On this page you will find (growing) details of and links to the main resources I am using to research my family history, record my findings and construct this Web site. Other sites/books/programs are available. These are just those that I like to use.

• Surf the net — internet links to important sites;
• Curl up with a book — guides and reference books that I have found useful;
• Keeping track of it all — the genealogy software that keeps the mass of information under control;
• Building the Web site — possible ways to put information on the net

Surf the net

These sites are gateways to the vast amount of family history information that is available on the Web.

• GENUKI — UK and Ireland Genealogy
• Cyndi’s List of genealogy sites on the internet

These sites are more specific.

• The General Register Office for England and Wales, or GRO, provides an online service for ordering copies of statutory birth, marriage and death certificates. If you know the GRO reference details, a certificate currently costs £7.00 including postage.
• The National Archives has a wealth of UK official documents, some of which can be purchased for download. The site also has a (huge) catalogue of documents that can only be accessed in person.
• Scotland’s People is the official government site for Scottish Genealogical data. It holds images of statutory BMD registers (no need to order a certificate), census records, old Parochial Registers and some other odds and ends. It works on a pay-per-view basis, currently 20p to view the results of a search and £1.00 to view an image.
• Ancestry is an example of a site that offers census images for England and Wales together with images of the BMD indexes for the same. It also holds transcriptions (not images) of the Scottish census records. It is a subscription site with a number of time-based and access-based options. Its main strength is the number and variety of records held; its main weakness is the number of inaccuracies in the indexes to those records.
• FreeBMD is an ongoing project that aims to transcribe the statutory registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales and then provide free access to those transcriptions on the internet. You can also view the scans (of the indexes) from which the transcriptions have been made. For up to date coverage by quarter (year) and registration type, check on the site.
• FreeCEN is a sister project of FreeBMD. It aims to transcribe the census returns for England, Wales, Scotland and the Channel Isles and then provide a free searchable database online.
• FreeREG aims to provide free internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, that have been transcribed from parish and non-conformist registers of the UK.

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Curl up with a book

If you are looking for a general guide, these three all do the job but the styles are very different.

Tracking Down Your Ancestors by Dr Harry Alder (howtobooks, 2006)

This novel-sized paperback is a well-written outline of the essential information you need to find and keep track of your family tree. It ends with several appendices including further resources (in print and online) and a glossary.

Tracing Your Family History by Anthony Adolf (Collins, 2005)

This is more of a coffee table book with plenty of images in colour. Invites you to dip into it. There is plenty of information and some useful insights.

Ancestral Trails by Mark Herber (Sutton, 2004)

This weighty tome of nearly 900 pages has won awards. It is as complete a guide to British genealogy as you could hope to find in print.

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Keeping track of it all

Some people manage their family history on paper alone. I decided to use computer software. The program I use is The Master Genealogist UK Edition from Wholly Genes. There are plenty of other excellent programs but I came across an older (US) version of TMG on a bargain rack (for £4.99) and decided to give it a go. I liked it so much I have since upgraded to the latest UK edition.

In the beginning I was more interested in entering the data and seeing the charts take shape than the nitty gritty of citing sources properly, etc. It was only when I started to share my findings with other people that I began to think seriously about making the software work to the best advantage. This part is (you’ve guessed it) a work in progress.

Better foundations

The pages for Hilda and Mary were generated using the in-built default "sentences" of TMG. Then I added a lot more by hand. Then I realised this was a back to front way of doing things. So the pages for Jack and Arthur were set up first by creating custom-built "sentences". Much easier to add new findings this way.

I’m not totally happy with the results yet, but I do have a better foundation for the future.

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Building the Web site

The main decision here was whether to use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) Web page authoring package or learn Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and do it myself. The former work rather like desk top publishing programs. You create the content and the look; they create the necessary HTML. The best are expensive. The less expensive ones tend to generate pages with inefficient markup that load more slowly. They may also use unnecessary proprietary markup that is not understood by all browsers.

Choosing an editor

On the other hand, Web pages can be written and marked-up in a simple text editor, like Notepad for example, and then previewed in any browser. For more ease of use, dedicated HTML editors are available and many of them are free. I tried out a number of the free ones, settling in the end on HTML-Kit Build 292: it is totally free, stable and can be customized to your heart’s content.

I learnt the basics of HTML and CSS on the excellent W3 Schools site and then made a start.

Instant (well, almost) Web sites

I have recently discovered that there is a third way! A number of family history programs have companion programs that will generate Web sites from your genealogy project (the TMG one is called Second Site). These are especially useful for those with a project that runs into thousands of names. Although mine is little more than 900 at present, I have decided to use Second Site to generate pages of basic data for everyone in my project. Of course, it helps to have a well-organised project (one day!) to take full advantage.

Looking to the future

As well as continuing to update the content of this site, I plan to make it more usable in the future. For instance, one goal will be to set up the pages so that they print simply and clearly without you having to make any adjustments. In other words, you will automatically get the main content as black text on a white background. Similarly, the charts will retain their colour coding, but will have a white background to save printer ink.

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