How to Trace Your Family Tree: Discover Your Personal Roots and Heritage: Everything from Accessing Archives and Public Record Offices to Using the Internet - Hardcover

This title offers accessible and clear advice on discovering your family's history in the UK, explaining the best research techniques, how to log and collate your research. It contains all the information needed to start your own search including a useful checklist to guide through each stage. You can experience the amazing thrill of tracing back your bloodline hundreds of years and discovering who your ancestors were and what their lives were like. It contains over 135 illustrations, including diagrams, contemporaneous photographs, document facsimiles, sample family trees and artworks. It includes sections on Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Channel Island records, as well as English. This book introduces the subject of genealogy in a highly practical form, and explains the process of tracing and finding ancestors in the British Isles in a simple and easy-to-follow way. The book begins with the very basics of starting to research, guiding the reader through each stage, from finding clues in photographs and naming patterns, to creating drop-line charts and starting to draw up a family tree. The next section goes back to the early 1800s, and explains how to take investigations further by using all kinds of sources, both in archive form and on the internet, especially census information. The book also goes on to explain how to find relatives through their professions, apprenticeships, education, and military records. This useful guide to genealogy will help you discover your roots, identify your British ancestors, and unlock the secrets of your family heritage.

Kathy Chater has taught genealogy and associated research subjects for many years, and has a Diploma on Genealogy and the History of the Family. A member of the Society of Genealogists, she has traced her own family to beyond the 1600s.