Just the Facts!

Last time, I covered the very first steps in beginning to build your family tree at home, by starting with the resources you have to hand.

In this post, I want to share some free websites that you can use to do some fact checking – because let’s face it, nobody’s memory is 100% accurate.  And matching what you’ve discovered so far against other sources is a great way of discovering people and events that nobody in your family remembers.  You may be able to fill in the gaps in the collective ancestral memory.

My own personal example is one of my father’s brothers, Duncan.  My mother never met him, and the family didn’t talk about him, so she just assumed he had died as a child.  It wasn’t until I started researching all eight of dad’s siblings – most of whom I had met or at least knew the whereabouts of – that I found out Duncan had died in 1947 in a farming accident, on the other side of the country from the family’s home in the Western Isles of Scotland.

On questioning my father, it transpired that Duncan had been ‘sent away’ to live there, permanently.  We couldn’t figure out why, and Dad wouldn’t discuss it, but one of my cousins recalled his own father handling Duncan’s affairs.  The death certificate I had found held a key.  Alongside the cause of death was a very sad annotation: ‘Idiocy 30 years’.  That meant that whatever Duncan’s difficulty, it had begun to manifest itself when he was a boy.  My cousin’s theory was that our grandfather had sent the lad away from home because he was ‘different’.  Years later, another of my dad’s brothers took me to Duncan’s grave.  Or rather, he took me to the churchyard where Duncan is buried, because there was no stone and after all those decades he couldn’t recollect the exact spot.

The moral of the story is: check your relatives’ memories, but check their facts too!

I've listed here just a few good websites that you can use as you verify your information – all free to access, too.  Although some may require you to register to get the best use of them, there won’t be any charge for this.

FreeUK Genealogy - parish, civil, and census records

FindaGrave or BillionGraves – search for and add details of family grave sites

FamilySearch – search/browse records, including images; add your own family tree; search digitised books; upload memories including photos and sound files

RootsWeb – tree sharing, community message boards

Commonwealth War Graves Commission – learn about those who have died in conflict, both military and civilian personnel, as well as their wartime experiences

☙ Follow these posts for more ideas on

building your family tree from home,

on a budget ☙