Tracing your family tree

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  soulboy77 Posts: 24,494

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  15/09/13 - 20:49 #2

  There's plenty of online sources for the UK but it takes some work to go back several generations. I can't speak for the availability of info. other countries. You start by drawing out your immediate family tree and talking to your older living relatives. Then try to find relatives in the old census' that have been released which will give you a snapshot of a family at an address at a specific date with ages and occupation. You can order birth certificates from the public records office which confirms the father and mother. This will only take you back so far and that is when the real graft starts.

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  chattamanuk Posts: 3,397

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  15/09/13 - 20:58 #3

  rupert_pupkin wrote: »

  Has anyone successfully done this? My mum has been talking about doing it for years but doesn't know where to start, one of her parents was from another country and there is minimal info to work with. Is it a waste of time unless you've got a bbc crew with you or can it be done?
  
  Any tips?

  
  In addition, there are also a shed load of threads on it on here too

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  [Deleted User] Posts: 4,391

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  15/09/13 - 21:08 #4

  Use ancestry.co.uk, You have to pay, but once you enter all of your immediate family in, the system will start to detect matches, you must review the match, and if it tallies (you might need to speak to the older members of family to see if they remember anything), you can include the match in your tree.
  
  I have been able to trace relatives back tilll 1774, so far. People contacted me who were related, but we had never met them. They provided me with some more people to add to my tree, they sent photo's over of my great grandad in WW1, and I even found out one of my distant distant relatives had murdered his wife.
  
  Good luck lol.
  
  Oh and be carful, some people don't like the past being dug up, I discovered family secrets which caused upset when I was doing it.

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  rupert_pupkin Posts: 3,975

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  15/09/13 - 21:10 #5

  chattamanuk wrote: »

  In addition, there are also a shed load of threads on it on here too

  
  I thought there might be, but I can't search the forums on a phone unfortunately

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  [Deleted User] Posts: 16,986

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  15/09/13 - 21:17 #6

  rupert_pupkin wrote: »

  I thought there might be, but I can't search the forums on a phone unfortunately

  
  The search function on here is woeful whatever you use.

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  [Deleted User] Posts: 251

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  15/09/13 - 22:42 #7

  I traced mine back to 1700. It will be difficult tracing the line that's from the foreign country, but the UK side should be easy enough. You start with your parents' wedding certificate and that will give you the names of their parents (your grandparents). You then look for death certificates which will give you dates of birth and the grandparents parents and so on. You just do it logically, one generation at a time.

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  sofieellis Posts: 10,327

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  16/09/13 - 02:15 #8

  tothegrand wrote: »

  Use ancestry.co.uk, You have to pay, but once you enter all of your immediate family in, the system will start to detect matches, you must review the match, and if it tallies (you might need to speak to the older members of family to see if they remember anything), you can include the match in your tree.
  
  I have been able to trace relatives back tilll 1774, so far. People contacted me who were related, but we had never met them. They provided me with some more people to add to my tree, they sent photo's over of my great grandad in WW1, and I even found out one of my distant distant relatives had murdered his wife.
  
  Good luck lol.
  
  Oh and be carful, some people don't like the past being dug up, I discovered family secrets which caused upset when I was doing it.

  
  I just want to add that if you're using info provided by other people, you should always check the original records, going back one generation at a time, as you would if you were doing it yourself. I've seen some terrible mistakes on peoples' tree on ancestry and other sites. These mistakes then get copied and repeated on lots of other trees, all over the net.

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