Your current location:
Home > Using Records to build out your Family Tree
Using Records to build out your Family Tree
With literally millions of records for you to search and view on Ancestry.co.uk, you can be highly confident of finding documents and references to your ancestors' past. The question is where to start? Which record collections should you be focusing your initial search on? How can you use one record collection in conjunction with another to search for or locate a known ancestor?
These are the types of questions commonly asked by those starting out on researching their family's history. So, to ensure we set you off on the best possible path, let's take a look at each of these in turn.
Which record collections should I initially be focusing on?
When starting out there are two main sets of records you'll be need to focus your initial search on. These are Census and Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes. On Ancestry.co.uk you can search across the entire publically available Censuses for England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man from 1841 (the start of the modern day census) to 1901 inclusive.
In the case of Birth, Marriages and Deaths, formal registration began in England and Wales on 1st July 1837 with the introduction of Civil Registration. This provided for a centralised point of registration for Birth, Marriages and Deaths in England and Wales. Prior to this date, each individual parish was responsible for maintaining their own Parish register and you will need to consult the relevant records when you reach this far back in your family history research.
Ancestry.co.uk has the complete range of Birth, Marriages and Deaths from 1837 through to 2005. There are also multiple sets of Indexes for you to refer to, depending on the span of your year search.
Using Censuses to build out your family tree
In terms of family history research, censuses are perhaps the best loved of all family history resources. And, with good reason. Censuses offer a wealth of information at the family unit level. Details you'll be able to typically obtain from census records include birth dates, places of birth, names of siblings and parents, profession, occupation and education level, amongst many others.
Censuses can also help you to pinpoint where your ancestors lived at a particular point in time and ideas on where to look in previous censuses and other record sets such as Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes.
If you're unable to locate a living ancestor this far back in your family tree, then Birth, Marriages and Death Indexes are a great place to look for this information. So, let's take a look at these now.
Using Birth Marriage & Death Records to build out your family tree
Consulting Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes will provide you with a variety of benefits when building your family tree.
- Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes provide you with the key information you need to order a Birth, Marriage or Death Certificate. The Indexes contain information regarding an individual's recorded first and family names, registration district and Volume information all required when ordering a Birth, Marriage or Death Certificate.
- For obtaining details of maiden and parental names-dependent record type and year. For example, in 1912 the Marriage Indexes added maiden name and married name if previously married as well as including the surname of the spouse.
- For identifying exact year and quarter of birth, marriage or death, this can be vitally important when cross referencing with Census records.
Used in conjunction with Census records, Birth, Marriage and Death (or BMD for short) Indexes represent a powerful family history reference source. To explain more, let's take an example of searching for ancestor who appears in the 1881 census but not in 1891. What happened to them during the intervening 10 years?
There could be more than one answer to this question. However by consulting the BMD Indexes, this should hold vital clues as to why. Did they die within these 10 years? Death Indexes would help determine this. In the case of a female relative, did they get married? In which case the Marriage Indexes would be key in locating their married name.
If they also failed to appear in the Marriage Indexes between the intervening census years, there's a strong possibility that they may have emigrated overseas. That's where Passenger and Immigration Records can come into play. Why not take a look here to find out more about these and other records you can refer to when building your family tree?
Links