About how to begin researching your family on-line...
There are many different sites offering records for you to browse...I've always used Ancestry.com because for a monthly or annual fee it entitles you to search not only English records but also American, Australian etc. including records from the Armed Forces...assisted emigration and transportation...criminal records and a whole wealth of others.
Don't be tempted to join a pay-as-you-go site though...you have to pay for every record and there's no guarantee it'll be the right one for you.
To begin you'll need names. Your grandparents names are a good place to begin because they might be on the 1911 census. The place or county where you either think or know they lived is good as well...saves much time.
The 1911 census returns will give you...the ages and occupations of everyone living at that address...how long a married couple have been married and how many of their children died and how many survived.
So... from the 1911 census you will find...John and Mary Smith aged fifty and forty-nine, married for twenty years with six children...two children have died. John is a bricklayer and Mary is a washerwoman. John came from Hereford and Mary came from Ludlow. They have a lodger who is also a bricklayer and they all live in five rooms.
This information will then lead you on to look for John and Mary's marriage record and their children's baptisms.
When you've gone back to the census taken when John was a child...you'll find his parents and his siblings...the other censuses give names, places and occupations...not length of marriage or children who died young as the 1911 one does.
Now you have your Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother. You'll see one of your Grandfathers brothers emigrated to Australia and another took the boat to America...with luck you might even find a picture of the ships they sailed on.
Once you've gone back as far as 1841 you then have to rely on parish records...and this is where you either throw your hands in the air in frustration while kicking the cat or grit your teeth and carry on regardless. Huge numbers of parish records are on Ancestry.
You'll find other people also researching your tree...they might have photographs of your Granny that you've never seen before and you can take those photos from their tree and put them on yours...and of course they may have dates and be aware of places or causes of death that you didn't know. For instance, my sixth Grandfather died of smallpox...
There are many oddities if you like...it was the custom to give a baby the same name as his or her sibling who'd died...so Jane was born and died in 1755...her sister was born in 1756 and was named Jane also...people with a disability were referred to as 'an idiot from birth' and anyone with no visible means of support was called a 'pauper'.
Oh dear...I've got carried away and this is awful long...probably bored you all to tears...lol
Ancestry costs me €33 a month...I have the world-wide membership because that gives access to records across the world.
If anything isn't clear, then please do ask.
- now thinking about volunteering!
