Tracing your Ancestry

The first port of call is your parents (and if still alive, grandparents). Most families will have a huge store of family stories and lore, as well as photographs, birth certificates, diaries, heirlooms and other things. Also talk to aunts, uncles, cousins - you will find that each has a different story and different information. Very often parents pass down information unevenly to children - some children may not have been told of events as they were too young at the time, other uncles or aunts may have been actual witnesses to stories and family history.

You might also find that other branches of your famly (second cousins) are also tracing the family history, and you could perhaps pool resources.

Write everything down and start tracing out a family tree. You will need to double check dates where the members of the family tree are not alive. If you don't have copies of birth, death or marriage certificates, you can usually get copies by contacting the official record office in your country (they all keep copies of birth, death and marriage certificates on microfiche). Registrations of births, marriages and deaths go back to 1837 in England, so you should be able to find the relevant certificate if you know the year you are looking for.

For records prior to this, you need to seek out church parish records, where baptisms, weddings and funerals were recorded.

If you have only a vague idea of when someone was born, but instead know where they lived, looking back at census data can reveal all sorts of information (age at the date of the census, number of children, occupations, other people living in the household at the time of the census).

Census returns are particularly helpful for whose ancestors migrated, and who wish to find out data about the period before they migrated.

The British National Archives have put census returns online from 1841 to 1911 (no censuses were done prior to 1841).

Once you know what an ancestor's occupation was, if they were a skilled worker, chances are they belonged to a guild, which kept records of their apprenticeship and membership.

In addition, many employers kept detailed records of their staff, and if the firm still exists, they probably have an archiving unit that can help you.

Lastly, the military have always kept detailed records of anyone who served with them. As most men in Europe fought in the World Wars, there should be records of their service in the military archives. These can prove fasinating - telling you the rank your ancestor reached, which regiment or unit they served in, and which battles they participated in.

Finally, if you really want to go back in time to when Homo Sapians were a young species, you can get your DNA tested to find out which of the ancient tribes you belong to.

Mitochondria is passed unchanged from mother to daughter - there are usually only small differences between the mitchondria of the founding mothers of our species, and they usually first appear at specific times in our history, when climate change was occuring. Testing mitochondria can usually tell you which part of the world your distant ancestor came from and how they got there from Africa (where all Homo Sapians originate from).

Similarly, the Y-chromosone is passed unchanged from father to son, and again there have been only a few copying errors over the last 200,000 years. Thus, testing the Y-Chromosone can also let you know which of the ancient tribes your patrilineal line comes from.