Tracing Your Family Tree From Home
With most of us in lockdown and spending more time than ever at home, there has never been a better time to research family history. But where to start?
When many of us are physically apart from our loved ones, delving into old boxes of family photographs and searching through online archives really could help us to feel that little bit closer to our relatives.
Belle spoke to Philip Turvey, executive director of Anglia Research, to find ut exactly where we should start if we want to discover more about our roots.
We’ve all sat hooked as Who Do You Think You Are sees celebs circumnavigate the globe, so knowing that genealogy could take us on a journey across continents and through great historical events is the perfect antidote to not being able to leave the house!
Here are some of the top tips and tricks Philip has learnt throughout a career of searching for people’s relatives and unearthing family history.
Pick up the phone
Talking to older relatives is the number one way to find out more about your family history. Your grandparents and great aunts and uncles might have lived through three or even four generations and will have a wealth of stories to tell.
With over 70s across the UK being urged to stay at home, now is the perfect time to pick up the phone and chat to your loved ones about their lives. Their anecdotes could give you a personal spin on historical events – you might learn where your grandma’s cousin served in the war, or that your great uncle emigrated to America. Ask lots of questions and encourage them to be as detailed as possible. Nicknames and names of siblings, marriage dates, education and jobs can all lead to new avenues of research.
Organise family records
You could also use the current lockdown as an opportunity to organise the box of old photographs that’s been sitting in your loft for years. You might even find that the best family treasures have been under your nose the whole time!
Looking through photographs and other documents can help you put faces to names and build details of forgotten lives. Ask your family members to take a look in their homes too and share anything interesting that they find.
Useful family records to keep an eye out for include not only photographs but newspaper clippings, diaries, education certificates, job records and family bibles. Make sure to write down the names of anyone you identify to help future generations discover their ancestry too.
Use online databases
After speaking to your relatives and organising family documents, hopefully your family tree will date back at least a couple of generations. Once this base knowledge is in place, it can be helpful to turn to the internet.
Ancestry tracing sites such as Ancestry.co.uk are a useful source of information, but there are also a few unexpected databases to check:
Parish registers are local church records of baptisms, marriages, and burials and will pre-date official registration. Once you’ve discovered the villages and towns where your relatives lived, you can use these registers to trace your family back to the time of King Henry VIII and beyond – long before the census was introduced.
The further back you trace your family, the more likely you are to find that you’re related to someone with a criminal record – sorry, but it’s true! The National Archives holds records from criminal courts up to 1971, most of which are available to search online. If you discover that one of your ancestors did had a criminal past, you might be able to find more information about their misdemeanours in local press archives.
English poor law resulted in many people across the UK entering workhouses – most of which had admission and discharge records. If you believe one of your relatives was admitted to a workhouse, by searching these records you might be able to find their name, age and details related to their condition and care.
Reach out on social media
Social media has made the world so much smaller – people in different continents are just a couple of clicks away. Once you’ve discovered some initial facts about your family such as age, name, and location, you might be able to find them on social media channels.
If you choose to reach out to your family members, try to be specific about how you’re related and how you found their details. Share the names of relatives in common, and if you have a photograph or document relating to those relatives send it over to add a personal touch. Let them know that you’re researching family history – you never know where these conversations might take you.
- Anglia Research is a forensic and probate genealogy and heir location firm, offering asset reunification and legal support services. It employs more accredited genealogists, legally qualified, and independently regulated staff than any other UK probate research company.
