Family
History - Websites.
There are tens of thousands of websites offering information to the family
history researcher. Most researchers would use but a few. There are sites
that are free, and there are sites that you will pay to view results. I
will split up what I have found to be the most useful sites into free and
pay per view.
Free Sites.
In my opinion the website that stands out as the kudos of genealogy sites is Genuki. It
has such an enormous amount of information it really is impossible to relate
it all here. With excellent search facilities, and links to wonderfully helpful
people who will do look-ups in all sorts of indexes free of charge, it is THE
free site.
From 1837 every birth, marriage, and death (bmd's) has had to be recorded by
law. These records were sent off to the civil authorities by each parish
every quarter. Copies - known as Bishop's Transcripts - were also sent
to the Bishop of the diocese. These records were once held at Somerset
House in London, but are now held at the General Register Office (St Catherine's
House) in Stockport. They cannot be viewed by the public, but are available
on microfiche in most archives. A group known as Freebmd have
transcribed (up to now) over 110 million of its records. These are available
online free of charge. Please take note that the page results for a marriage
search will return more than one couple, and from that information it is
impossible to say which of the men married which of the women. So then
you have to discover who married who by either purchasing a marriage certificate,
or by consulting a census recorded after the date of the marriage.
The oldest and largest free genealogy website is Rootsweb. This
is another site that you should explore and make yourself familiar with. There
may be others of your family that are already looking for you. Excellent message
boards fully searchable.
Genfair is
a website that is the shop window for the Federation of Family History
Societies. They offer for sale on behalf of the FHS's many transcribed
county censuses, MI's (monumental inscriptions), parish records, and
much more.
Searches of the I.G.I.'s and the 1881 census may be made on the LDS site.
If you have lost family in either war then a search on the War
Graves Commission site will find them for you.
If you have Scottish roots then click on Scotland.
If you have Irish roots then an excellent website is the Genealogical History
of Ireland site.
FreeCen is
another free to view resource that is aiming to have as many census
records online as it is able to. As the name suggests there is no charge
for this Click here.
Pay to View Sites.
Undoubtedly the largest and most worthwhile family history resource on the
web today is Ancestry. Although you will pay a relatively small subscription,
most of the UK's censuses will then be fully searchable. Includes many, many
other finding aids too numerous to mention, and not available elsewhere. In
my opinion an helpful aid to your research.
The latest released census online is the 1911
census It is complete, run by the authorities
and is pay to view. The site, which is an excellent
resource, is probably
going to be your first port of call census check. The census may be checked
via a person, address, or vessel search.
Every birth, marriage, and death (bmd) since 1837 has had to be registered
with the civil authorities. A complete list of every one of these events
may be searched on the site Find
My Past. If you are searching for an uncommon name,
then it is quite easy to find an event, but with common names it may take
a while. Bear
in mind that when searching for a marriage between a man and a woman whose
names are known to you, the clue is that they will share an identical reference
number e.g. 11c 296 - that being the volume and page number on which the
marriage was recorded. It makes sense of course to search Freebmd (website
details above) before resorting to paying for the information on this site.
The reason we don't use Freebmd all of the time is that the records are
not 100% complete, but they are certainly getting there.
