What materials are available?
Researching your past is like living a good Sherlock Holmes mystery. You often have tiny fragments of information that are clues, but how on earth do you put it all together and work out what the clue means?
Researching material that is available is the obvious answer, but if you are new to researching, knowing where to look and what to look at is just as confusing. If you have read through the Where do I start? section we already know how to break up our researching tasks. If you have not read through this section yet we suggest you return to it now.
The type of material available is vast and the following are just a selection of the most common types used by those new to genealogy.
Civil Registration
Parish Records
Census Records
Burial / Cremation Registers
Probate / Wills Records
Newspapers
Directories
With the knowledge of our data facts we can begin to determine our next course of action by looking through the most likely data material sources. Here are a few examples of how we might start:
Looking for Data between 1841 & 1891 and have an idea of an area.
Try Census returns. The 1881 Census has been indexed and cross indexed with Surname, Enumeration Districts, Census Place and Birth Place. The 1891 Census is now also available on microfiche. Many UK Family History Societies have Surname indexed the 1851 & 1891 Census for their area.
Looking for a Date between 1838 and 1998 no idea of area but know a name.
Try St. Catherine's Surname index for Births, Marriages & Deaths. From 1st July 1837 ( the start of civil registration in the UK ) and 1998 (this date is given because it usually takes 2 years for Data to become available in registers open to the public on a local basis). From here you can make a list of all the people with the same details that you are looking for. You can then start to follow up any specific ones that seem possible, or you may have to look at them all in order to eliminate them until you find the correct person.
You find a reference - now what?
When you first start out researching it is so tempting to feel a certificate of some sort will be required. This should not always be the next course of action. Knowing a location and/or name can help you pinpoint a specific area to look next. You could be able to look at Parish records for this area and try to find details of Marriages, Deaths and Christenings (the LDS Family History Centers located all over the United Kingdom can be very good for all of these tasks). Any of these options could provide you with more information to continue your search (all for free; certificate purchasing can be a very costly way to obtain data that is out there just waiting to be read).