Your Search Begins-Where To Look And
What To Look For
Once all family sources have been exhausted, now comes the real
challenge of investigating from official-sources, and not just central
records offices and county registers. There are many, many other
repositories of information available to the researcher, all of which
must be considered in relation to the actual family and whether you
wish to restrict your investigations to a limited period of history, or
instead, uncover anything you are to able about your family as far
back as time, money, and ability allow.
The most logical and easiest next step is that of obtaining all official
documents relating to recent generations as it is possible to obtain, a
task usually accomplished from birth, marriage and death certificates
held at your county courthouse. All information is of course committed
to the basic tree format already waiting on paper or computer disk.
Any other information to come to light and which might be clarified or
expanded upon from other official sources should be noted for working
on when the time is right, and includes such as relatives known to
have a military record, those known to travel who will therefore have
had their passport applications from 1795 onwards registered and so
on.
Once you have a dear indication of your most recent generations, you
will be able to track down copies of birth, marriage and death
certificates from civil records which go back to the mid 1830s. Since
mandatory registration it is relatively easy to trace a tree back to the
second half of the nineteenth century. Then the really hard work
begins.
Census returns are an excellent source of information relating to
household members, and provide information gained every ten years
since returns commenced in.
For much information prior to civil registration, we must turn to
county records, which can usually and quite easily take the
investigator back to the mid 1700s, perhaps earlier where families
have remained in one area. Records can be consulted at your county
records offices, or sometimes from the International Genealogical'
Index, or Percival Boyd Index, the latter of which covers the period
1538 to 1837.
Local newspapers might provide obituary details; gravestones also are
havens for previously evasive information.
Wills might uncover a skeleton or two for the unsuspecting detective.
The process of accumulation continues. until eventually the trail dries
up. It might take you to various little known sources of documentation,
perhaps relating to small religious orders or now outdated trades and
professions. It might even bring you to the genealogist's dream of
finding his or her family recorded in the Doomsday Book, which
commenced records in 1086.
If your search is local, your task might well be extremely easy in the
initial stages, given that our ancestors were not frequently renowned
for a travelled existence. Many in fact lived their entire lives in one
county, and it is quite conceivable to derive a great deal of information
from one day's sifting through county registers, nearly all of which,
when completed, are stored in local county record offices. Of course if
you are tracing the history of a well-travelled family, then your task
becomes more complicated and of necessity far more costly to you.
Returning to the subject of County Record Offices, here one will find
official census returns providing names, ages, marital status,
occupation and county of birth of everyone living in one particular
household. Such records are released to the public only after 100
years, but when opened are generally pounced upon by, genealogists
for the wealth of information they contain.