How to grow your family tree

May 3 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

In the first of a series of features on genealogy, marking Local History Month, Laura Davis finds out how to start tracing your ancestors

YOU no longer need to have a coat of arms and a huge ancestral hall to be interested in your roots.

Whether your ancestors worked on the land or were shipped off to Australia, thanks to the internet it has never been an easier or better time to start unearthing your family’s past.

And with another series of Who Do You Think You Are? on the BBC later this year, celebrities are leading the way.

If you weren’t a huge fan of history at school, the idea of looking back through dusty records can be quite daunting.

But once you get the family history bug, you’ll find it soon becomes a very rewarding hobby, says David Stoker, manager of the Liverpool Record Office, a useful source for family historians, both amateur and professional.

It is one of the busiest in the country, with 50,000 people passing through its doors each year and around 70% of those are interested in finding out more about their ancestors.

“People tend to become particularly interested in family history when they find out where their ancestors lived and how they lived,” says David.

“It becomes a social history for them and many people go around the city to find the places they lived and worked and how much it has changed.”

Not everyone is able to visit the record office in person, so there are research officers available for £16 per hour to do the work for them.

“We get a lot of enquiries from America, Canada, Australia and sometimes Ireland because of Liverpool’s links abroad and history of emigration,” adds David.

“But we also get people who, because of their busy working lives or other commitments, can’t come in and do it for themselves.”

Before you set out on a unique journey into your family’s past, follow our advice to getting the most from your research.

WHERE TO BEGIN

Don’t worry about record offices just yet, the best place to begin researching your family tree is at home.

By talking to as many relatives as possible, you’ll soon build up an idea of who was related to who, and how many children Great Aunty Dot had.

Ask your oldest relatives for family names, dates and places and look for birth certificates, letters, newspaper cuttings, diaries or anything that will fill in the background on your family.

It’s also a good idea to decide what you want to find out. Are you drawing up a simple family tree or do you want more of an idea of what life was like for your ancestors?

Are you going to follow just one branch of the family (a one name search) or try and get an overview of everyone?

“The initial thing we always advise people is to do some preliminary research before they come in,” says David.

“We recommend they ask around their family and try to find certificates of birth, marriage and death that will give them a starting point. They may have a family Bible with births and deaths written in. There are a lot of books giving good advice on searching for your family history, in libraries or in the shops, as well as websites. The libraries here subscribe to www.ancestry.com so people can come in and get free access to it.”