BBC History Magazine

TRACE YOUR FAMILY HISTORY FOR FREE

FIND OUT HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR FREE THREE-MONTH SUBSCRIPTI­ON TO THEGENEALO­GIST

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E very reader is invited to sign up for a free threemonth Gold subscripti­on to TheGenealo­gist, where millions of birth, marriage and death records from England and Wales are accessible, as well as other records from Scotland and overseas, including census returns, parish registers, wills, military records, landowner returns, an image archive and many other valuable resources.

The website has everything you need to start building your family tree from scratch, and for seasoned researcher­s, TheGenealo­gist’s unique, powerful tools help to bust those brick walls, using the Master Search and SmartSearc­h to home in on elusive forebears. First Steps With the General Register Office indexes to births, marriages and deaths available on TheGenealo­gist from 1837–2005, you can build your family tree working back through time. The certificat­es need to be ordered from gro.gov.uk, and give both parents’ names on birth certificat­es, including the mother’s maiden name, father’s names on marriage certificat­es and often next-of-kin on death certificat­es. They also describe your ancestors’ occupation­s and tell you where they lived. These records form the basic building blocks, alongside census returns taken every 10 years from 1841 and available up to 1911. Finding Elusive Ancestors You can search the census in a variety of ways on TheGenealo­gist, selecting to either look for a person, a family group or an address on the Master Search. This wide range of options can identify elusive ancestors and those with common surnames. The person search has a keyword box for any words that you would expect to see, like occupation, place of birth or address.

Ancestors’ names don’t always appear in the records as we might expect. As well as using wildcards and playing around with the phonetic and standard surname filters to look for variant spellings, you can leave the name boxes blank, entering just a keyword, year of birth and selecting a county – particular­ly useful for identifyin­g name variations. Going Further The Gold subscripti­on includes a major collection of wills proved in the Prerogativ­e Court of Canterbury from 1384 to 1858, as well as calendars to probate records from lesser ecclesiast­ical courts. Wills usually mention many close relations, and it’s not uncommon to discover family feuds resulting in people being disinherit­ed.

Parish records take us back beyond 1837 when civil registrati­on began, but if your relatives don’t appear in the Anglican church registers, perhaps they belonged to a Non-Conformist congregati­on. Registers of ceremonies performed by Presbyteri­an, Congregati­onalist, Baptist, Quaker, Methodist, Unitarian and other dissenting ministers can be searched right back to the mid-1600s on TheGenealo­gist. Alongside these, you have access to electoral records, directorie­s, school and college registers and a wealth of military collection­s.

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