Family Tree - Getting started

After spending years thinking about it, I've finally made a start at creating a family tree, which I think is a great thing to hand down to your children. My mother is really interested in this, and has written a journal of her earliest and personal memories of her childhood in 1920s Scotland, which is in many respects a vanished world now. It's only when you start to construct a family tree that you realise how much has already been forgotten, and how little you really know about your own ancestors. That's the case in our family, anyway. If I was Lord Bath, with my ancestral seat at Longleat, I could easily trace my family line back to the Tynnnes of 1560, the Norman conquest etc, -but I'm not, and our family seem to have been normal folk with fairly humble occupations. Most of them seem to have worked the land, or being involved in running an inn in Ayrshire.

When I saw on the news that the 1911 census was available online, I thought it looked interesting as a starting point. I tried findmypast.com. You need to buy credits to search in detail, so it's not a free service. It seems well designed, and user-friendly.

Then I followed a link to scotlandspeople.gov.uk, to follow the Scots side of my family, with very little info to go on, not even full names. If you have middle names and addresses this will be a lot easier than it was for me. There is a link to this site below - I think it's really helpful. The 1911 census has not been released for Scotland, just England so far.

Does it work? - yes, it is brilliant! You have a choice of subscriptions, but I have been a bit cautious and bought Pay-as-you-go credits: least expensive package costs £6.95, and for the £10 spent so far I have downloaded birth certificates and marriage certificates, plus various census entries which provide a story of my ancestors back to great-grandfather in 1851. It was quite emotional, because these are handwritten entries (and quite difficult to decipher in some cases). I had no idea of the life of our forebears, but there are clues in flowing longhand, and a brief glimpse into a different world.

Update- at a total cost of £18 I have now traced my grandfather's line back to 1751 through a combination of parish birth, death and marriage certificates, and all of these are viewed as copies of the original document. Down loaded in jpg form, you can zoom in to read difficult handwriting.These documents are impressive!

It's handy to have the Java software for viewing images before you start - the website will advise you of this, but do we ever listen?

If you were thinking about visiting Scotland to follow up your family history, having some research in place first could be really helpful, as well as a way of getting you off the beaten track. I've now been to my mother's old homes in Fife and Glasgow, and it has really created a shared interest for us. We even knocked on the door, and the folks were kind enough to show my mother round a house she hadn't seen since WW2 - she'll never forget it. Next time, I'm definitely going to look for my great-grandfather's house. This is a way to bring history alive.

So I would encourage you to follow up your own family history - I'm finding it very rewarding so far.Scotlandspeople (link below) is a great resource, I'd recommend it very highly. 

Once I had sketched out some basics of my family tree I filled in some blanks by using census returns. In my case I tracked family from 1841 to 1901 in ten year intervals. The fact that people were far more static in one area helped.

Another avenue is to use emigration records: I found the original steamship entries for my grandmother, who sailed to China via Hong Kong in 1914. Using Canadian records I should be able to trace her homeward journey too. 

Findmypast.com for English and Welsh families, which link to 1901 and 1911 census sites. Have used this extensively, but prefer scotlandspeople for its ease of use and photo resources. Ancestry.com is one I haven't tried yet because it seems expensive, but it may be extremely productive. The National Archives at Kew looks promising too - you can order copies of certificates there.