I have been tracing the family history of myself and my husband for about 20 years.  At first the work was all done by another keen genealogist who traced my husband’s family name back into the 16th century, and gave me a number of sidelines to work on.  I call them sidelines where I am searching for the mother’s side of a family, but I do not think any less of them.  After all, my children would not be interested in half of my research if they were not interested in my family.

However, I have not been as lucky with tracing my paternal line as my friend was in tracing my husband’s.  In fact I am stuck with Samuel Wilson, born about 1812.  I am unable to decide which one of the dozens of Samuel Wilsons born in the Sheffield area in that year is mine.  Still, I keep looking and you never know.

I intend to pass on all the useful hints that I can.  For instance, do not rely heavily on anecdotes told to you by your own grandparents. If you were told that your great-grandmother was a hairdresser she may have spent her time sweeping up in a barber’s shop.  If you great-grandfather came across from Holland to build canals he was much more likely to have been a labourer for canal builders.  It has always seemed to me that my entire family consisted of Agricultural Labourers of one sort or another but now I believe I may have the occasional artisan, such as a wheelwright, a shoemaker, or even a silversmith.  Mind you, what people put down on the 19th century censuses may also be a bit doubtful.  Many of them did not read or write, and the census enumerators varied from the excellent to the almost illiterate themselves.

Where should you start with your family tree?  I always repeat the advice given to me – ask all the older people in your family for FACTS.  This means you need to know exact names and dates of birth.  So if one person says grandfather was called Bert while another says Albert and another says James Albert you must keep all these alternatives in mind. As for spelling, anything goes.  Sophie may be shown as Sophie, Sophy, Soaffee, Sophia, Soffia, Sopheea or even Soafeea. Always have an open mind.  When the census was taken people were reluctant to give their family history away, so a family almost always consisted of a man, his wife, and children, whether or not the couple were actually married. Children may or may not belong to both adults and surnames were often assumed.  The wife may say John is my son and he would be entered as John Smith even though he was born before the marriage and should therefore be given his mother’s maiden name as his surname.

OK, so now you have a list of mother and father’s names and dates of birth, and likewise of four grandparents.  Do you have any information about great-grandparents?  When I began my family tree I was in my 40s and my father’s parents were alive so I could get information from them.  However if you are just starting now and are of my age this will be impossible – so I will start with my grandparents, as I hope will you.

The first thing to do is get your mother and father’s birth certificates and marriage certificate.  At the time of writing this these cost £7 each but hopefully your parents will already have them so you should scan them into your computer for safe keeping. My grandparents were all born in the 1890s so I began with the 1901 census.  If your were born later you can look them up in the 1911 census.  There are many places online where you can look at the census returns, but my favourite is Ancestry.co.uk. Simply type www.ancestry.co.uk  into the search engine of your choice and your family history is begun. If anyone is interested in using Ancestry please let me know and I will produce a tutorial to guide you through the early stages.

I also use My Heritage to store my family information. My Heritage has a simple way of entering data, which I like a lot.