Family History Resources
Access guidance on the best archives, websites, and organisations for hunting down your family records. Find out where to search, how to request documents, and which resources offer the richest information.
Baptism Records and Tracing Your Ancestors
Use parish baptism records to trace your family tree back before 1837, when official birth registration began.
Birth Certificates and Genealogy
Birth certificates have been officially recorded in England and Wales since 1837, providing genealogists with crucial clues to trace ancestors and understand their lives.
Family History: What to Ask Your Older Relations
Ask your older relatives the right questions to uncover family stories, memories, and historical details you won't find anywhere else.
Finding 17th and 18th Century Records
How to track down your ancestors in fragmented 17th and 18th century records, from poll books to tax documents.
Genealogy And Immigrant Ancestors
Trace your immigrant ancestors through genealogy records and census data to uncover your family's migration history.
Genealogy Information From The Cemetery
Cemetery records can reveal crucial details about your ancestors that birth and death certificates won't tell you.
Hidden Clues in Family History
Family tales passed down through generations often contain clues to your ancestry, even when the stories seem muddled or exaggerated over time.
How To Find And Use The Main Genealogy Sources
Find the best places to start researching your family tree, from online databases to archives that hold birth, marriage and death records.
How To Use Census Records In Genealogy
Census records from 1801 onwards reveal where your ancestors lived, what they did for work, and how many children they had.
Searching Education Records
Find out how to locate school records for your family history research, including registers and log books held by local authorities and archives.
Sharing Your Family Tree
Ways to share your family tree with relatives, libraries, and others who might add to your research.
The Importance of Heraldry
Heraldry emerged in medieval times as a system for identifying noble families through symbols on shields, eventually becoming a way to trace lineage and inheritance through generations.
The Importance of Newspapers as a Source
Newspapers reveal surprising details about your ancestors through local stories, obituaries and historical records that other sources won't show.
The Importance of the Protestation in Genealogy
The Protestation of 1641 was England's first nationwide census and remains a vital record for tracing family history before official censuses began.
Tracing Aristocratic Ancestors
Tracing your family back through aristocratic lines is easier than you might think, thanks to centuries of carefully kept records and published genealogies.
Tracing Huguenot History in England
French and Belgian Protestants fled religious persecution in the 16th and 17th centuries, bringing their skills as silk weavers and craftspeople to England.
Tracing Your Family History Using Military Records
Military records from the PRO and National Archives can help you trace your ancestors' service records, marriages and children back centuries.
Using Family Photographs to Trace Your Family
Family photos bring your ancestors to life when tracing your family tree and fill gaps that dates and names alone can't capture.
Using Family Stories to Trace Family History
Family stories hold clues to your ancestry and help bring your family history to life beyond just names and dates.
Using Marriage Certificates for Genealogy Research
Marriage certificates are more reliable than birth or death records for tracing your family history and usually faster to search through.
Using Original Sources in Genealogy
Why original documents matter more than transcriptions when researching your family history.