Other than sheer enthusiasm, I assume you have gathered as
much detail from your parents & relatives to start your tree,
and have come to a grinding halt.
Either you do not know where next to look, or you have the information and are unable to decide in which direction to go.
Help for those just starting with very few relatives listed. Click here.
For
those who have there relatives information by cannot make that decision in which
direction to go.
Click Here.
| Looking for the birth of your earliest
relative is a difficult job unless your family lived in the same parish over
many years. If the name you are searching for is a common name such as John, Mary, William, Ann or Thomas, then you will have a job to prove that he/she is yours. Before civil registration the only evidence of events are in parish registers. These record baptisms & rarely give birth dates, marriages & burials, (not death dates). It is a good plan to mark in red on a map all the parishes searched starting with the marriage place continuing outwards in ever increasing circles. Before c 1840 there were no railways. Journeys were made by foot, horse, horse & cart or stagecoach. By convention most marriages took place in the brides parish but there are always exceptions. Look on the map for roads radiating from the marriage place & start by searching those parishes along these routes. Mark all these parishes searched in red & continue with parishes further out along these routes. This is a time consuming task but made easier now with so much information on the web. Census returns from 1851 onwards will also be very helpful. These give the parish of birth against every entry. Beware, though as some people didn’t know where they were born & made a guess. The earliest census of any use taken in 1841 does not show the place of birth. It only records Yes if they were born in the county or No if outside the county. If you have a marriage certificate or the parish marriage entry look at the witnesses. These may be relatives & may give you a clue to fathers, mothers, sisters or brothers. Many witnesses were paid by the parish to do this job & were not related. Early parish marriages do not have witnesses though it might mention where one or both came from if neither were resident in that parish. Most people with land, farms, trades, working tools & live stock left wills. These give much information about a family & may even mention a child not found in the register.
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