Thank you, once again, to all those people who have offered me so much advice and support in my search for Sandra Heaton.  Marie was my STAR of the week and her very helpfull information put me onto a great web site, called Genesreunited, that has led to a possible lead for me, so thank you again Marie.

As I love researching my family tree soo much I thought I would post a tutorial on how you can get started researching your family tree and what is available online to aid you in your search.  I live in Australia but 99% of my family tree is made up of people from the UK so finding them from way over here, just using my PC, has not been easy.  It has taken me a long time, I’ve done some very boring work trolling through web pages for hours, spent quite a bit of money, had a great deal of luck and some brilliant help from people I have never met.  So follow me and I will lead you into your past … the quick way!

First and formost get yourself a good family tree program for your computer to store all the information you find.  I use Family Tree Maker, which is brilliant and very easy to use.  Hint #1 - It is vital that you make a hard-copy back-up file of your tree every couple of months.  Earlier this year we had a Trojan viras which wiped out everything on our PC, luckily I had a copy of my files and so nothing was lost.

So where do you start?  That’s easy … with YOU!  Start off recording the names and dates for the people you know, yourself, parents, siblings, husband, children and so forth.  By starting with facts that you know to be true you won’t fall into the trap of adding information that is incorrect, fixing up mistakes on a family tree is very time consuming, trust me I know this from experience.  Hint #2 - To avoid costly time wasted deleting a branch of people, only record details you know to be reliable on your tree.

Using the Internet to source your information is easy, I use a number of different sites, but the number one site I always go back to is Ancestry.  I have paid for an annual membership with this site and it has paid me back ten fold.  Many genealogy sites offer you a “pay per view” option, this gets very expensive very quickly and they often only give you access to one type of file.  With an annual membership you have unlimited access to all their files all the time.  Hint #3 - Avoid those expensive pay-per-view sites and find one that offers unlimited access to a lot of information for a one off annual membership.

One of the best sources of reliable information is a proper birth, death or marriage certificate and these can be ordered online from the General Register Office at a cost of ten pounds per certificate.  You will need to know the persons name, year of record, volume and page numbers in order to get a copy of the certificate.  The Ancestry site can help with finding out this vital information as they provide full page scans of all birth, death and marriage record books.  You select a year and a surname and then you will be directed to four pages, one for each quarter of the year, from there it’s just a matter of scanning the pages for the person you seek.  A word of warning this takes time, I have been lucky and hit on the person on the first scan but I have also looked at ten years of files and found them on the last page, I kid you not!  Hint #4- Be prepared to spend some time browsing pages to find the correct person.

Now you don’t always have to pay for your information, over at FreeBMD they offer access to birth, death and marriage details for free, as the name suggests.  You type in as much information as you know and go from there.  They are able to offer this service for free as all the information is transcribed from the hard copy to the Internet by volunteer transcribers.  I am a volunteer and it is very rewarding work, so if you have a little spare time I’d highly recomend it. 

OK so you have your immediate family on your tree, but how to find your Granny’s details?  That’s easy you just need to look at a census!  The taking of a census began in 1841 and continues to this day, these records are protected for 100 years and then opened for public access.  Once again Ancestry can provide you with access to the Census taken from 1841 to 1901, I told you it was a great site!  Looking at a census gives you a complete picture of the family living in that house on the night the census was taken.  You will get the persons full name and thier relationship to the head of the house, for example wife, daughter, mother-in-law.  It also tells you their marital status, occupation and place of birth.  Hint #5 - When you see “do” next to a name this does not mean their surname is Do, it stands for ditto, my husband and I fell for this one and laughed for hours when we realised our mistake.

I think that’s enough information overload for now, I’ll give you some more great links and hints in my next post regarding WWI army records, church records and the use of newspapers to find the living.  I am very happy to field any questions you may have on getting started so please don’t be afraid to ask.  Good luck!

TTFN