Family history

[Hitch]

I was handed a box of stuff a few weeks before Christmas, various items, photographs, documents, and various scribbles on scraps of paper. Bits from a few different lines of the family.

Anyone done any research on family history? Any good websites/links to check out for info?
Plenty of them charge, but are any worth paying for?

 

[rtbcomp]

I'm with Ancestry.co.uk, basic subscription. I think it's worth it. They are very active and new sets of records get added frequently and customer support is good.

I use Brothers Keeper (free) as a database. It links photos and sources of information, prints trees and computes relationships. Again active with frequent upgrades.

I have transcribed census records onto spreadsheets (Lotus 1-2-3) which is useful to put the records into context.

 

[cumbriasteve]

Mate has done it for a while now, was using free sites and searches but eventually signed up to the big popular one (can't remember it's name) and said it was a world of difference, he has got a fair bit back but you do have to do a fair bit of investigative type research.

 

[cumbriasteve]

rtbcomp just named it..yep that's the one.

 

[Shox Dr]

Mate has done it for a while now, was using free sites and searches but eventually signed up to the big popular one (can't remember it's name) and said it was a world of difference, he has got a fair bit back but you do have to do a fair bit of investigative type research.

Isn't that half the fun?

I did start to research my fathers side [as it was very interesting] maybe 15+yrs ago. I got to around 1750ish and found none of the sites had info or you had to pay for it.

 

[Robotstar5]

There was a thread on it recently - link

 

[Rudi McAnichal]

FreeBMD is good if you are looking in England/Wales from 1837 to c1970, but no use for Scotland. If the person doing the indexing happened to spell a name wrongly, you will get a “not found” result, so it is often worth entering just the first few letters, followed by *

FamilySearch.org is free, and particularly useful if you have relatives in USA, Canada, Australia or NZ.

Probate search will give exact date and place of death and, for the period late 1850s to mid 1960s, also gives names and occupations of executors. Names will be given in full, and usually spelled correctly. Now available to search for free:
www.gov.uk/search-will-probate

Google search for a person’s full name may produce something, especially if your relative’s name was ever in an official publication such as the London Gazette (executors looking for beneficiaries, bankruptcy proceedings, or death during war service).

A local Family History Society can be a very useful information source if most of your relatives have remained in the same part of the country.

Other people are quite likely to have published their family trees on the web, which may contain details of your own relatives. But I have found that quite a lot of the information may be wrong.

I think FindMyPast will still let you buy credits and do a few searches without signing up for a subscription.

 

[rtbcomp]

Ancestry has West Yorkshire BMD records available for free - not just the indices.

If you find a spelling mistake you can correct it and searches will find the corrections.