It is an irony that there has been no comprehensive book on English
genealogy; it is even somewhat astonishing that there is no book that
guides the researcher beyond the rudiments of genealogical research,
no book that enables the researcher to forge iron- clad links to
original source material and published sources, nor any single work
that can be called the Bible of English genealogy, on a par with Val
Greenwood's Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy. But now, with
the publication of Ancestral Trails by Mark Herber, a work published
in association with the Society of Genealogists (London), a definitive
text on English genealogy is at last available.
Lavishly illustrated and breathtaking in coverage, Ancestral Trails
guides the researcher through the maze of British archives, giving a
detailed view of the records and the published sources available,
analyzing each record and guiding the searcher to finding-aids and
indexes. The early chapters help beginners take their first steps by
dealing with such matters as obtaining information from living
relatives, drawing family trees, and starting research in the records
of birth, marriage, and death, or in census records. Later chapters
guide researchers to the records that are more difficult to find and
use, such as wills, parish registers, civil and ecclesiastical court
records, poll books, and property records. So the book is ideal for
the beginner and the experienced researcher alike, and will enable
those who are persistent enough to trace their ancestry back to the
Middle Ages.
One of the aims of the book--entirely unique to it--is to link
sources together, to ensure that researchers can use material found in
one source to assist a search in other sources. Another aim, somewhat
more modest but equally essential, is to bring the reader up-to-date
with the many important changes that have taken place in English
genealogy over the last few years. These changes include the movement
of census records and the indexes of births, marriages, and deaths to
the new Family Records Centre at 1 Myddelton Street, London; the
opening of the 1891 census; the placement of parish registers in
county record offices; the transcription and indexing of census
returns and parish records; and county and regional boundary
changes. Anything even slightly affecting your research is thus dealt
with and brought up-to-date, making the book an essential reference
and an indispensable field manual. The scope of Herber's work is so
thorough that it's worth looking at the table of contents, where
chapter headings alone tell the tale:
* An introduction to genealogical research
* Personal recollections, photographs, memorabilia
* Organization of your research materials
* General problems in locating and using records
* Civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths since 1837
* Census returns
* Parish registers
* Churchyards and cemeteries
* Directories
* Combining sources of information
* Record offices, libraries, archives, and family history societies
* Wills and administrations
* Roman Catholic, non-Conformist, and Jewish records
* Marriage and divorce
* Maps, land registration, introduction to property records
* Local and social history
* Newspapers, poll books, and electoral registers
* Records of the poor, parish records, and town records
* Records of the Army, Royal Marines, and Royal Air Force
* Records of shipping and seamen
* Records of trades and professions, family businesses, employment
* Oaths, taxation, and insurance records
* Records of the civil and ecclesiastical courts
* Records of Justices of the Peace, criminals, and criminal courts
* Education
* Peerages, the gentry, famous people, and heraldry
* Further property records
* Tracing migrants and locating living relatives
* Research in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Isle of Man, Channel Isles
* Immigration, emigration, and investigations abroad
In addition to the contents noted above, this new paperback edition
contains a supplement of updated or amended information that has
appeared since the publication of the original hardback edition in
1998, a new appendix containing web site addresses, and an expanded
bibliography.
