Genealogy Chat

I must confess to expecting too much, but for some daft reason I thought that this kind of site would - once you added your details and a few imidate family details - have a magic button which shows you many or all of your possible family tree.

Naive I guess, but what I found so far seems to suggest "go elsewhere, do your research and come back to build your tree"

I'm stuck.

I got my bro & sis as well as my mum and dad but I know nothing beyond that. OK, I can ask parents about their parents etc but I was expecting this site to help me research from within somehow.

Any tips please?

Thanks

Kieron

Hi Kieron,

The best place to start is to find out as much as you can from your immediate family and see where this leads. The more names and dates you can get into your tree the more likely you are to find a match with somebody else on this site who may be able to share some more information with you.

Once you have some names, locations and rough dates there are plenty of free sites such as familysearch.com and freebmd.com that will help locate births and marriages for your family

Hope this helps

You need to get your parents marriage / birth certificates to find out who their parents were, and work your way back from there.

There isn't a site that will magic up your whole family tree at the touch of a button, all you will find are sites that hold the records you need to search to find what you are looking for.

Even if there was such a site, how could you trust what it was telling you if you hadn't done the research yourself?

Sam x

Hi Kieron

This site, or rather the members of this site are very helpful, but you will have to invest some time and money. You will have to get as much information as you can from living relations, you will also have to buy some certificates along the way, these provide lots of information.

Good luck
Dee

Thanks guys, I'll do that.

Cheers

Kieron

No Kieron doesn't work like that would be an impossible data base to have EVERYONES family tree on it . this site is manned by its members many of whom have many years of researching experience and subs to sites that have census etc . and many will do look ups if you get stuck but you will be encouraged to help look yourself first

You start with yourself, you have your parents names then you find their marriage cert which will have their ages and dads names you then work backwards finding birth marriages deaths etc once you hit the 1901 census then you can find that family at that time and then you work back again.

Always double check your info and back it up with certs etc cos its easy to go down the wrong tree.

Will cost you buying certs but if you are really serious about finding your roots it will become addictive and worth the monies you spend. A good family tree program like FTM held on you PC is a good idea to store the tree and build it up.

Good Luck.

By the way the 1881 census if free to search of the Family search site . And Births /marriages /deaths are free on Free BMD altho that site has only up to the 1920,s so far

The very first thing you should do is get all the older members of your family to tell you what they know and to sketch out a rough tree on paper based on that, If any of your grandparents or great aunts and uncles are alive make sure you get as much information as possible from them.
You may later find that some family legends and stories are total fairy tales but normally some information will be based on fact.
Get a file or note book and write down all you can find in the way of dates and places connected with your family. If you know occupations that will help you check you are on the right lines too.

Your parents will probably know the names of their grandparents and aunts and uncles so make a note of those.

Once you can give us some clues about where to look and some names to work with then I'm sure some of us will be happy to do look ups and get you started.

Sue
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