Searching for information on your ancestors

The easiest way to search for your ansestors is to use one of the commercial sites designed to help you do this. These can be expensive but there is usually a free trial period for subscription sites so you can decide if it really is for you.

When you look at a record on a subscription site, you can return to it for free for a period of time - but make sure you get a print out of the searches you have done, along with the results, before your subscription runs out, otherwise all of your work will be in vain!.

Here are some examples of pay-for sites for basic genealogy:

• www.genesreunited.co.uk - contains (among much else) birth, marriage and death indexes and census returns for England and Wales
• www.familyrelatives.com - contains (among much else) birth, marriage and death indexes and census returns for England and Wales
• www.ancestry.co.uk - contains (among much else) birth, marriage and death indexes and census returns for England and Wales. The site currently allows you an initial free start to 'get you going' - searching for you and prermitting the viewing of 10 documents for free. Click on the graphic to find out more.

• www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk - contains (among much else) birth, marriage and death indexes for Scotland and digitised images of many of the certificates and census returns for Scotland.
• www.findmypast.co.uk - contains (among much else) birth, marriage and death indexes and census returns for England and Wales.

These sites will allow you to order copies of certificates but these are much cheaper to order as an individual, directly from The National Archives Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU Tel: +44 (0) 20 8876 3444

Civil Registration (July 1837 - present day)

Birth, marriages and deaths are kept by the government, but they were only started in 1837. The civil registration records can be accessed and copies of original documents ordered via a government site. There are also several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

I have found some useful free sites that might be helpful to you.

	This site has some (not all) birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales.
	http://dustydocs.com/
	http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/
	Old maps online resource.

• www.familysearch.org is a vast international genealogy website run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• www.rootsweb.com is useful for 'genealogy chat' and gleaning all kinds of relevant information.
• http://www.cwgc.org is the site of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It is free and you can use it to find details of servicemen and women who died during the two World Wars.

Parish Records are often transcribed and put online for your use. You can look at the entries and then go and see the original to find out more.

A census can give you a lot of information - but be careful - spelling can be very dodgy - as can the ages given by your ancestors!