Finally when you have exhausted looking at all the web references above, take a look at local links (43) and Black Country Connections (44) which have a much fuller list of websites relevant to the Black Country.
Maps
Maps, particularly old maps, can be useful when trying to make sense of where ancestors originated from and how they subsequently moved. Some useful sources of old maps online are old-maps (45) which covers the UK and Old Maps Online (46) which covers many parts of the world. https://www.archiuk.com/ (47) is a database of historical and old maps which again may prove useful.
It may not seem obvious but a "newer" source for searching for family names is the social media app Facebook (. You need to create a Facebook page of your own but then have the ability to contact other Facebook users with similar names or a similar interest in their family history based on the family name or place of origin. You may wish to share information with specific fellow Facebook users or join Facebook groups which share an interest.
A final comment: if you are looking for Brettles associated with George Brettles Hosiery and Stocking Co. in Belper, and some of its history, as many may be, you have come to the wrong place. I am afraid that I can't trace any connection of my Brettle line with that of the rather more famous Victorian clothing manufacturer. However to help: you can find more information on the history of the Brettles company here (49). If you are looking for more recent information the company now trades under the Slenderella (50) name.
(1) newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/topic/genealogy Genealogy Church Newsroom / LDS Church
(2) familysearch.org/en-united-kingdom FamilySearch United Kingdom FamilySearch / LDS Church
(3) freeukgenealogy.org.uk Free UK Genealogy Free UK Genealogy charity
(4) freecen.org.uk/freecen_coverage FreeCEN Coverage FreeCEN
(5) findmypast.co.uk/1921-census 1921 Census of England & Wales Findmypast
(6) ukbmd.org.uk UKBMD
(7) dustydocs.com DustyDocs
(8) cwgc.org Commonwealth War Graves Commission CWGC
(9) britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk British Newspaper Archive
(10) http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~brettell/geneoalogy/BRETTELL/ BRETTELL_One_Name_Study.html#Intro BRETTELL One Name Study RootsWeb Freepages
(11) https://www.ancestry.com/boards/thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=1&p=surnames.brettle Brettle Message Board Ancestry Boards
(12) https://en.geneanet.org/ Geneanet
(13) https://rootschat.com/ RootsChat
(14) https://home.rootsweb.com/ RootsWeb Home RootsWeb
(15) https://ancestry.com/ Ancestry
(16) https://ancestry.com/boards/ Ancestry Message Boards Ancestry
(17) https://genealogyforum.co.uk/forum/index.php UK Genealogy Forum
(18) https://wikitree.com/indexes/person/A/index.html WikiTree Person Index WikiTree
(19) https://bcconnections.tribalpages.com/ Black Country Connections TribalPages
(20) https://tribalpages.com/tpshowcase.html TribalPages Showcase TribalPages
(21) https://wheatus.tribalpages.com/ Wheatus Family Tree TribalPages
(22) http://halesowen.weebly.com/ Halesowen Parish Registers
(23) http://thurgartonhistory.co.uk/2011/01/the-old-rectory-of-thurgarton/ The Old Rectory of Thurgarton Thurgarton History
(24) https://www.cyndislist.com/ Cyndi's List
(25) https://www.cyndislist.com/whatsnew/11-12-2020 What's New: 12 Nov 2020
(26) https://www.ancquest.com/ Ancestral Quest
(27) https://www2.le.ac.uk/library/find/databases/s/SpecialCollectionsOnline Special Collections Online University of Leicester Library
(28) https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate Probate Records GOV.UK
(29) https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/campaigns/public-record-office-northern-ireland-proni PRONI NIDirect
(30) https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/wills-and-testaments Wills and Testaments National Records of Scotland
(31) https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/STS/ Staffordshire GENUKI
(32) https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/WOR. Worcestershire GENUKI
(33) https://www.genuki.org.uk/ GENUKI Home GENUKI
(34) http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/info/...indexes_and_guides Indexes and Guides Worcestershire County Council
(35) http://www.archives.staffordshire.gov.uk/CalmView/ Archives Catalogue Staffordshire County Council
(36) https://www.blackcountrysociety.com/ Black Country Society
(37) https://www.blackcountrysociety.com/index-table Index of Articles Black Country Society
(38) https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/.../cwmh/index.aspx Centre for West Midlands History University of Birmingham
(39) https://marlgray.angelfire.com/cradleylinks/ Cradley Links
(40) https://rowleyvillage.webs.com/ Rowley Village
(41) https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Rowley_Regis Rowley Regis Genealogy FamilySearch Wiki
(42) http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~uktranscriptions/...Brettle.htm Brettle Transcriptions RootsWeb Freepages
(43) http://www.sedgleymanor.com/misc/local_links.html Local Links Sedgley Manor
(44) https://bcconnections.tribalpages.com/ Black Country Connections TribalPages
(45) https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/ Old Maps UK Old Maps / Landmark Information Group
(46) http://www.oldmapsonline.org/ Old Maps Online
(47) https://www.archiuk.com/ ARCHI UK
(48) https://www.facebook.com Facebook
(49) https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/b8d927f7-2a23-352b-b7c7-2b9e38519dc9 Archives Hub Record Archives Hub / Jisc
(50) https://www.slenderella.co.uk/ Slenderella