Trace Your Ancestry: Useful sites

Here are some sites that are recommended for searching your family tree. We recommend anybody’s comments on using any of these sites.

www.ancestry.co.uk

This is a really useful place to start with lots of information in one place. However, it costs around £80 for an annual subscription. This has a community space for talking with other members.

www.genesreunited.co.uk

This is a good site too as there are lots of members. There’s lots of information and people tend to get in touch with details of their own searches that may link with your own. However, they might be wrong leads and you could waste time going down a dead end. You can search some information for free, take a six-month subscription for £10 or buy pay-as-you-credit. This has a community space for talking with other members.

www.ancestryaid.co.uk

This is a free service. Good place to start as you’re not paying out but limited membership base.

www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk

This is a resource that tells you the meaning of your family surname.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellysearch

An article about the old Kelly’s Directory.

www.historicaldirectories.org

Historical Directories is a digital library of local and trade directories for England and Wales, from 1750 to 1919. It contains high quality reproductions of comparatively rare books, essential tools for research into local and genealogical history.

www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

This is where you go to order your birth, deaths and marriage certificates. These cost about £7 per certificate.

www.myheritage.com/family-tree-builder

Download free software to create your own family tree.

www.familyrecords.gov.uk/guides/beginners.htm

Good starting point, some introductory guides.

www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyhistory/get_started/#basics

Another good introduction to researching your family tree.

www.familybmd.com

Well respected, free resoucre.

www.familysearch.org

Has selected parish records.

www.rootsweb.com

For genealogy chat and other relevany information.

http://www.mancuniensis.info/

Ancient Salford history.

http://www.genogold.com/

						A simple idea: elusive genealogical data, reliable searchable databases & useful family history links, without the heavy-duty approach. We focus on hard-to-find records, with a total of c.411,740 records at 11/1/07 with c.119,000 more on the way.

www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LAN/Salford/

Really useful database of local Salford resources

http://www.ancestor-search.info/

List of resources.