Research Considerations

Let's face it, as much as we dread the idea of finding a criminal in our past, there's also a thrill to it, too. It adds a bit of colour to what might otherwise be a very sober history. A lot of ...

As you can imagine, health records have the potential to be a great source of information for genealogists. There are not only records of births collated from GPs, hospitals, midwives and clinics, ...

We use maps without thinking, from the road atlas in the car to city A-Z guides. But maps are very useful to a genealogist, too. Guides to parish boundaries, land ownership, railways and cemeteries ...

It’s a given that the further back you go in your search for family history, the harder it becomes to find reliable source material that can help you. For the vast majority of us who aren’t of ...

A lot of people – mostly men, especially as you go back in time, but also women – have served in the different branches of the armed forces. For some it was their entire lives, posted abroad – to ...

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 learnt at museums, not only about the way people ...

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 how they were treated). Before this, relief of the ...

No serious 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 - for now. But, the more you become absorbed by it all, the ...

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 give us official and legal standing in the world. If ...

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 of taxation have remained intact. Sadly, that ...

In the early 1640s, England was on the brink of Civil War between the King, Charles 1, and Parliament. It was a conflict no one wanted, and everyone tried to avert - to no avail in the end. But ...

Finding the branches of a female family tree can be much more of a challenge than following the male line. It means going back from your mother to her mother, then her mother, and so on, so you're ...

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 an ancestor was a criminal of some kind. By the law ...

The Internet has been the single biggest boost genealogy has experienced. Genealogy is the third most-researched topic on the World Wide Web (after personal finance and pornography), and the number ...

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 and nationally. That means, to understand your ...