How Not To Trace Your Family History In the UK

Personnally I love doing the back breaking research as it gives me a sense of achievement to find the information myself. However with the number of people around the world who are doing the same it makes sense to see who else is interested in your own family. Putting your research on the internet is a great way of sharing and storing your research, meeting long lost members of your family and saving other people a lot of hard work.

Using these websites is an excellent way to find out the information you need without having to spend hours upon hours doing the work yourself but it can lead to you receiving incorrect data and actually tracing someone elses family tree. I have become more and more concerned recently regarding the amount of incorrect data that has been uploaded onto the internet.

The people who enter their family tree information onto these websites can do so without having to provide any source material to backup the information they have. To make matters worse the next logical step for anyone getting information from these sources is to then add it to their own family trees. Many years ago I mis-spelled a first name for one of my ancestors. I transcribed his name as "Elisha" rather than "Elijah".

I realised after finding him on the census that I had spelt his name wrong but in the mean time I had passed the information on to someone else via email. Now on www.ancestry.co.uk there are five family trees who all have my spelling mistake and on www.GenesReunited.co.uk there are four !!!

The example above is only a minor problem but it is an example of how mistakes can easily be duplicated. More worryingly I have found several huge mistakes on websites where the data is completely wrong. There are instances where the user has simply joined two unrelated families together based on the fact that one of their ancestors shares a name with one in someone else's family tree.

The answer is simple ... every piece of information received from someone else needs to be verified by YOU. Don't take anyone's word for it as your family history is too important to trust someone you don't know.

OK I am aware that I sound paranoid but sharing a few emails with someone may tell you if they are nice or not but cannot guarantee that they are any good at genealogy. I doubt that there are many people out there who would deliberately upload incorrect data but there are many who will simply pass on someone else's work as their own without having a clue if it is correct or not.

To verify the information you are given you need to re-trace the steps of the original researcher. Yes I know it's boring and time consuming but in the end you can say you have piece of mind that the information you have is as correct as it can be.

1. Ask the person who gave you the information to provide you with the source data. Most uploaded trees will only contain the bare essentials and not the detailed research that will help you in the verification process as well as give you extra information.

2. Find the original record for each piece of evidence - if possible look at a copy of the original rather than a transcription.

3. Look for alternatives - if you have a "John Smith" and you know he was born in 1823 have a look to see if there were any other "John Smith" baptisms in the area at that time who could have been him instead.

4. If you have an ancestor who was baptised in a different area from where yours lived make sure you know you have the correct person. For example if I had a Thomas Brown who was married in Greensville in 1784 but has was supposed to be baptised in Brownstown in 1764. I would check for burials and marriages in Brownsville to see if he did actually move to Greensville or if the baptism was that of a completely different person.

5. Get to know the area your family lived in. Have a look on Google Maps to find out how far apart different places were and if it were likely that they moved from one to another. This is particularly important for people outside the UK who may not be able to visualise the area.

6. Look for additional information from other sources to verify your data and to add to what you know. Trade Directories, Settlement Certificates, Court Records, Wills etc.

Why don't you brighten up your computer area with these bright genealogy mousepads from Zazzle?

Ancestry.co.uk is in my opinion the best of the family history websites in the UK. The primary documents available are copies of the UK census from 1841 to 1901 and the indexes to births, marriages and deaths from 1837. These can both be vital in verifying the family history you have been given. In addition to this there are a large number of miscellaneous sources relating to ships list, military records, parish registers and endless other databases.


Genes Reunited has been a popular venue for family history and is run by the same company as the famous Friendsreunited site. A subscribed member has the ability to search the 1841 - 1901 UK census returns, the civil registration indexes from 1837 - 2004 and military records including WWI and WWII death records.

Family Search also refered to as the IGI which stands for international genealogical index is a website run by the Mormon church. Their database contains an amazing number of baptisms and marriages from across the world as well as a few burials and a index to the 1881 British census. It is completely free to search but you need to consider the fact that it isn't complete and it does contain some errors. Personally I use it as a guide and try to double check what I find with the originals as the originals normally contain more details.

Free BMD is another free site which contains transcribed civil registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths. The number of records increases regularly but as it is all volunteer based the records are still incomplete.

Find My Past is currently the only online resource for the UK 1911 Census. The site also has the 1841-1901 census' as well as the indexes to the birth, marriage and death certificates. The company are adding additional records all the time including military records. In my opinion this service is quite expensive but it is the only available source for the 1911 census returns.

Census Transcriptions for $5! It is often difficult for genealogists to gain access to British census documentation without paying huge fee's and therefore I decided to create a "gig" on Fiverr to help out . I'm offering to search the English and Welsh census for half an hour for that elusive ancestor!

The Gower Brick Wall

Joseph Gower was born in 1804 and according to his baptism was the illegitimate son of Mary Gower. There is a baptism of Mary Gower in 1786 daughter of Archibald and Charlotte Gower. Now Joseph had children called Archibald and Charlotte. Plus there was an Archibald Gower who was the witness when Joseph got married. Who could argue with this being the correct family?

Ten years later we found a marriage which altered everything. Mary Gower the daughter of Archibald Gower had married John Booth in 1800. Four years before Joseph was born. John and Mary went on to have children including a Archibald Booth, a Charlotte Booth and yes a Joseph Booth. We have never managed to find out who the elusive Mary Gower was ...

Nortcliffe Family Tree

John Nortcliffe married Ann Frost in 1730 and they had a son called John who was baptised in 1734. Whilst looking at the parish registers we came across a marriage in 1753 for a John Nortcliffe and Martha Volley. John would have been 19 years old at the time of the marriage but we were unable to find any baptisms for their children or a burial record for John.

A few years later we found a burial for John Nortcliffe son of John Nortcliffe in 1741. This was obviously John Nortcliffe junior. After rechecking all the information we had gathered it appeared that Martha Volley was actually John Nortcliffe seniors second wife. In conclusion we had poor Martha marrying her husbands son who had died as a child.

One of the families I was tracing had hit a massive brickwall. The earliest ancestor was born in 1814 but in that year two babies with the same name were baptised in his village. We had absolutley no way of knowing which baptism was his.

I then found a lady on Genesreunited who had decided that she knew which baptism was the right one. I was sceptical to say the least and with much tepidation I contacted her to try to find out why she could have come to that conclusion. It turned out she had the family bible with several generations of births, marriages and deaths written in there. Serves me right for thinking the worse.

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