Family tree research

[Blackrock]

I am interested in enlarging my knowledge of my family tree and am considering joining one of the specialist companies such as Ancestry or My Heritage etc.
Does anyone have experience of using these sites and which one would you recommend ?

[Hamble]

Ancestry gives you a free trial before deciding to join.

Although I did not take up the offer a neighbour was keen to research my family tree for me as a hobby after exhausting her own family tree research.

I am still grateful and refer back to the fascinating results every now and again as it is a lot to absorb at once.

[said]

We had a retired friend of the family do our research - he was brilliant. He found all the necessary Birth,Death and Marriage certificates for one side of our family dating back to the 11th century. On my mother's side it will not be so easy going as there is an Irish connection where surnames and place names coincide, and adoptions which will create great difficulties.

[Starling]

'Family Search' is a free genealogy resource that I've used quite a lot. https://www.familysearch.org/

I've also used 'Ancestry' which I think has the biggest accumulation of records. Apart from the free 2-week trial period, they also have occasional free weekends.

The Liverpool & S.W Lancs Family History Society are a very friendly and helpful bunch - so if you're family records are local, you might find their forum useful.
https://www.lswlfhs.org.uk/

[seivad]

We had a retired friend of the family do our research - he was brilliant. He found all the necessary Birth,Death and Marriage certificates for one side of our family dating back to the 11th century.

That's amazing, considering that civil registration of births, marriages and deaths wasn't introduced until 1837! ... so there were no such things as BMD certificates.

Prior to that there are parish records. In 1538 every church was ordered to keep a record of baptisms, marriages and burials. Not all parishes bothered to record them. However in 1597 Elizabeth 1 put her foot down, and they started keeping records. A few churches may have records before this date, but there are no records prior to the 1500s, and most definitely not for the 11th century.

Another Said fantasy... seek help.



I have my dad's side of the family back to 1592. It helped that all of his side of the family had always lived in the same area. The only parish records I needed were at St Cuthberts, Halsall and St Peter & St Paul, Ormskirk.

[Nick2]

Using Ancestry, I've been able to trace both mine and my wifes maternal and paternal trees back as far as (in some cases) the mid 18th century. The Ancestry site is excellent and easy to use. It's the only one that I've tried.