Interested in researching your ancestors? More and more people are trying to find out about "what went before" - not the history that you can read in books, but the history of their own family.

Unless you come from an aristocratic, wealthy, or otherwise famous family the story of your forebears may have been forgotten. You may not know where your family were, or what they were doing 100 years ago - let alone 200 or 300 years.

Download a FREE Ancestor Chart that you can complete by hand

Finding information in censuses

Fortunately the records that have survived will be able to tell you quite a lot about where they lived and what they did for a living. For example, there were censuses carried out in Britain from 1841 onwards which aimed to record the name, age, occupation and place of birth of every inhabitant. Though a few people were omitted for one reason or another, well over 95% of the inhabitants were indeed recorded for posterity.

All of British the censuses from 1841-1901 are available online, and the 1911 census is in the process of being made available (England is online now and Wales should be completed during 2009, but the Scotland census will not be released until 2012).

Birth, marriage and death records

During the 19th century a system of Civil Registration was introduced, under which local registrars would be responsible for recording births, marriages, and deaths in their district. It was introduced at different times in different parts of the British Isles: on 1st July 1837 in England & Wales, on 1st January 1855 in Scotland, and on 1st January 1864 in Ireland (though records of protestant marriages had been kept since 1st April 1845).

Parish registers

Prior to the commencement of Civil Registration parish registers are the primary source of information. Registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials were kept (there were no cremations in those days).

Finding other people who share YOUR ancestors!

There are several sites that attempt to match you with your living relatives, but there  are two that stand out: Genes Reunited, because it has an enormous membership, and LostCousins which is the only site that offers near 100% accuracy (others can be wrong 90% of the time).