Using the web to track your ancestors

Published on Tuesday 3 October 2006 12:40

BY ITS very nature the internet has an incalculable number of sites which may help the ancestor hunter put flesh and blood onto the bones of that skeletal scaffolding which you are slowly building up. Here are a few sites that are definitely worth getting to know.

Genuki

This is the place to zoom in on that city or village or corner of Scotland where your forebears lived out their lives.

The site arranges its treasury of information into four tiers:

The British Isles

Scotland

Scottish regions

Scottish parishes

Have a look at all of these and get used to the format. At each level there will be sections on archives and libraries, newspapers, poorhouses and schools, social life and customs and much, much more.Quick tip:

Local family history associations are becoming more and more common and provide a really useful service to anyone wanting to know more about the area. Out-of-town members are welcomed.Now get down to the region that you have identified as the soil from which you spring. Scroll though and see the wealth of material you can access.

You will find old maps and directory entries, articles on trades and industries and a ragbag of goodies that defies cataloguing or listing.

You can go down to the next level - the very parish where all those baptisms, marriages and burials took place. Dip into the site and be delighted.

Familysearch.org

The mighty site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It describes itself as "the largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world" and few would argue with that.

For anyone seeking Scottish roots, it is worth every minute of your time getting to know this site. In particular look out for:

The birth, marriages, deaths search facilities

The simple Census searches for England, Wales, USA and Canada which should catch any of your wandering ancestors

The ancestral files which may lead you to someone else's research that overlaps with yours

The articles and tips which give you the benefit of the experience of the world's greatest genealogical organisation

Quick tip:

Try the search facility on Familysearch.org which allows you to enter two parents and see what offspring appear on those enormous Salt Lake City computers.Scottish Genealogy Society

This is the site of the distinguished Scottish Genealogy Society. A good resource, it is useful in particular for the family history index.

This index has over 2,500 separate files deposited by researchers with the society over a period of almost 50 years. Each file contains research on a specific family or number of families and there may be a number of files for each one. They range from one page to substantial family histories running into the hundreds of pages. They may take the form of research notes, random jottings, family group sheets, pedigree charts, family trees, original documents, transcripts, newspaper cuttings, photographs or fully written histories.

Keep your fingers crossed for this one.

Ancestral Scotland

As you would expect from the site of the folk who run Scotland's tourist industry, VisitScotland has put together a comprehensive package for those of you wishing to visit the hills of home.

Despite the image of the clearances and a mass movement of people into the towns, in the 19th century many folk stayed close to their ancestral roots. Once you have identified where this was, this site is for you.