Anyone traced their family tree?

[Bear]

About to start

Any tips, advice, good resources?

[realityhack]

genesreunited is a good starting point

My dad's doing this at the moment - that's where he started.

[brollyman]

I've been doing mine for about 2 years now - I got to the point where the internet runs out of steam (1831 when births and marriages had to be centrally registered) after about a year and I've been trolling around parish records, british library etc since then. Now got back to 1726 in St Kitts and Nevis - fascinating and people really want to help you!

I would start by registering for the free trial with www.ancestry.co.uk and doing as much as you can in the month. If it looks like it's going somewhere, you might as well pay for membership as it's a really useful tool and I think it costs about £75.

Family tree making software is freely available and the better ones automaticall search various databases as soon as you put someone's name in. Make sure the one you use can open .ged files as these are the international standard file.

Watch out for blind alleys, don't make assumptions, persevere and you will soon become totally absorbed.

pm me if you want any specific advice...

Good luck

[Zippy]

About to start

Any tips, advice, good resources?

If you have any unusual names in the family start there. I did the free trial on Ancestry.co.uk which was good for getting lists of possibles. I also use GenesReunited which enabled me to find a death record which I couldn't find on Ancestry.

Good luck.

[TheFaQQer]

Ancestry.co.uk do an annual membership, which is worth paying if you are going to be spending lots doing it.

Be prepared to waste time and money on finding the wrong people - my mum has got folders full of birth certificates that relate to people with similar names but aren't actually family members.

That said, she's got one line back to the 1700s when they moved to America - the mormons do loads of family tree research, as part of their religion says that you can take your relatives to heaven if you know who they are.

If you've got some kind of family bible that may help - someone removed the front page of ours so it wasn't.

Also, be prepared for some skeletons and shocks to come out. My Uncle Percy tried to do the research, found out he was illegitimate and stopped (and he even got his fathers date of birth wrong in that little bit of research he did!!). We also found someone in the family who died in a boxing match - something about family honour. And, I finally found out the details (from the army diaries) of exactly what my grandfather did in the war that earned him his medals and mentions in dispatches (he never spoke about what happened).

I find it quite interesting, but my siblings have no interest in it whatsoever.

[sasguru]

I've gone all the way back to King Arthur. He, ahem, dallied with the local milkmaid and I'm the eventual result.

HTH

[DS23]

got heavily into it some years ago. can get back to the mid 18c and with tantalising assumptions i can get to early 16c. run out of time to research so it is all just hanging in limbo at the moment. ancestry.com is the best place to start.

[DS23]

what you will find out is this: you come from a long line of agricultural labourers.

[King Cnvt]

I traced mine and they all turn out to be cnvts like me.

[daviejones]

I did this in 2000. I was looking for my dad as he left when I was a baby so I never knew him. I went to the registry office in Edinburgh and managed to find his birth cert. I also traced a few family members back to 1700.

Once I had this, I put an advert in the local paper in Edinburgh and within 1 week I had a call to say that a woman knew where he was. He was in Oregon, USA and had been for over 30 years.

I also found out that I had a half brother. When I got home that evening, I got a call out of the blue...."Hi, my name is Mark, I guess we are brothers"...which was a tough call as you can imagine.

He gave me my dad's email address and I sent him an email with the subject line of "Hey, long time no hear!"

The wait was agonising, I can tell you. It was mazing to get a response thou as one of the things that goes through your mind is "what if they don't want to know?"

I flew out in April 2000 to go spend some time with him after 33 years...the strangest trip I can imagine....

It turned out he was Director of IP Engineering for the largest Telecoms Company in the world and a very clever man.

He died in March from ALS so my thoughts to anyone thinking of looking for anyone, especially family, do it soon because you just never know when it is too late...