How to Trace Your Ancestry

The book I read to research this post was Tracing Your Ancestors by D M Field which is an excellent book although a bit short & I bought it from a car-boot sale. There's a difference between family history & genealogy. Family history involves say if your family comes from Dublin in Ireland which my mums family does, reading books about that & finding out all you can about it. Genealogy on the other hand just involves tracing your family tree via things like wills & birth & death certificates. I'm sure you'll agree family history is potentially more rewarding. Most towns & villages have at least 1 publication about their history. Many areas have at least a local historian you can contact. Most families moved around although they might only move to the next parish. The exception to this was when a family were landowners. If members of a family left wills this can give you a lot of information like who their children were & who they were married to. The hardest type of family tree to trace is an orphan with a common name, the easiest is a noble family with an unusual name & the easiest is if they have a double barrelled name. If a member served in the armed services there will be records of this. There are books which tell you the nicknames for the different regiments for example so if you find a letter with that in you can trace it. If you can trace your history back to the mid-nineteenth century there is a good chance you can trace it another hundred years beyond that it's normally only well to do families you can trace. Often there are baptismal certificates which can be traced as well although if you are an english catholic in the 19th century that church didn't always pass on the certificates. I think they distrusted the government. If you are a mormon you are in look as they kept quite detailed records.