Free Family History Mini-Class 2024: Lesson 7

 

General Register House, Edinburgh
Image courtesy of National Records of Scotland

Some of the first and most important genealogical sources you will use in tracing your family tree are birth, marriage, death (BMD), and census records.  You can search many of these online at no cost using websites compiled by various organisations, often by volunteers. 

If you’re starting out in the British Isles, try using Free UK Genealogy or UK BMD for indexes to England & Wales civil registration, British census returns and parish records. Note that UK BMD provides more than one source for the England & Wales BMDs; their main web page explains this in more detail.

For birth, marriage and death records, both civil and religious, on the island of Ireland, you can search indexes and see free certificate images at Irish Genealogy.ie.  Some great tips on browsing these images are found on Shane Wilson’s blog. 

For many other countries as well as the UK and Ireland, record images (both indexed and unindexed) are freely accessible on FamilySearch.  You can search or browse civil registration/vital and census records, and tips and how-to videos are provided for using them.  Creating a FamilySearch account is free and allows you unlimited access to all the website's resources - see my previous post for some more things you can do on FamilySearch.

If you want to use the resources of a company that are kept behind a paywall, but don't want to shell out for a subscription, watch out for limited free access offers throughout the year - for example, websites like MyHeritage, FindMyPast, and Ancestry may make military records freely available around commemoration dates such as Remembrance Sunday, or Irish records near St. Patrick's Day.

Finally, if you’re trying to calculate someone’s birth date using their age on a census, here’s a handy chart to pinpoint the various dates on which censuses took place in the UK, Ireland, and the US.  This chart was compiled before the 1921 UK census was released for public use, so for that year, the date was Sunday 19th June. Of course, this is only helpful if your ancestors gave accurate ages to the census authorities!

 

In the next class, we'll look at some of the many digital resources available to help you learn more about your ancestors. 

Free Family History Mini-Class 2024: Lesson 6

 

Image by Martine from Pixabay

A few minutes here will give you the tools to 

root out untrustworthy information online. 

No course would be complete without a visit to the library for a guided tour, and these mini-classes are no exception.  And no skiving off – this is important stuff for your research, especially when it comes to things like social history that help put your family's lives into context.   

The mini-class’s library is the World Wide Web, which can be a problem: how do you know if the information on a website is reliable?  

Answer: be PROMPT.  Look at its 

Presentation   

Relevance

Objectivity

Method

Provenance

Timeliness        

 

This will help you evaluate the reliability of information you find online.  After all, anyone can set up a website and fill it with whatever they like.  Even double-checking with another website can’t ensure accuracy, because many sites copy and paste from each other.  For instance, looking up Wikipedia is quick and easy, but it’s riddled with stuff that’s inaccurate or just plain nonsense.

So ask yourself: 

• Is the website well laid-out?  Even if it is, that’s no guarantee of truthfulness, but it’s a good start. Glaring spelling and grammar mistakes are a red flag, though.

• Is the information relevant to my research?  Skim read the material to determine if it’s detailed enough for your needs, or perhaps too detailed if you just want a summary of the topic.

• Is the author/organisation behind the site impartial and fair?  Or do they have a specific axe to grind? Make sure their credentials, if they have any, are genuine, and perhaps do some research on the author.

• How was the information gathered?  Was it just copied from Wikipedia, or is there some proper research behind it?  Genuine studies will show their sources and methods.

• Is it a trustworthy source?  If there’s a link that tells you “About” the website, use that to learn more about the source of the information. Find out if the author is an acknowledged expert on the subject.  You might want to contact them for more details, especially if the information is about your ancestors.

• Is the information up to date?  Checking the date on a news story, article or blog post is important.  You don’t want to be caught out by obsolete data.  If you can't see a date anywhere on the website, consider finding an alternative source of information.

Get more details about PROMPT with this Open University handout. 

Put as much thought and homework into your
online information sources as you would your
online purchases

Next week's class focuses on birth, marriage & death records

 

  

Free Family History Mini-Class 2024: Lesson 5

 

Eassie Old Church, Angus, Scotland

In this week’s mini-class, I'm looking at graveyard research, and how to get the most out of visiting your ancestors' final resting place.  But it's not just a matter of grabbing a pen and paper and heading off to the cemetery...  

Before you go...

☙  Speak to relatives who may know the whereabouts of family graves, or have paperwork relating to burials. 

☙  Contact cemetery or local authorities to find out about a graveyard’s opening hours.  The may offer look-up or research services - sometimes for a fee - which could make your search easier. 

☙  Check for the existence of layout plans or maps for large cemeteries. Public libraries (and their websites) or council offices sometimes hold copies of these.  GENUKI is a useful source of information about burial grounds - as are the groundskeeping staff in the cemetery.  If you can't find a plot, ask them for help. 

☙  Use online sources to identify ancestral grave sites and memorial inscriptions - try the websites and mobile apps for FindAGrave, BillionGraves, and, for those who died in wartime, Commonwealth War Graves. Smaller churchyards and other burial grounds may also have been surveyed and the inscriptions made available on the Internet, so a good online search should track those down.    

☙  Family history societies produce indexed cemetery publications which you can buy directly from them, or from organisations like the Scottish Genealogy Society.  Public libraries often hold copies of these monumental inscription books for local parishes.  Search their online catalogues to find out what they have on their shelves.  Digitised versions of these and similar, older books may also be found in online e-book repositories - Internet Archive, HathiTrust, FamilySearch Digital Library, or Project Gutenberg, for example.

During your visit... 

☙  Don’t try and scrape lichen or moss off gravestones as this can do more harm than good. A safer way to clean a memorial is to wash it carefully with water, using a damp cloth, and perhaps a very soft brush afterwards to remove dirt residues. However, it's important to get permission from the cemetery or headstone owners if you feel the need to clean headstones, no matter how good your intentions are.  Resist the temptation to use abrasive cleaning materials which can cause irreparable damage to masonry, as in the case of some well-meaning folk who did some DIY and caused an SOS: When Helping Is Harmful.  

☙  Damage to memorials can also be inflicted by taking a rubbing with chalk, crayon, or any other materials to try and read or record the engraving on a stone.  Record the inscription with a photograph instead.  This will allow you to take a note of the plot's location as well as the information on the headstone. 

☙  Use non-invasive methods like foil reflectors, artificial or natural light/shade to help highlight worn and hard-to-read inscriptions.  Or do what my friend Anne did and wait for the sun to providentially break through the clouds!  You can learn more about looking after gravestones from Historic Environment Scotland.  

☙  Be careful of unstable stones and soft ground.  Follow cemetery authorities’ advice regarding visits, health and safety, and care of graves.  Take heed of signage on site which may alert you to hazardous areas of the cemetery. 

☙  Look on the back of ancestral headstones for more names - sometimes there wasn't enough room on the front for everyone! 

 

After you return home... 

☙  Check dates and names from headstones with certificates and other sources. Beware of gravestone "typos" – for example, if a name was added well after the event, or if the deceased’s age was uncertain, the inscription may contain inaccuracies.  

☙  If you’ve photographed headstones, you may decide to upload them to FindAGrave or BillionGraves, along with a transcription of the wording on them. Sharing what you’ve found can connect you with others researching the same families. 

☙  Add what you’ve learned to your records, remembering to use pencil if you haven’t double-checked the information yet. 

☙  Share your findings with your family, especially those relatives you asked for help beforehand. 

Next time, I'll look at how you can tell
the good from the bad on the Internet.

Free Family History Mini-Class 2024: Lesson 4

 

Image by Dmitriy from Pixabay

In this lesson, I take a look at organising the information you find about your family.  This could be on a visit to a record office, a graveyard, or in conversation with a relative.  It may be a good idea to start with what you have at home; for some suggestions on how to go about that, check out my post on shoebox genealogy. Whichever method you choose, you’ll need something to help you make sense of all the details you’ve collected and recorded in your notes. 

To start with, you should decide if you’re going to store your collected data on paper, in electronic format, or both.  

Paper options

☙  A good hard-backed notebook, with a page for each individual or family. The kind with built-in alphabetical index tabs is ideal.

☙  A loose-leaf folder or lever arch file for family sheets, which you can organise by surname or family line. This is a really flexible system - polythene pockets can protect your records and keep related documents together.

☙  Index cards, one per person – but beware, this can grow very rapidly and take up quite a bit of space!

☙  Once things really take off, you may want to splash out and get a filing cabinet.  This is a great method for storing copies of documents as well as your family history notes and charts.

Electronic options

☙  If you’re comfortable using database or spreadsheet programs, you might like to consider adapting an existing package like Access, a cloud-based app such as Google Sheets, or a free office suite of programs. 

☙  Install specialised genealogy computer software on your laptop or PC – check out some of the many free packages available to download.  Take advantage of free trial versions before deciding on one with the features you want.

☙  Use a genealogy website with online tree hosting facilities – and you don’t need to have a paid subscription with them.  In a previous blog post I compare a few of these companies’ free offerings. 

☙  Consider using a mobile app on your phone or tablet, which you can use to check your pedigree while you're on the go. Whether that's at an organised family history event or an informal get-together with relatives, it can be very handy. If you've already shared your tree on one of the big hitters like Ancestry or FamilySearch, downloading their app allows you to sign into your account with them and view your tree. Note: a paid subscription isn't necessary in order to use Ancestry as a tree-hosting site, and all of FamilySearch's tools and resources are free to use.

Next time, I'll look at how to plan and
carry out a cemetery visit in search
of family gravestones.

Free Family History Mini-Class 2024 : Lesson 3

  

Image by inspirexpressmiami from Pixabay

Once you’ve identified the repository that holds the records you need to search, you can start to make preparations for your visit there.

Here are my suggestions for ensuring nothing gets forgotten:

☙      Contact the archive to give them as much advance notice as you can about your visit.  Request an appointment, where necessary, as well as to pre-order any materials that require notice to consult.  Make the most of archive staff's expertise in the records and the local area by asking them for advice regarding your search. 

☙      Make a list of all the records you want to see, alongside the names of the people you hope to find in them, including the reference numbers from the catalogue, to avoid wasting time by having to look them up again - for example, Helen Macpherson, Register of Paupers Admitted into the Easter Ross Union Poorhouse, CRC 8/5/1.

☙      Put together a file or database to take with you that contains details of all the relevant family groups that you will be researching

☙      Review the rules and visitor information on the repository’s website or in their literature to ensure you are properly prepared, for instance...

• Whether you can buy food there or need to take your own, and if there is somewhere on the premises you can eat

• If change is required for lockers or cloakroom - you won't be permitted to take your coat, bags, or food and drink items into the search area. Many archives provide clear plastic carrier bags to allow you to bring essential research kit to your seat

• ID requirements. You may not get into the archive without specific forms of identification, so be sure to take the correct paperwork with you on the day

• If you'll be allowed to plug your laptop in to charge in the search room

☙      Practice some palaeography if you’re going to be consulting records with unfamiliar handwriting styles.  I’ve listed some websites to help with that. 

 ☙     Prepare a research log book or use pre-printed log sheets to keep track of what you find, what you don’t find and, most importantly, which records you’ve searched. This is a good safeguard against re-doing the same work at a future date.   Download and use this ready-made log sheet. 

 

In the next class I'll explore some of the 
options for organising your family information.