How to get started

Many people have asked how to get started and to use the various on line resources that are available. Where to start depends a great deal on what information you have to hand already. The major hurdle is to get back to the 1901 census when you will be able to use census information to refine your searches. For most people it is fairly easy to get back to 1901, but I will cover the problems here as well for those people who have very little information. Unfortunately getting back to 1901 may cost you some money, even if you do it all yourself there will be the cost of certificates to verify your findings, prior to that there is a good chance that you can get the information you need on line without charge. Not all records are free of course, but there are many web sites out there from large to small containing a whole host of data, all you have to do is to find it.

The Notice Board

The first thing to do is to sign up to the Notice Board on this site and search it for anyone researching the same names as you are, with luck you will find someone, even if you do not find anyone then post a message with your interests, many people just read the notice board without posting anything to it and they may have the information you want.

Mailing Lists

Next join one of the mailing lists for the areas you are interested in, the most likely for you are the Cumberland and the Westmorland lists, links to these are available on the links page CLICK HERE. Don't be afraid to let everyone know what your interests are and be as specific as you can, particularly with names, locations and time periods, just posting a message saying you are interested in the SMITH family will not get you very far, but putting up something like Interested in John Smith who married Jane Jones about 1891 in Penrith, will give people much more to go on and maybe they can link you into her trees.

Basics

So lets get down to the basics of where to start, first it is recommended that you get a program to let you keep all the data you find, there are many around, but for a free one I recommend that you start with the PAF (Personal Ancestry File) that is free from the LDS website, CLICK HERE to go to the download page for that program

While the programs are excellent for keeping your data it can be a bit confusing at first, especially when researching new branches, as to what exact relationships are, a suggestion is to use a large board and write names and details on different coloured post it notes (maybe pink for female and blue for male), you can then move these around the board until you sort out relationships and then transcribe the details to your program. It can also be useful to keep record sheets, to assist in this you can download the following items.

Pedigree Chart OR  Individual Record Sheet OR  Family Record Sheet

The PAF program gives you all the necessary facilities you can enter any data directly into the program and it will also accept and produce GEDCOM files so that you can transfer data to and from another programs should you decide to do so at a later date, or should you wish to share your information with others, there are other programs available from around £10 ($18) upwards which will also do the job very well, beware of paying high prices though, as you are normally paying for additional CD's containing data which may or may not be of use to you. GEDCOM is just a plain text format file with all your data identified by labels so that it can be exported from and imported into any other program, all programs will normally support GEDCOM, but some may require specific version as it has gone through many revisions, when importing a GEDCOM to your program never forget to backup the data file before you do it in case of corruption and I would recommend you import the GEDCOM to a separate database until you are sure it is importing OK before importing it into your real database.

Now you have your program you can start to put in the data, why not start with you and then you can work your way backwards and as far to each side as you care to research. Assuming you have no date other than your own, you will need to carry out the following process. You can of course start as far down this list as you wish if you have more information to hand.

Suggested methods

• First talk to all your living relatives and see what you can get from them, in many cases birth, marriage and death certificates may be hanging around in a drawer somewhere or you will be at least able to get approximate dates for major events. Look for School Certificates, Forces Service Records, National Health Cards, anything that can help you to pin down a date and event and make notes of all these details. Grandma may still have a biscuit tin full of everything you need to get started.
• Obtain your own birth certificate and extract your parents names.
• If you do not have your parents birth dates then you will need to work back from their marriage certificate
• If they are deceased, then work back from their death certificates.
• To get the marriage or death certificate, or birth certificate you will need a reference, if you know the approximate date you need to consult the GRO index. You can do this in person at the Family Records Office or there are many locations on line where you can search the database. Some are free but most charge a small fee to access, typically this will be in the order of £5 for a months access. Be careful if signing up on line as many sites auto renew your subscription so you must make sure to cancel it when you are finished researching. If you set by some time then a month will be more than enough to get the data you need.
• At the time of writing this you can search the UK database 1837-1983 free (though you will have to register) at Ancestry Marriage Database Ancestry Birth Database Ancestry Death Database (It is not known how long they will keep this free of charge though) this will enable you to view the page relevant to your names and period and to extract the volume and page number data for the marriage concerned.
• Once you have this data you can order the certificate from the Government Records Office at GRO The cost if you order on line is £7, it is slightly more if you order by phone, fax or mail or if you can not supply the full reference. If you wish to verify the details then there is really no alternative but to obtain the relevant certificate
• Once you have found your parents birth dates then you must repeat this process with your grandparents. In most cases this will get you back to the 1901 census, in some cases you will have to go through a further generation to get there.
• Once you are back to 1901, you can use the site at 1901 CENSUS with this site you will be able to inspect the list of entries without charge, but to get the full details will require a small payment for each record. In some cases the list will be enough to give you the information you require, but the additional sheets are of interest as they will give the full family details. The cost is small, but you have to buy an access subscription , though the advantage of this site is that you just pay the once off charge and you have a period to use up the fee, they do not rebill you unless you ask again. As this period is quite short, it is best to save up your queries until you have several. You can either pay on line through credit card or buy vouchers by sending away or from some libraries, the advantage of the vouchers is that they last longer before they expire and you have a limit on your expenditure as you can not use more than the voucher value.
• By now you should have people who were born prior to 1901 and if lucky before 1881 which is the next main census that is freely available on line. To use the 1881 census go to IGI 1881 Census here you can choose the census you need, normally the 1881 British Census and then you can put in at least a surname and the Country and County to get realistic results, putting in less information will probably give you too many results or not work at all.
• The 1881 Census is useful in that you will have access to households, so you can find families from one record, this will give you ages of the parents and children as well as their birthplace, which will enable you to tie them to the 1901 record or any other later information. With luck you will find parents who would have been alive in the 1851 census and you can proceed to that for the next stage. Although there are some transcriptions of the 1851 census on line, in general for the Cumbria area you will need to resort to the printed booklets issued by the society, which can either be purchased (there is an order form on this site) or you may be able to inspect them at your local library or at the Family Records Centre.
• I have used the 1901 and 1881 census as they are the most freely available on line at the moment, there are censuses every year from 1841, but 1841 is limited in use, 1851 and later are better but generally not available on line, though they are available on CD for some years and counties. After 1901 are not yet available due to the 100 year restriction on publishing this data.
• This method should enable you to get back to the early 1800's, there are however other records that can be used to fill in the gaps, should you not be able to find your relations in the census, not being listed does not mean they did not exist, in fact there are a number of omissions and mistakes in all transcriptions, if you can not find them then you have to resort to other sources.

Other Sources of Information

There are a number of other sources of information, the main ones will be explained here, but check out the full links page on this site as there are more and some of them lead to pages with even more links.

IGI

This is the on line database that most people resort to, it is totally free and is an excellent source of information, but be aware that like all databases this one does contain errors and omissions and in some cases the information provided there has not been verified, so it is important to check the source of the information and if possible look at the source data to verify that the transcription is correct. You can access the IGI at IGI Search Page from this page you can search several databases at one time, though when you get more familiar with the IGI you may wish to search from other places for specific items. You can search from here on as little as the name of the person, though putting in a common name and nothing else may provide thousands of people, put in as much information as you have, a name, country and county are probably the minimum you need to put in for meaningful results.

There is another way of searching the IGI which is not generally known by newcomers, this is to search by batch numbers, this will limit the search to one particular church/location and in some cases to a specific time period. But you need to know the batch numbers to do this. Fortunately much work has been done by Hugh Wallis and you can access his site at IGI Batch Numbers. For those interested in Cumbria you can get directly to the appropriate pages using the following links Westmorland or Cumberland.

Once you log in to these pages, simply find the location and time period you want to search and click on that link, in the next page that opens make sure the batch number has been filled in at the lower right of the page and then fill in the surname you are interested in and click on submit, if you leave the surname blank it will return all records in that batch.

FreeBMD

This is the Free Births Marriages and Deaths site, as the title suggests it is also totally free to use. However as records are still being added not all locations and years are yet in place. Bear in mind that records only started in 1837 so there are no records in here prior to that date, before 1837 your only source is the IGI or the church records. Not all church records are available, many got destroyed over the years, if you are lucky the church you are interested in may have records back to the 1500's, prior to that there are very few records as they were lost in the reformation of the church

You can access the FreeBMD at Free BMD. There are a number of ways of searching here and you can in fact search scans of the original records even where they have not yet been transcribed. But at first just try on the type, name and date as well as the location. If your ancestors are included you will then get a result showing possible matches, if you now click on the page number link next to any entry it will give you the details on that page. You now have the volume number and page as well as the date (quarter) which is what is needed to obtain the certificate

Clicking on the spectacles to the right of the name will let you know who transcribed the information so that corrections can be made and it will allow you to see the original index image. It is not immediately obvious how to view the image, you must click on the required image, select the format you require in the list at the right and then click on the 'View The Original' icon at the left of the screen.

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