Where to Look and What to Look For

Once all family sources have been exhausted now the challenge of searching from official-sources, and not just central records offices and county registers. There are many, other repositories of information available to the researcher, all of which must be considered in the family and whether you wish to restrict your investigations to a limited period of history, or instead, uncover anything you are able about your family as far back as time, money, and ability allow.

The next step is that of getting all official documents about recent generations, as it is possible to get, a task usually carried out from birth, marriage and death certificates held at your county courthouse. All information is of course committed to the basic tree format already on paper or computer. Any other information can be clarified or expanded on from other official sources and should be noted for working on when the time is right. These includes relatives known to have a military record, those known to travel who will therefore have had their passport applications from 1795 onwards registered and so on.

Once you have a sign of your most recent generations, you will be able to track down copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates from civil records that go back to the mid 1830s. Since compulsory registration, it is easy to trace a tree back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Then the hard work begins.

Census returns are an excellent source of information about household members, and provide information gained every ten years since returns started in.

For information before civil registration, we must turn to county records, which can usually and easily take the investigator back to the mid 1700s, perhaps earlier where families have remained in one area. Records can be consulted at your county records offices, or sometimes from the International Genealogical Index, or Percival Boyd Index, the latter of which covers the period 1538 to 1837.

Local newspapers might provide obituary details; gravestones also are havens for previously evasive information.

Wills might uncover a skeleton or two for the unsuspecting detective.

The collection continues, until eventually, the trail dries up. It might take you to various little-known sources of documentation, perhaps about small religious orders or now outdated trades and professions. It might even bring you to the genealogist's dream of finding his or her family recorded in the Doomsday Book, which started records in 1086.

If your search is local, your task might well be easy in the early stages, given that our ancestors were not often renowned for a travelled existence. Many in fact lived their entire lives in one county, and it is conceivable to gain much information from one day's sifting through county register’s, nearly all of which, when completed, are stored in local county record offices. Of course, if you are tracing the history of a well-travelled family, then your task becomes more complicated and far more costly.

Returning to the subject of County Record Offices, here one will find official census returns providing names, ages, marital status, occupation, and county of birth of everyone living in one particular household. Such records are released to the public only after 100 years, but when opened are pounced on by, genealogists for the information they contain.

Another useful source of information is the International Genealogical Index, produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as 'Mormons'. Most information is-stored on microfiche, and includes parish registers for much of Britain.