Research Considerations

One thing the Crown or the government has always done well is keep taxation records. Many other things might be lost, but for the most part, records...

Family history can become a long-term hobby as you try to go back through the generations to discover not only the names of your ancestors, but...

As you can imagine, medical records have the potential to be a great source of information in genealogy. They are not only records of births collated...

A lot of people – mostly men, especially as you go back in time, but also women – have served in the different branches of the military. For some...

Many people regard museums as simply dusty collections of old things that have no relevance to their lives. But that's wrong. There's plenty to be...

It's a given that the further back you go in your search for family history, the harder it becomes to find reliable genealogy source material that...

For hundreds of years, Latin was the common international tongue of the educated. It was that way before the Normans conquered England in 1066, and...

The Poor Law Reform Act of 1834 changed the way the poor were cared for in England and Wales (although cared for might not be the best term, given...

It might be that you live outside Britain and want to look into the family tree with ancestors who were born and raised here. You might have...

No serious genealogy researcher is ever going to claim to have completed a family tree. All that's happened is that you've gone as far as you can in...

These days spelling is a very set thing - it's either right or wrong - and that's especially true of surnames, which both bind and define us, and...

Most families don’t own a family Bible these days, but once you found them almost everywhere, and where they do still exist they can be a superb...

When the 1911 census was released online in January 2009, it was a momentous event. For anyone interested in family history, the release of an old...

The Protestation was an oath meant to avert Civil War in England in the 1640s. Its legacy is the closest we come to a listing of all adult males in...

That tracing one’s family tree is big business isn’t exactly news. Genealogy has been one of the most-searched terms online for several years now,...

Many families have skeletons in the closet, a lot of which have probably been forgotten over the years. Perhaps the biggest one to discover is that...

Finding the branches of a female family tree can be much more of a genealogy challenge than following the male line. It means going back on the...

Let's face it, as much as we dread the idea of finding a criminal in our family history, there's also a thrill to it, too. It adds a bit of colour to...

Maps are very useful to a genealogist. Guides to parish boundaries, land ownership, railways and cemeteries are the kind of maps that are invaluable...

The Internet has been the single biggest boost genealogy has experienced. Genealogy is the third most-researched topic on the World Wide Web (after...

Genealogy is, after a fashion, a study of history. It's family history, and like all families, yours was affected by historical events, both locally...