Would you like to research your family tree and don't know where to start?

Well, here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Get yourself a good-sized notebook
• Write down what you know already: births, marriages, deaths, names of any relations, places they lived, their occupations, any other snippets which may seem unimportant.  The more you write down now the less there'll be to remember . . . .
• Talk to family and friends, especially the older members, noting all details, even tiny ones which seem irrelevant at the moment.
• Obtain certificate for all events about which you are certain.
• Back-up everything - 'just in case'.
• Use the information gained from the above to start looking further afield.
• Start a file making a note of which details you have about each person.
• Look on the internet - a good place to start as it saves shoe leather and petrol.  Various sites are given to the right of this column and in a separate spot on this site. Also see my article Recommended Sites from the April pages.
• To be continued .....

Example
I remember my grandmother (Violet Florence Gasper) saying that her husband was born on Valentine's Day in the same year as her, that her mother had the same first names as my grandmother but reversed and that Violet and her husband had been in a terrible accident in the mid 1930s on the way to a family funeral.

I had Violet's Death Certificate (above) from 1987 which gives information about her date of birth, and her husband's name.  This Death Certificate say that Violet was born in 1898, so I knew her age and could then look up her birth on http://www.freebmd.org.uk/.

I went onto this site, pressed on the word 'search'.  On the next page I keyed in my grandmother's maiden name and the approximate year of her birth (as some ladies have traditionally been economical with the truth about their ages) and then highlighted the word 'birth' in the top left hand corner.  Then I pressed on the word 'find' in the bottom left corner.

Up popped Violet Florence Gasper, born Hackney, in the quarter ending June 1898, volume 1b, page 508.  This gave me the information needed to send off for her birth certificate from: http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/default.asp.

On the first page which came up on this site I clicked on 'order a certificate online', to register with them.   Then typed in my email address and chose a password.  This saves giving my address details every time I order.   Then when asked I give the details gained from freebmd: name, year, which quarter, volume and page.  This service costs just under £10 for each certificate and is very prompt.

Here is a copy of Violet Florence Gasper's Birth Certificate 

ordered from gro.gov.uk (see above) . 

When it arrived we had a big surprise - there was no father mentioned: so my grandmother was illegitimate.   Well, at least it gave details of her mother, mother's job and place of residence and where little Violet  had been born.  I looked up on the internet and found a photo of, and some information about the place:

The Mother's Hospital (above) was a Salvation Army Maternity Hospital at 153-163 Lower Clapton Road, Clapton E5. It was opened on 18th October 1913, replacing an earlier Salvation Army hospital at Ivy House 271 Mare Street, Hackney E8, which had been opened in 1884. 


The next thing to do was to start the file, so there would be birth, marriage and death certificates, plus any other documentation and photos.  I like to keep a photocopy of everything so the originals can be kept somewhere safe. Then, if I go to the library or to visit someone the originals won't get lost or spoilt as I don't need to worry about the photocopies.

There are several ways to file information.  I like to have a ring binder with plastic pockets so everything can be seen at a glance.  Then I have tabs to separate each part of the family.


At present I have a different colour binder for each part of the family and start with the latest generation (me) at the front.  On the front inside cover I put a family tree, so I can easily see who is in that particular binder and where they're likely to be. 

Family Tree to go on front inside cover

On the back inside cover I put a tree with the oldest person first, cascading down to me and all my cousins.


I also started to do a page for each person, giving the following: name, date of birth, parents, spouse, children and death.  To this page I added census information when  located and any other details, pictures or references.

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Now that we've covered how to start saving all this information that's accumulating, I must warn you that researching your family tree is somewhat addictive and the more you find out the more questions you'll probably have.  


Family history seems to seep into every subject: geography, history (of course), then there are the occupations of your ancestors, the wars in which they may have been involved.  Then there were the social conditions of the time, how some women had so many children which died in infancy, or indeed some mothers themselves died very young.  


Also you may well find relatives who've crossed continents and researching them may be not quite as straightforward as those who've stayed in one village all their lives.  Having said that, my husband's family mainly stayed in one place but unfortunately there are many people in the same village with the same name - so which Robert Fry are we to look at!?