copies of pedigrees for many distinguished families from around the British Isles. You can visit their website at www.college-of-arms.gov.uk to find out more about their history and the services they provide.
The College of Arms’ records can only be searched by members of staff, who are still known as heralds today. However, Frederick Arthur Crisp and Joseph J. Howard published a series of pedigrees based on the heralds’ visitations that include twentieth-century descendants, entitled Visitation of England and Wales and Visitation of Ireland. In addition, in 1952 Sir Anthony Richard Wagner released The Records and Collections of the College of Arms, which may be worth consulting if you believe a branch of your family may have been entitled to bear a coat of arms at one time.
Online Pedigrees
For those of us who are not so lucky as to have had our family history already published, it is worth scouring the many genealogy websites that enable researchers to share their family trees online. As has been explained in Chapter 2, there are many websites where you can upload your tree as you go along, including www.genesreunited.co.uk, www.ancestry.co.uk and www.myheritage.com, so why not use these resources to find out if there is somebody else out there looking for some of the same ancestors as you? Many of these sites allow you to search their database of records for free simply by entering the name of a particular ancestor you would like to find. Usually you will be provided with a limited amount of detail about all the people in the database that match your criteria, and if you subscribe to the website you can email other users who seem to be researching the same people to ask their permission to view their research in full. Some websites provide free access to other people’s online pedigrees, such as http://familysearch.org and www.genealogy.com.
Guild of One-Name Studies
The Guild of One-Name Studies is an organization that supports researchers keen to investigate the origin of a particular surname. Its members are interested in everybody who has the surname they are studying, though they might restrict their study to a certain geographical area, which means they are not looking at one particular pedigree. Nevertheless, their records sometimes include lineages of many families. Visit www.one-name.org to find out if a one-name study has been established for any of the surnames on your tree. For example, the Izzard surname is listed, so if you suspect you have a connection to Eddie Izzard, you can visit the site, click on the link and learn more about the origins of the surname and its derivatives, as well as how often it appears in historical documents through time.
The website provides a useful profile for some of the registered One-Name Studies, including their aims and the data that has been gathered so far, along with contact details for the Guild member who posted the information. You can contact that member if you have a specific question you would like to ask about their findings. The Guild supports projects designed for experienced researchers, so if a surname you are interested in is not registered with the Guild, it is wise to research your own family tree first and then build up a portfolio of information about that particular name before registering the surname and starting a study. There are guidelines about how to begin a one-name study on the website.
SUMMARY
Check the following to see if some of your proposed research has already been done:
• The records of the Society of Genealogists
• Burke’s and Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage, and The Records and Collections of the College of Arms
• Indexes of published pedigrees
• Genealogy websites
• The Guild of One-Name Studies, for a particular surname (especially if it is unusual)
Remember … Check the Evidence
It is imperative that you find out the sources of any research undertaken by other people before you even consider incorporating this data into your own family tree – it is vital that you can double-check their accuracy. Even if somebody else’s research has been published, their work is still liable to human error and it is not unusual to find a pedigree published in two books that has different dates of birth or death cited in each version. Therefore, check as many editions as you can for each published pedigree so that you can compare the information they contain, and then follow up the document references in the footnotes and examine the original sources.
Just as you did when you were collecting information from relatives, you should treat all second-hand evidence as merely a guideline to follow, rather than gospel truth. Use it as a short cut to the records that will allow you to verify the information, rather than taking the data at face value as proof of the past. Family trees published on the web are even less reliable simply because anybody can add to genealogy websites without needing to authenticate their entries. If you do contact another researcher who has seemingly investigated one of your family branches, do not be afraid to ask them how they came to their conclusions and what sources they have used. You can then follow up these sources yourself to see if you find them convincing as evidence.
‘Treat all second-hand evidence as merely a guideline to follow, rather than gospel truth.’
Despite these words of warning, family tree sharing facilities are fantastic genealogical tools, particularly the online versions that enable researchers to share ideas and learn from each other’s work. Once you have completed your research you should consider making it into a book, perhaps using one of the family tree software packages suggested in Chapter 2 – many of which include a publishing suite – so that you can deposit your work at the Society of Genealogists or your local record office for other researchers to benefit from.
Researching Your Genealogy Online
Genealogy as a pastime is at its most popular in the twenty-first century, partly thanks to the wealth of resources that have been made available online to millions of people at the click of a mouse. Whereas family history was once the domain of the upper classes who had access to (or were keen to prove) their pedigrees, and die-hard genealogists prepared to spend hours scouring reels of microfilm in search of each new name on their family tree, now anybody with a vague interest in their roots, regardless of status or origin, can start investigating. Because there is such an enormous interest in the subject, there will always be somebody online who can be of assistance if you are struggling with your research.
There are literally millions of genealogy websites out there – just try typing ‘family history’ into Google and see how many hits you receive! This can make it difficult to know where to begin, so here we’ll de-mystify the process and highlight the most useful sites you’ll need to visit. Basically, the core resources you will be working from can be broken down into the following categories:
• Commercial or institutional websites supplying access to datasets, images of records, or indexes to documents (‘dataset’ websites)
• Websites of genealogical organizations that provide advice, or links to other resources (‘portal’ websites)
• Websites where you can link with other users and join social networks (‘network’ websites)
Dataset Websites
