TRACE YOUR FAMILY TREE.
The 1911 Census records will become available in 2009.
Until fairly recently, researching your ancestry required lots of digging and specialist knowledge. It was a time consuming and frustrating business involving a fair amount of legwork, searching through dusty archives. Nowadays, with the advent of PCs, the internet and email, it has been transformed into an absorbing and rewarding hobby that anyone can enjoy. You might possibly discover noble or royal blood, a title, a family crest or maybe even a long-lost legacy?
The internet opens up several highly productive avenues of research as it gives you more or less instant access to archives and databases around the world.
If you have knowledge of your family back as far as 1901 it is quite easy to trace back to earlier census years and soon got back to the earliest census 1841. The census years are every 10 years 1841/1901, they can be found at Ancestry.co.uk
Another site you may find very helpful is FamilySearch.org/eng/ this is the site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Aka the Mormons) whose members are committed to researching their own family histories. The IGI database has been built up from information sourced from public records, church and parish registers in the UK, the US and more than 40 other countries. In spite of its size, the IGI is surprisingly easy to use, although you can speed things up considerably if you have accurate names and dates and can reduce the size of the geographical search area to a particular country.
Find My Past.com.is another site well worth a visit. You may also find Genes Reunited.co.uk info helpful but unlike the above sites your details are open to public scrutiny.
Quite a lot of local libraries give you free access to Ancestry.com census returns.
From 1801 to 1831 the censuses were simply head counts with no personal information on individuals recorded (except in exceptional cases).
From 1841 personal information on individuals was recorded. Census records are currently protected from public view for 100 years, so the latest census available is the 1901 census. You can get census information at most Family History Societies, however the information here will be limited to the local area.
The amount of information on the census varies but in general the later the census, the more information it holds. Apart from finding names to fit into your family tree, you can see how the population moved around the country, usually looking for work. People came from all over the country to work in the mines and industrial areas as local jobs in farming etc. were becoming scarcer. The clues that you pick up from census records can lead you into far greater depth.
There are websites devoted to genealogical research and family history, countless news groups where information can be sought and exchanged and (most important of all) email which allows you to communicate directly with other members of your family.
Time to make a start, the simplest method is to begin with the pieces of the jigsaw that you have to hand, namely yourself and if possible, names and dates for your immediate relatives who would be parents and grandparents. Normally it is easier to start by researching the paternal line, but there is nothing to stop you tracing your mother's family, or even working sideways, as it were, looking for living relatives among cousins, aunts and uncles.
A great site for Old Photos.Visit The Past.
