Genealogy Chat

Through the censuses I have now found some ancestors who were born in the late 1700s. (Quite a buzz - this is an addictive pastime!)
Where though do I go from here?
Is it a case now of trawling churchyards and parish records manually? Or are there sites still on t'internet where I can find earlier info?
I'm hoping that some of you may have found even earlier relatives and can make some suggestions for me. Thanks in advance.
Sally

you could look on the Family search site to see if they are listed as extracted from parish records .other than that its looking at the parish records themselves. however if you know the parish and church then family search ie Church of Latter Day Saints, (Mormon Church) can order them for you to view at your nearest branch of theirs. cost about £3 ,I think, & they hold them for two weeks

Thanks Shirley.

If you looK at the UKbmd site....many counties have Parish records online.......its pot luck wether the counties and places your intrested in are included in them. There is also freeREG sister site to freeBMD which is updating all the time ...though I have never been able to find any of mine on there.... my best advice would be google...parishes ,churches ,place names, surnames....its amazing what you can find.


Nicky

There are various websites that have transcribed parish entries but you will usually have to subscribe or pay a download fee.

Here are a few that I have used many times in the past:

www.familyhistoryonline.net

www.parishregister.com

www.cosford-database.co.uk (for Suffolk)

http://www.genealogylinks.net/uk/england/somerset/som-parish.htm (for some somerset records)

and I always check Genfair if I can't find online subscriptions as you may just be able to purchase transcriptions in book/fiche/CD form.

I always Google for the parish records I need to see if anything comes up.

Regards, Athena

It's always a matter of luck how far back you can get and how much information you can find.

Some counties and parishes are better covered by the Mormon IGI than others.

Some counties have more active Family History Society groups than others. Some have a lot of information either online or on discs.
http://www.ffhs.org.uk/

Some parishes have online parish clerks who are happy to do lookups for you.

It is worth looking for online wills and other documents
http://www.documentsonline.pro.gov.uk/

Many documents are only available in local records offices but you can get an idea about who has what here
http://www.a2a.org.uk/

Sometimes there is no substitute for actually going and spending time in the relevant records office and looking through their documents........but it can take many hundreds of hours to get lucky and find what is useful. There are often snippets on land records or in parish council sort of meetings, which aren't indexed so you don't know if the name you want is mentioned unless you look yourself.

If one line comes to a dead end try one of the other linking ones. It can be easy to ignore a branch and forget they are just as much your ancestry.

Find out what you can about the places and the occupations connected to your ancestors. It can help you understand why they were where they were and perhaps where they may have moved to or come from.

Good luck

Sue