Genealogy for beginners
A plain-English starting point for UK family history: what to gather at home, which records to search first, how to prove each…
Trace your family tree, one proven generation at a time
Independent guides to UK family history: which records exist, where to search them free before you pay, how to read what you find, and how to avoid the wrong-ancestor mistakes that undo years of work. Written for beginners and useful long after.
Getting started
What is genealogy?
What genealogy and family history actually involve, the difference between the two, what a pedigree and a descendant tree are…
Where to begin tracing your family tree
Ten concrete first steps: interview relatives, collect certificates, work backwards one generation at a time, find the family in…
Interviewing relatives and home sources
How to get the most from older relatives before it is too late, the questions that unlock memories, and what to look for in the…
UK records explained
Every British family tree runs on the same handful of record sets. Start with the census and civil registration, which take most families back to the 1830s, then move to parish registers for the centuries before.
UK census records, 1841 to 1921
What each census from 1841 to 1921 recorded, where to search them free and paid, the 1931 and 1941 gaps, Scottish and Irish…
Birth, marriage and death records
How civil registration works from 1837 (1855 in Scotland, 1864 in Ireland), how to search the GRO indexes free, what each…
The 1939 Register
Why the 1939 Register fills the gap between the 1921 census and today, what it records, why some entries are closed, and how to…
Parish registers
Tracing a family before civil registration: Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials, bishop's transcripts…
Wills and probate records
How to find a will from 1858 onwards through the probate calendar, pre-1858 church court records, Scottish testaments, what a…
Military service records
Finding an ancestor's army, navy or RAF service: WW1 service and pension records (and the burnt records), medal index cards, WW2…
Tracing Scottish ancestry
How Scottish records differ: statutory registration from 1855 with more detail than England, Old Parish Registers, kirk sessions…
Tracing Irish ancestry
What survived the 1922 Public Record Office fire and what didn't, the free 1901 and 1911 censuses, civil registration from 1864…
Websites, DNA and tools
Free genealogy websites
The free sites that do real work for UK family history: FreeBMD, FreeCEN, FreeREG, FamilySearch, The National Archives'…
Paid genealogy websites compared
What the big subscription sites hold for UK research, where their record sets differ, how their trees and hints work, free-trial…
DNA tests for family history
Autosomal, Y-DNA and mitochondrial tests explained, what ethnicity estimates really mean, how DNA matches help break brick walls…
Genealogy software
Why you should keep your own tree offline as well as online, the main desktop programs for Windows and Mac, GEDCOM, syncing with…
Family tree templates and charts
The standard charts genealogists use, how to number people (Ahnentafel), how to fill a pedigree chart and family group sheet…
Researching a surname
How British surnames arose, the four main types, why spelling varied until the 1800s, how to use surname distribution maps to…
Libraries, archives and family history societies
Using county record offices, The National Archives, local studies libraries and the Society of Genealogists, what family history…
Useful resources for genealogy
The sources beyond the core records: old maps, historical newspapers, trade directories, electoral registers, school and…
Organising and preserving your research
Filing systems that scale, citing sources so you can find them again, scanning and storing photographs, archival storage for…
Quick answers
How far back can you realistically go? What does it cost? What if your ancestor was illegitimate, changed their name or doesn't appear in the census? The FAQs give short answers and point to the full guide.