Maris Ancestry: Resources

Page Three: Miscellaneous Resources

This page includes a range of resources which you may find helpful. Page One concentrates on sources of information related to civil registration of births, marriages & deaths for England & Wales. Page Two covers access to census information for England & Wales.

Getting Started

A useful resource for newcomers to family history research, FamilyRecords.gov.uk provides a comprehensive overview of the information available to family historians and where to find it. There is also a seven step "Beginners Guide".

GENUKI is an excellent resource for beginner and expert alike. Content varies from county to county, but the site contains many useful links on a wide variety of topics related to genealogy and is always worth a visit. If you have not used GENUKI before start with the Guidance for First-Time Users.

Records of civil registration of births, marriages & deaths and census returns are important sources of information to anyone getting started on their family tree. For further information, see our BMD page and our Census page.

Top of Page

The Origins Network

This site provides online access to an extensive and growing collection of records held by the Society of Genealogists and other repositories. The Origins Network includes British Origins, Irish Origins and Scots Origins together with Origin Search Pro.

British Origins includes Marriage Records (Boyd's Marriage Index alone includes 7 million names), Wills record, Apprenticeship records, Court records and Militia Records. The site also includes Boyd's London Burials Index and a growing number of 1841 and 1871 census returns for England & Wales. See Resource Page One for futher details of census coverage.

Irish Origins includes Census records and census substitutes, Wills records, Militia records, Passenger Lists, Maps, Plans and Photographs.

Scots Origins provides a facility to order transcriptions of Birth, Marriage and Death records from 1700 to 1990 and of census returns for 1861 and 1871.

Origin Search Pro is a specialised genealogical search engine which continually searches for new sites and provides an enhanced search capability allowing keywords and page types to be specified as well as names.

Access to The Origins Network is "Pay per View" with time periods ranging from 72 hours up to one year. There are separate tariffs for British Origins, Irish Origins and Origin Search Pro. Alternatively, subscribers can opt for Origins Total Access covering all three at reduced cost. Scots Origins is NOT available in any subscription package.

Family History Online

The Federation of Family History Societies provides access to a growing number of databases through Family History Online. This site is also FREE to search. To access records, users must purchase credits. Charges vary from 3p to 9p per item and are displayed on listings of search results. Registration is required.

Parish Locator

We regard this excellent free download as an essential tool in our box. It contains a database of all the parishes in the UK with map references and allows distances between parishes to be calculated at the click of a mouse. Another very useful feature is the ability to plot the location of neighbouring parishes within a specified radius. The programme can be downloaded from the Bennett Family History pages.

Top of Page

GenesReunited

The Genes Reunited site can be used in two ways. Hosting your tree - entered either manually or by uploading a Gedcom file - is FREE. Users of the site can then find your names in the index and make contact with you. Alternatively, you can take out a subscription. This gives you the additional benefit of being able to initiate contact with other members and to view the trees of other members. Through GenesReunited, we have made contact with a considerable number of distant cousins and, as a result, have been able to add a significant amount of information to our database.

International Genealogical Index

In common with most other family historians, we have made extensive use of the IGI. We have learned through experience, however, that the quality of data varies enormously. Whilst a degree of reliance can be placed on records which come from a "controlled extraction" batch (i.e. those extracted from parish registers in a controlled fashion), those which do not have to be treated with a degree of caution. For this reason, we recommend the excellent site maintained by Hugh Wallis which lists "controlled extraction" IGI Batch numbers for each parish. There is, of course, no substitute for verifying all research by reference to original source material.

LDS Family History Centres

If you do not live close to the relevant record office or library, LDS Family History Centres provide an excellent means to access copies of source material. We have spent many hours in our local centre perusing parish registers, bishops transcripts, land tax returns and many other items. The volunteer staff are very helpful and you do not have to be a church member to use the centres.

Copies of some records covering the immediate locality may be held on the premises and other information on film or fiche can be ordered for a small charge. The LDS Catalogue is the place to go to find out what is available. Click here to find your nearest Family History Centre.

Top of Page

Family History Software

When we started our family history research over eight years ago, we began using Personal Ancestral File. We found that it met all our requirements and the good news is that it is a FREE download from the LDS church website. Click here for further details. The only major drawback has been its inability to produce European style vertical charts.

At long last, we have discovered Family Tree Builder which is a FREE download from MyHeritage. As long as you are comfortable importing and exporting GEDCOM files (or are willing to re-enter data), this package has an impressive range of features. Of particular interest to us is the ability to produce Ancestor, Descendant and Close Family charts in vertical format as PDF files. It is also possible to produce Ancestors and Descendants reports in an attractive format with the option to output in Rich Text format for editing as well as PDF. Last - and by no means least - Family Tree Builder provides access to a free version of The Complete Genalogy Reporter (TCGR). This produces book reports in PDF format comprising ancestry, narrative description of ancestors and relatives, family trees of each family and a range of indexes.

If you like the book reports, you can purchase the full version of TCGR at modest cost from Nigel Bufton Software. This has a wider range of features, much more control over content and can produce reports in HTML format for uploading to web sites. It also includes the option to add hyperlinks to PDF files so that they can be navigated on screen in a similar way to a web site.