Sites
There are many commercial websites that have worked in conjunction with archives to provide reliable historical material online. For example, The National Archives at Kew have teamed up with commercial companies such as Ancestry and Find My Past to enable online access to census returns, military records, ships passenger lists and more, whilst the National Archives of Scotland have established a partnership with the Scottish General Register Office and the Court of the Lord Lyon to create an official website – www.scotlands people.gov.uk – where Scottish parish registers, civil registration, probate and census records are available to those unable to travel to the archives.
‘Datasets are digital collections of particular records that can be searched using a name-based index or search engine.’
As a result, there are many commercial subscription-based websites that offer access to datasets, namely digital collections of particular records that can be searched using a name-based index or search engine, and you will often find more than one website offering access to the same records – civil registration indexes and census returns being prime examples (the relevant resources are listed in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively). The differences between the various websites are usually the type of search engine they offer and the cost of accessing the records. For instance, you may find two websites that will give you online access to census records, but one is better for finding ancestors by name and one is more useful for locating addresses on the census if you cannot find an ancestor by name. Equally, one website may offer a better deal for pay-per-view subscriptions and one a better deal on yearly subscriptions, so shop around and work out which ones better suit your needs.
Archives
In addition to the commercial organizations, major archives around the British Isles also give online access to digital copies of some of the documents in their holdings – though of course hard copies can still be ordered if you prefer. Therefore if you cannot get to these archives very easily you may be able to access some material from home. The types of records available from each archive’s website varies widely; for example, The National Archives’ website has a Documents Online area where you can pay to view copies of wills from medieval times to the mid-nineteenth century, as well as many military and naval documents, and you can order images of specific document references that are emailed to you using the online Digital Express facility. In contrast, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland does not yet enable any access to its holdings over the Internet. It is worth checking the websites of both the national and local archives that cover the regions your family were from to see if they have digital collections of any of their holdings, though this should not be considered a substitute to visiting the archives. Despite the growth in online availability, the bulk of the documents you’ll need will almost certainly have to be viewed on-site.
Newspaper Collections
It’s not just archives that are putting their holdings online. Online newspaper archives are increasingly useful for family historians, helping you to locate articles about your ancestors that may otherwise have never been found. It is always worth checking the local newspaper that covered the area your family lived in if you have a date of birth, marriage or death for a prominent ancestor that may have warranted a mention in the personal announcements or obituaries section. In the majority of cases you will still be required to visit the local library or county record office or go to the British Newspaper Library in north London to scroll through the original chronological records.
The most important records are the digitized collections of national newspapers, many of which can be searched by keyword, article type and date range. The Times is one of the most prominent of these; its collections are available online from 1785 to the present day. To access the entire collection of The Times an InfoTrac database connection is needed, to which most major archives and local library networks provide free access. Your local library may be able to give you a PIN number and instructions about how to use the database for free from home. The Scotsman also has an online database of its backdated editions from 1817 to 1950, accessed at http://archive.scotsman.com, and the historic archive of the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes can be searched and viewed for free at www.gazettes-online.co.uk.
Local newspapers tend to be more fruitful when searching for newspaper articles for the majority of our ancestors, but you may be surprised to locate an entry in a national newspaper in the form of criminal reports, court summaries, advertisements, changes of name and address notices, in addition to the many birth, marriage, death and funeral announcements and obituaries they contain. These ever-growing online newspaper archives are so useful to modern genealogists purely because they enable us to find articles about our ancestors by name rather than by searching through months’ or even years’ worth of original newspaper reports.
Portal Websites
There are numerous professional bodies in the field of genealogy that are at hand to aid you in your quest to find as much material as you can about your heritage, and most of the larger organizations attempt to do this as best they can via the web so that they reach the widest group of people. The Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) has a Research Tips section on its website www.ffhs.org.uk, and the Society of Genealogists’ website www.sog.org.uk has genealogy leaflets that can be downloaded giving general advice about how best to go about tracing your roots. Many of the major archives also have subject-related research guides on their websites that guide you through locating and interpreting documents when at these institutions. One of the best places to find out more about the key resources you’ll be using is at www.familyrecords.gov.uk, which describes civil registration indexes, census returns, wills and probate documents and other material.
HOW TO …
… make the most of the Internet
If you are not an experienced computer and Internet user, it is probably worth investing in a good guide, like Peter Christian’s The Genealogist’s Internet or How To Trace Your Family History on the Internet published by Reader’s Digest. These books provide detailed explanations of how to research each aspect of family history using online resources and will guide you through the most popular sites. They also suggest a good range of websites for your online research.
GENUKI
GENUKI is a web-based charitable organization that offers information on all aspects of genealogy in the UK and Ireland. Its database of information and links is organized geographically and by theme on the www.genuki.org.uk website. While this site provides links to many other websites where you can seek help with any problems, the website itself aims to serve its users as a ‘virtual reference library’ and is not designed to answer specific research questions. It is supported by the FFHS and its member societies, who collaborate with GENUKI to provide them with much of the information contained on the site. It is therefore extremely useful for locating rare online indexes and transcriptions for records held in local archives that cannot be found on some of the large commercial dataset sites. As soon as you can pin a branch of your ancestors to one particular place, it is definitely worth visiting the GENUKI website because its sophisticated geographic index will show you all the key online tools and organizations that specialize in that area. Its topographical index is just as useful if there is a certain genealogical subject you are struggling with.
Cyndi’s List
Cyndi’s List is a web-based directory
