Trace Your Family Tree

Using search to build out your tree

So you've started your family tree and are now looking to build it out, but where should you be looking and how should you be going about this?

How should I be searching?

How you search will really depend on a number of factors. These include how far back in your family's past you've got to, as well as your family name-or maiden names if researching female lines. For example, having a less common name can help you in pinpointing ancestors, in particular if you don't have much additional information to go on, such as dates and place names. However, there are a number of key record sets you'll be referring to as you seek to build out the first 6-10 generations of your family tree.

Read on to find out more about the records you'll need to refer to and using our search tools to help you find records of your ancestors too. Let's start by taking a look at the key records.

What are the key records I should be researching on?

Censuses as well as Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes will form the backbone of your family history research. Ancestry.co.uk carries a full set of census years for England, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey from 1841 to 1901 inclusive.

We also carry Birth Marriage and Death Index records, right from the start of the introduction of centralised registration in 1837 to 2005 inclusive, totaling around 300 million records of Birth, Marriages and Deaths in England, Wales, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey across the period.

Military records are also highly valuable in discovering information regarding your ancestors who may have served their country in battle and military conflict. To find out more about these records and how they can help you build your family tree, take a look here »

Search Techniques-some hints and tips

With millions of records available to you, we've ensured that your search is made as easy as possible. We do this by providing you with a range of search options from beginners through to advanced researchers to enable you to locate those records that matter to you.

At a basic level, there are 3 different levels of search you can undertake. Let's take a brief look at each of these now.

• Global search - global search is typically done from the Search page and is the widest of the searches you can do. This will search for returns across all our record sets -you can specify whether this should be UK or worldwide focused too Category search-we also enable you to search by record type too. For example, search in Census records only, Military records, or Birth, Marriages and Deaths, Immigration records etc.
• Specific Record Search - if you're searching for an ancestor in a known record set, at a known year, you can easily accomplish this too. For example, for an ancestor in the 1851 English Census, you'd simply select the relevant link to the search homepage for the 1851 English Census and search from there. This will draw better results and is the recommended way to search.
• Advanced search - we also provide you with an advanced search option too, whereby you can search across a number of record sets, setting different levels of confidence in the information you may hold for an ancestor. A good example of this would be someone looking to search Census and Military records for ancestor for whom they have a known surname, but for whom the place of birth is perhaps less well defined.

Any searching you undertake on Ancestry.co.uk is totally free of charge so you can search as many times as you like for whatever you like. If you would like to view the original images then you will need to join up to one of the Ancestry.co.uk paid subscription services.

Let Ancestry do the searching with you

By building your family tree on Ancestry.co.uk you'll also be searching for records at the same time. Each time you enter a new ancestor or ancestor(s) or new detail to an existing ancestor stored in your tree, Ancestry will be working hard behind the scenes to return the results of potential matches. These will be within both our own comprehensive family record collections as well as other Ancestry Member Trees. You'll be notified of potential matches through the appearance of a "shaky green leaf" next to each of the ancestors for whom we have potential matches. You can review and accept or discard these at any time.

How other family members can help you in your search too

As mentioned above, we'll notify you if you have matches against other Ancestry Member Trees too. With other 200 million names saved by other members on their trees, it's very likely you'll come across a potential match here. What you'll be able to do at this point is dependent on whether the tree owner has made their tree "Public" or "Private". If they opted make it "Public", you'll be able to view the relevant ancestor directly in the matched tree owner's family tree and send an email communication. If they've opted to make it "Private", you can send an email requesting access to their family tree to view and evaluate the entry for their ancestor.

Find out more

To find out more, why not let Tony Robinson, the popular historian tell you more about how it all works on Ancestry? Watch here now for free »