3 Use alternative resources

It can be very frustrating if you can’t find someone in one of the key family history resources, such as the census or the birth, marriage and death indexes produced by the General Register Office (GRO). If you’ve tried different spellings and judicious omissions and still not had any luck, you may have to use an alternative record set that will offer you a similar result.

This technique has become easier now that more and more records are being digitised, but it could also be worth contacting the relevant local record office and explaining your predicament, to find out if there are some records held at the archive that might work as a substitute for the record you are trying to find. It is easy to see how military, criminal or Poor Law records might add colour to your family tree, but make sure that you don’t neglect the more prosaic records such as rate books and land records.

I have also found newspapers increasingly useful for tracking people down (particularly in the case of an Irish brick wall I had). So many have now been digitised that the chances of you finding a relative within them has really increased. You may find it helpful to use the search facility on the British Newspaper Archive britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, which gives you more options, and then track down the same newspaper on findmypast.co.uk if you have a Pro-level subscription. Below are some of the alternative resources that are my ‘go to’ options.