Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy: The definitive reference guide to tracing your family history

• Oral accounts by people who were there

Secondary sources consist of:

• Accounts written by third parties after the event

• History books

• Stories passed down within families over the years

Locating this evidence to build a family tree, learn more about these relatives and support the stories that are passed down through generations are the core tasks of a genealogist, so it’s time to focus on what material you are going to use to achieve these goals, and where to find it. Roughly speaking, there are two main types of record you’ll encounter during your work – primary sources and secondary sources.

Primary sources come in many shapes and forms, such as contemporary documents that survive from the period, or even oral accounts that are told to you by people who were present at an event. Of most use are officially created sources, such as birth, marriage and death certificates, as their creation and content have been governed and directed by legally binding requirements. These can be more reliable as evidence than personal documents like diaries, which are open to artistic licence and subjective opinion. Official sources are only as reliable as the people filling them in, however, and it is not uncommon for ancestors to ‘forget’ important details, or deliberately provide misleading information. The lesson here is never to take anything at face value.

Secondary sources are accounts written retrospectively by people who were not present, but may have had access to primary material, and as such can be subject to errors. Examples are history books written about a major event, such as the Boer War or life in a workhouse. While secondary sources will play a part in your research, you should always endeavour to locate primary evidence to back up your suspicions and findings. Stories passed down through the generations also fall into the secondary source category, unless the story-teller was actually present at the event.

SUMMARY

The archival pyramid:

National and specialist collections

Municipal or county archives (area administrative records)

Local studies centres (general material)

Your initial investigations within your family will have already generated both primary evidence, in the form of documents, photos and letters found around the house, and secondary material from relatives in the form of anecdotes told to them by their ancestors. The next task is to find additional primary and secondary material to extend your family tree. Once this is done, you can then proceed to a wider search for information that will place your relatives in their historical context. It is time to turn to record offices, libraries and museums.

Where to Look for Evidence: Archives, Record Offices, Libraries and Museums

What is an Archive?

The majority of primary material will be housed in record offices, libraries and museums, scattered across Britain – or, if your ancestors came from overseas, all around the world. Many people loosely refer to these institutions as ‘archives’. Although this isn’t the place for academic debate, in technical terms an archive is actually a collection of documents, manuscripts or other primary evidence, although the term is more often used to describe the building or institution in which the collection is housed. It is in this context that the word ‘archive’ will be used in this book.

For those of you who have never been to an archive before, it can be a daunting experience, but one well worth undertaking. Each archive is unique, will hold a different variety of records, and will have its own way of collecting, storing, cataloguing and indexing its records. Bearing in mind that information about your ancestors could turn up anywhere, the first step of your research strategy should be to work out which archives are going to be of most use to you first. The following notes should help you do this, but don’t forget that you will probably need to visit more than one archive over the course of your research, and will often have to return to the same archive many times.

Local Studies Centres

There is a rough hierarchy to archives, ranging from general material held at local studies centres, via the administrative records of a municipal area or county, to national and specialist collections. It is advisable to start at the bottom of this archival pyramid first, and begin by looking for information at a local studies centre. These are often located in a local library, and hold records relating to the immediate area, which may cover a few towns and villages, or all the places situated within a borough. These records can include newspaper collections, rate books, electoral registers, trade directories, photographic material and private family papers deposited by local gentry, as well as maps and plans of the area. You will also find secondary sources here, such as histories of the local area, and if you are really lucky you may also find national collections – indexes to birth, marriage and death certificates, or census returns – on microfilm or microfiche.

The amount of material held varies greatly from one local studies centre to another. Some hold vast amounts of primary material while others are less well stocked. Therefore it is worthwhile contacting your local studies centre beforehand to enquire exactly what type of records they hold. If your ancestors did not live locally to where you now live, you will need to visit a local studies centre near the place they were from. Geography is very important to pinpoint the archives you need to visit.

‘If your ancestors did not live locally to where you now live, you will need to visit a local studies centre near the place they were from.’

Family History Centres

If you do not have a local studies centre in your area, then you may want to see if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) have set up a Family History Centre in the vicinity. The LDS Church is an American organization founded by the Mormons in Utah. It has been collecting genealogical records from around the world for the last century, depositing them at its Family History Library in Salt Lake City. There are many Family History Centres around the British Isles and the rest of the world where duplicate copies of many of their central records are held, ranging from parish registers to ancestral files deposited by other researchers. You can find your local Family History Centre from the www.familysearch.org website by entering a country of interest in the Find a Family History Centre Near Your Home search box and then scrolling through the alphabetical list of places for that country.

County Archives

In the hierarchical structure of archives, county record offices (CROs) are the next port of call. As the title suggests, a county record office is a central repository for administrative documents relating to the county, and each county has at least one. (Some have more than one, like Devon, which has three; the Devon Record Office in Exeter, the North Devon Record Office in Barnstaple and the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office in Plymouth.)

In general, most CROs hold census returns, rate books, electoral registers, trade directories, photos and prints, local government documents, maps, parish registers, civil registration indexes, private company and family papers and local history books for every place within the county (rather than just a few towns and villages covered by a local studies centre). In some cases a CRO will store duplicate copies of material held by local study centres, but in other areas the two types of repository will hold completely different sets of records on any given place within that county. It is always worth visiting the local studies centre and the CRO for the area in which you are researching, because there is bound to be at least something extra you will find in the CRO.

Of particular importance are the records deposited by locally important families, who historically would have owned much of the land within the county and therefore played an important part in your ancestors’ lives. Their estate records, rent books, employment accounts, correspondence and records as local justices of the peace will contain thousands of names, many of which may be relevant to you and your search. However, it’s worth remembering that especially wealthy families owned land in more than one county – so if you can’t find what you are looking for in one CRO, it might be worth checking to see if important family papers for principal landowners are deposited elsewhere, possibly in another county where they had their main residence.

If your ancestors lived on the border of a county you should investigate whether the county borders have changed at any time. For example, Bredon’s Hardwick, now in Gloucestershire, was for many centuries described as being in Worcestershire. As a result, some records for people who have lived in Bredon’s Hardwick are located in Worcestershire Record Office, while other records are held in the Gloucestershire Archives. Equally, if your ancestors lived on the border of one or more counties they may have moved around and spent time living on both sides of the boundary at various times, in which case there is probably material about them to be found in the record offices for both those counties.

Municipal Archives

It is also worth considering the collections of major cities, which are often stored in their own municipal record offices or archives. Many places have more than one institution for you to visit. For example, London is served by the London Metropolitan Archives, the Corporation of London Record Office and the Guildhall Library, each of which holds important historical and genealogical information.

National Archives

Each country in the British Isles has its own national archive where documents concerning central government are deposited. These are:

• The National Archives (TNA) based in Kew in West London, covering England, Wales and the UK

• The National Archives of Scotland (NAS) at Edinburgh

• The National Archives of Ireland, based in Dublin

• The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast

There are also major collections relating to Wales at the National Library of Wales (NLW). Descriptions of each institution are provided in Section Five.

The holdings of each of these archives are not strictly determined by geography. If your ancestors lived outside England then you may still need to visit The National Archives at Kew as well as the particular country’s national archive, as the centralization of administrative records to London has affected all of the countries at some point in time. A change in the location of government does not always mean historic archives have moved to that new location. Each country also has a central General Register Office from which family historians order duplicate copies of birth, marriage and death certificates (see Section Two). The advice provided in Section Three relating to specific topics of family history will explain when you will need to visit each of the national archives, and what records you should use when you arrive.

Specialist Genealogical Libraries

There are other centralized archives that hold some documents that are not accessible at the above-mentioned national and regional archives, as well as duplicate copies of those that are. The Society of Genealogists based in central London has copies of many parish registers from county record offices around the UK, as well as indexes to records held in other archives, documents relating to people around the British Empire, and much more.

Libraries

It is also worth visiting your local library as well as an archive. Not only will many libraries play host to your nearest local studies centre, many have now opened specialist family history services, given the popularity of the subject these days. Furthermore, many libraries hold important manuscript collections that are worth visiting in their own right, as well as important reference works that will play a crucial part in shaping your knowledge of how and where your ancestors lived. This is especially true at national level. The British Library in St Pancras, London, contains a copy of most books that have ever been published, but – as you will discover in Section Three – it also has a collection of genealogy records for people who lived in the British Empire, including records of baptism, marriage and burial in India. There are similar national libraries for Scotland (in Edinburgh), Wales (Aberystwyth), the Republic of Ireland (Dublin) and Northern Ireland (Belfast). Many academic libraries also hold important collections of primary evidence.

Museums

Finally, do not forget to visit museums, both specialist – such as the National Railway Museum or National Coal Mining Museum (both featured in Who Do You Think You Are? when Sue Johnston and Lesley Garrett went looking for their ancestors) – and local, such as the Rochdale Museum where much research into Bill Oddie’s ancestors took place. Museums will be full not only of documents, but objects, artefacts, clothes, engines, machinery, books, sporting memorabilia – anything from the past that shows what life was like for your ancestors. This is where you will finally begin to understand the era in which your relatives lived, to encounter history up close, and find out about some of the events they lived through.

Museums can also help you to identify some of the bits and pieces you’ve found during your own research within the family. Items of clothing or household objects can be taken to local museums or national ones such as the Victoria and Albert Museum (for clothing and textiles especially), where curators can help you date them. Military memorabilia such as medals can often be interpreted at places such as the Imperial War Museum.

How to Find an Archive

There are various online databases to help you find libraries, archives, record offices, museums and repositories around the UK, and even around the world. Most of these allow you to enter the name of a place or use an interactive map to display a list of all the nearest archives to a particular area. The ARCHON Directory is perhaps one of the most useful databases to start with, and it’s available from The National Archives website at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ archon. It contains addresses, telephone numbers, websites and street maps for local and major repositories all over the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, and you can search by region or by entering the name of the place in which you’re interested. Visit the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) at www.scan.org.uk/directory/index. htm to find an additional alphabetical directory of Scottish archives.

If, as outlined earlier, you want to find out where the principal records of a particular landowning family are kept, the best way is to search the National Register of Archives, now part of The National Archives. You can view their paper indexes in person at their main search room at Kew, but a quicker route is to key the name of the landowning family into their online database at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra and click on ‘Family Name’. You will then be given a list of all archives holding relevant material. So if you were looking for a connection to the Marquess of Sligo, as actor John Hurt was, you could type in ‘Sligo’ and quickly learn that relevant records were stored in the National Library of Ireland.

Working in Archives