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The following was scanned from thegoodwebguide to Genealogy (2nd. Ed.) Email address: caroline@thegoodwebguide.com Website: www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk/genealogy/ Any errors are the responsibility of SHS website only. Introduction This book has been exciting to write, exciting as part of the Good Web Guide's overall plan, and exciting as a personal project. At the time of writing, a guide to the worldwide genealogy resources of the internet, aimed at helping UK-based researchers, was badly needed. There were several, good, meaty books out there explaining how to tackle online research into family history From the North American viewpoint, but The Good Web Guide was the first written from the UK perspective. I am grateful to the Good Web Guides for giving me the opportunity to create that book. It is true that there are some brief booklets, some of them listed here, which direct UK-based researchers to useful genealogical websites, and I acknowledge them with gratitude. But it has been a thrilling quest to explore the vast, unruly resources of the internet and try to sift out the very best genealogy websites, both British and international, for the benefit of UK users. I have visited many, many more websites than I have reviewed here, and I have made a serious attempt to select the best and explain why they are the best. IF your favourite website isn't here, don't fume in silence, please. I would love to know about it, have a look at it, and perhaps include it in the next edition, Websites on the internet move, alter, expand and collapse with alarming regularity, so the opportunity to provide online updates is a brilliant idea and a vital new service. You will Find the Good Web Guide's email address listed at the end of this introduction, so please don't be shy about using it! The many hours spent online have been fascinating, rewarding and, at times, exasperating. I have found that there are still, as yet, relatively few sites where the family historian can search so-called primary data online. Perhaps, in fact, this is the moment to decide, once and for all, what counts as primary data, what is secondary and what, in my terminology, is tertiary. When the project started there was no primary data on the internet. Primary data, strictly speaking, is original documents, such as the actual Parish Record hand-written by a parish priest. Some such records, most notably those in the famous IGI (International Genealogical Index), have been transcribed onto microfiches and, more recently, into an online Form on the Internet, but wherever transcription is involved a possibility of inaccuracy creeps in. Misreadings of old-fashioned handwriting is only one problem. Actual mischief becomes a possibility, as is illustrated by one now celebrated case in the 1881 Census record. In this instance, a family appears whose members lived to impossibly advanced ages, fathered children either in their infancy or in their dotage (or indeed even before they were themselves born) and employed improbable servants from countries all over the globe. This is now recognised as an elaborate joke, but it explains why transcribed data has to be considered 'secondary' data. Another example, from my own experience, makes a similar point. In the course of some research I recently had cause to consult the complete works of John Ruskin, which run to more than 30 volumes. To get them transcribed as accurately as possible, the Ruskin Archive had employed three secretaries, each of whom typed their way through the whole lot. The three transcriptions were then superimposed, so as to flag up any possible inaccuracies, and any failures of identicality were individually checked. This is the sort of procedural excellence that top-quality transcription requires. And even then, it still has to be termed 'secondary' data. At the next level are family histories compiled by individuals, and these, though often loosely termed secondary material, are, in my view, tertiary records. It is essential that the novice family historian should treat these with extreme care. When a little bit of a gap opens up in the family tree and absolute certainty can't be assured, it may become all too tempting to take just a tiny leap of faith and 'adopt' an ancestor as part of the tree without being 100 per cent sure that the link is correctly made. Some, perhaps most, family historians are extremely rigorous about checking their sources. A few are not. So, if you approach a general name-search website, and there are plenty to attract you with several good ones being listed here, do so with extreme caution. If you find yourself offered a family tree on a one-name website or by means of a personal GEDCOM (GEnealogical Data COMmunication) file, don't necessarily accept it all as gospel. The mantra of the really dedicated genealogist is 'Check, check and check again'. Please may I urge you to be particularly cautious when you are offered all sorts of not inexpensive gifts, even from bodies so apparently reputable as Burke's Peerage. Keep your discriminating wits about you and check very carefully before you are seduced into thinking that you belong to a noble line, are entitled to bear arms and should accordingly commission an inscribed pedigree complete with ancient seal — let alone have your family crest printed on wall-plaques, mugs and T-shirts! These caveats aside, there are great, great genealogical and family history riches to be explored on the internet. All the web sites I know of that allow you to consult actual transcribed records are here. So are all those, and these are in the majority, that tell you where original records are to be found. There is a growing list of sites where individuals have provided indexes of records elsewhere. In addition, there is also a host of enthralling websites where simply trawling around, and following up slender threads, may lead to wonderful discoveries. If we're being fussy about terminology, a genealogist is one who is seeking to trace his or her family tree back generation by generation, deviating neither to left nor right. A family historian, on the other hand, is captivated by the wider picture and moves out, laterally, to explore the historical or social context in which his or her ancestors lived. Both are entirely honourable pursuits and I confess that, for the sake of brevity, I have used the term 'genealogist' rather than 'family history researcher' within the website reviews that follow. My apologies if this offends any purists. A few other words of explanation may be useful here. When I say 'on the occasion tested...' it usually means that I have taken a family name or other reference that I know should produce a particular result, in order to see whether the outcome is satisfactory. I have had to make some painful exclusions from the list. It was immediately clear that there would not be room to include a list of one-name websites, especially as new ones are being posted daily, but that I could only mention the umbrella organisations through which you can find out about them. In due course, it also became plain that individual local Family History Societies and even good local records centres, like the admirable Borthwick Institute of Historical Research in York, would have to be left out too. For the same reason local and university libraries are not listed here either. I can confidently assure you, however, that the links to all of these are to be found from within other websites reviewed here. One problem I faced was that of overlap. There are many websites that cover a huge amount of ground. Some not only provide basic guidance, list data resources and give details of access, but also offer online tutorials, list coming events, sell books online and link to namesearch facilities. Deciding where to categorise them has been difficult. In the end I have sought to situate each one in the most comfortably applicable chapter as a main entry and then refer to it again under other headings with cross-references. I hope this makes the book as user-friendly as possible. Finally, I have tended to exclude obviously illiterate sites, such as the one in which the words 'granfather', 'hundreth' and 'ficticious' (sic) all appear in a single, quite brief homepage, though I acknowledge that this may be more the fault of the website designer than its owner. A bad homepage is off-putting, nevertheless. Web designers and owners, take note! Well, as I promised, here's how to get back at me if you don't like (or perhaps if you do) what you find here. I'm learning, too, and I will be very glad indeed to hear from you. Caroline Peacock, July 2000, updated February 2002 Email address: caroline@thegoodwebguide.com Website Address - www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk
Ancestral Research on the Web The purpose of this book is to help those who are interested either in tracing the descents of their families from ancestors to the present day (genealogy) or in building a wider picture of those people's lives (family history), by making use of the internet. Many researchers want, in fact, to build up a composite picture, taking the route of both the genealogist and the family historian. Some will already have done quite a lot of research and will be seeking merely to consolidate and extend it with reference to the web. Others will be tackling the subject for the first time. Can I do it all on the web? The first question many researchers ask is, 'Can I do it all on the web?' It is certainly true that there is a lot of information, both genealogical and historical, now available on the web and it is being added to all the time, but the short answer to that question has to be 'No'. Unfortunately, it is not possible, or certainly not yet, to start from scratch and build up a complete family tree using just a PC and a modem. There are two reasons why this is so. One, as explained in the Introduction, is that there are still very few actual records available for consultation online. Much the biggest, fully searchable, online record is without question the famous International Genealogical Index (IGI), which is still being compiled by the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. (It can, of course, also be consulted in microfiche form in county and some libraries, as well as in Family History centres run by the Church). The 1901 census has been digitised for release on the' and further census records may soon be consulted on The 1881 census, however, is available in its entirety on ROM and the 1851 census is partially available by the s means; copies of these can be ordered online. The census was taken in 1801 and all census records, taken every ten years, are lodged at the Family Records Centre London. Things are changing fast, however, and it is c that in a few years' time many more records will searchable online and the situation will be completely transformed. Even when much larger bodies of data transcribed, however, researchers using the web will do well to remember that they will still be consulting secondary records (records that have been transcribed) rather than the original, primary documents. The second reason why it is not possible to do all family history research on the web is that even such material as available doesn't come close enough to the present day. You will still need to start by quizzing older members of your family and getting as much information as you can by this means first. Documents in your family's possession might help fill out the picture. Few families, perhaps, are fortunate enough to have an ancient family Bible in which each generation's names have been carefully inscribed, but many will have other items of memorabilia, such as photograph albums, certificates or old letters and diaries from which to gain clues. Family Records In terms of simply working out a family tree you can, of course, consult the records of Births, Deaths and Marriages (often known as BDMs), also held at the Family Records Centre, and probably travel back fairly easily to 1837 when registration began in England and Wales. Registration did not begin until 1855 in Scotland. Beyond that point you will be dependent on parish registers, some 11,000 transcripts of which are held by the Society of Genealogists. The IGI is made up of material largely taken from parish registers, though this is limited to baptisms and marriages, so is slightly less informative than parish registers, which will record burials and sometimes other events as well. Schools and Apprenticeship records are more difficult to track down, as some are still in the possession of the institutions themselves, in local or county education offices or libraries. The Public Record Office, the Guildhall Library and the Society of Genealogists may all be able to help. Army, Navy, Police and Criminal records are also held at the Public Record Office, as are details of tax returns from the Domesday Book onwards. It is in this sort of area that making use of the internet really comes into its own. As already explained, in most cases you can't yet read the contents of actual documents online but, most important, you can find out which documents are held where. Somewhere in this book you will certainly find a web site that will tell you where your local or county library is and which records it holds. Another will direct you to your nearest Family History Society. Others will tell you which national bodies hold records that you need to consult. Armed with that information you can plan a visit in person to consult such records, having already saved yourself an enormous amount of time by identifying in advance exactly what you want to see. Alternatively, in many cases you can make use of a service that will send you copies. Several such reputable services can be accessed online and not all of them are costly. Some will perform limited searches on your behalf free of charge. Tutorials on the Web Another way in which you can make use of websites reviewed here is for learning more about the methodology of family research. GENUKI, for example, offers an excellent online introduction to the whole matter entitled 'Getting Started in Genealogy and Family History1. You may find it worthwhile to print off these seven pages and keep them by you as you get underway. They do deliver the warning that such notes are no substitute for 'good old-fashioned books' and, as you get more deeply into the quest, you will almost certainly find that you do need to consult books as well, but these notes are still a good way of setting the scene. There are many other websites here that offer similar tutorial articles. It may be worth mentioning that, for the UK-based researcher, it is probably more relevant to make use of a British website for such purposes, rather than an American one. This is not to suggest for a moment that American-based tutorials are unreliable, since in general terms they will give you all the same very sound advice. However, they will not direct you to the right data sources unless you have established at some stage in your search that you are looking to consult British records (assuming this is the case). As a rough guide, URLs that end '.uk' will, of course be British. Those that end '.org' may well be British, and will be public bodies. Those that end '.com' are more likely to be American. Having established that genealogy means going backwards in time, and family history means going outwards in exploration, where do you go next? It would be convenient if the websites on the internet fell neatly into those two categories. They don't. Many of them are not what you would call 'neatly contained' at all. With some 500,000 genealogical websites already posted and more being added every day, the opportunities for sites to assemble a multiplicity of links and become massively sprawling, all-things-to-all-men, gallimaufries of information are enormous. Right at the beginning, the difficulty of classifying websites becomes evident. It seems obvious, for instance, that Family Search, the website that contains the IGI, should head the Searching for Names chapter. In fact, when you start consulting it you discover that it contains a great deal of other information, too, under a catch-all link entitled 'Browse Categories'. This, in turn, leads to a list of countries. From this massive databank you can review the records held in each country: a feature that earns this amazing website a place in the first, general section of this book. Because of this difficulty of classification, do explore all the chapters here. In almost any of the websites reviewed you will find things that will either help or, at the very least, intrigue you. Some will enthrall you, some will amuse. There really is a huge variety out there. I hope, having sifted out some of the less helpful ones, that not too many will infuriate you. Happy hunting! Moving around the Internet How to move around large websites on the internet People already familiar with using the internet, though not necessarily for genealogical research, will probably find that much of what follows is obvious. But those who have never explored the internet as a resource before may be glad of some help, particularly as so many genealogical web sites are extremely large. So I make no apology for the next few paragraphs. Those who know it all already can skip them. First and foremost there is the absolute necessity of typing the URL (website address) correctly. Any error, however minor, will produce a 'page unavailable1 notice. So the first thing to check, if there is a problem, is that the address has been entered correctly. Once you have opened a website and started moving through it, the quickest way back to any earlier pages is to use the Back button at the top left of the page to retrace your steps. Alternatively, look for words such as 'home' or 'main' to return to the 'front' page (usually known as the homepage and always referred to as such here). Scrolling down any given page can be done by two methods. One way is to click repeatedly on the up and down arrows in the right-hand toolbar, which allows you to move slowly and deliberately. To move much more rapidly, click and hold on the block between the two arrows and then slide it up or down the bar to the required new position and release. To move a whole page at a time, you can use the 'page up' and 'page down' buttons on your keyboard. Alternatively, clicking in the scroll bar just below the block will produce an automatic 'page down' result. Sometimes, in the case of very long pages or lists, you may be scrolling through rapidly and appear to come to the end of your options before the list is complete. If the scroll block won't continue down the bar, you should probably just wait a few moments, during which the block will move back up the bar, to give the remainder of the page time to load. To find a particular word or name in very large documents or lists, use the Find facility in your browser (found under the Edit menu), which gives you a search box and will find all occurrences of that word in the page you are viewing. Clicking on a 'link' means moving your cursor to either the relevant picture or words on the screen and clicking rapidly, usually twice with the principal (left-hand) button on your mouse. The link will then usually become highlighted, underlined and/or change colour. When an egg-timer symbol appears this means things are happening, whereas reverting to the cursor arrow or a hand means they are not. Sometimes, clicking on a link will bring up a new, superimposed window. When this happens, you will probably need to enlarge the picture in order to read all the text. You do this by clicking in the 'maximise' square, which is the middle button of the three at the extreme right of the top-of-page toolbar. Once you have made use of the new information, you can either exit {right-hand button of the three) or minimise (left-hand button). Minimising rather than exiting will leave the name of the website just visited still visible in the bottom-of-screen taskbar, which means you can re-open it quickly if you need to. Exiting, on the other hand, would mean that to return you would have to open it from scratch again. Many of the websites in this book offer a 'Search' facility. If a search box has no 'go', 'search', 'find' or similar button, press the return key on your keyboard to initiate a search. Indeed, it is often quicker to do it this way, though you will find that a few search facilities insist on your using the button provided. Some searches require you to fill a succession of boxes with information before a search can be activated. Moving through a sequence of this sort can often be done more quickly by using the 'tab' key (above 'Caps Lock'} on your keyboard than by moving the cursor each time with the mouse. Incidentally, many such sequences mark the compulsory boxes, as opposed to those you can leave blank, with an asterisk or similar device. To leave one website and move to a completely new one, put the cursor in the 'Address' box at the top of the page and click with the left-hand mouse button once. This will highlight the current address and, as soon as you start typing, the address of the new site will immediately replace it. It is not necessary to type 'http://' each time - simply type exactly the letters that appear as the URL in this book, usually starting with 'www'. It is not normally necessary to observe capital letters, though they appear to matter on GENUKI-based sites. Simply pressing return on your keyboard, or 'go' if you prefer, will trigger the search for that website. Once a website is open, its name will appear (probably in an abbreviated form) at the very bottom of your on-screen page, somewhere between 'Start' on the extreme left and the clock on the extreme right. If you open several sites, or windows, simultaneously, you can use these newly created name-buttons to move between them. If a website comes up as unavailable, clicking on the word 'Refresh' very seldom sorts the problem, though it is always worth one try. Normally, it is better to abandon the quest and return on a later occasion, though do check before you leave that you have typed the site address correctly. Browsers vary in the cleverness with which they manage to find incorrectly addressed sites. If you find you have indeed made an error in the address, click on the address box twice rather than once, dismissing the highlighting, and then alter the necessary letters before pressing return or clicking on 'go' to try again. See p. 23 for further ideas. Using a search engine to find the names of likely sites of interest is going to be one of the principal ways in which you use the internet for your genealogical researches. There are numerous portals (search engines restricted to specific fields of interest), general search engines, and meta-search engines (which search, in a single operation, the resources of many general search engines) available to you. I have my doubts about the usefulness of meta-searchers, because they normally 'present' your question to the individual search engines by means of a single, universal method, and this may not always work. They can then appear to have searched many different resources, without actually having done so. If you do decide to use a meta-searcher, one of the best is www.allsearchengines.com. Good general search engines include Yahoo, Hotbot (now associated with Lycos), Altavista and so on. My preferred first choice is always Google, for the following reasons: first, it is quick; second, it doesn't clutter its pages with advertisements; third, it lists the most likely matches first; fourth, and very importantly, it gives you a brief guide to what each website is about; and, finally, if you know the title of the organisation you are seeking but don't know the online address, you can try clicking on the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button rather than the normal 'Search' button. Usually you will then hop to the relevant web site immediately. On the whole, websites are surprisingly forgiving. If you start loading a page and, as soon as you see the first part of it, realise it is not what you want, you don't have to wait for it to finish loading completely before going elsewhere. You can use your back button or, if the index you came from is still visible, click on an alternative link before the 'wrong' page is complete. You may think this would cause a crash but in practice it very seldom does. Many search facilities, both those of general search engines and those within individual web sites, will allow the use of some linking words, typically 'and', 'or' and 'not'. Some don't, though, and some (Google is one) assume 'and' automatically if there are two or more words in the search and inform you rather condescendingly that using it is unnecessary. In addition, some (such as Lycos advanced search) offer options such as 'the exact phrase' or 'all the words in any order'. This latter is useful when, for instance, you are looking for a name but don't know for certain how.: will be presented, whether as 'John William Smith' or as 'Smith, John William'. Often, you can only find out how sophisticated any given search is by experimenting. At various points you may be offered downloadable documents as PDF (Portable Document Format) files, that are only readable if you have an Adobe Acrobat Reader. In these instances you are normally offered the relevant button for obtaining the reader on the spot, although this free program now comes pre-installed on most computers. Clicking on an Adobe Acrobat Reader button brings up a new window, with a long list of versions of the reader, from which you select 'Acrobat Reader - Windows' (unless you are working with an Apple Macintosh or another operating system). Now you are offered a new list from which you select the most appropriate version, typically in English (either with or without 'search' depending on how much memory you have available— with 'search1 it takes about 6 megabytes) and the most recent date. The next stage is to fill in a name and email address, after which you can again instruct to download. Wait for another window to appear, in which you check that you are downloading to disk, and click again. A lengthy transmission process will now ensue, taking probably half an hour or so, during which your window will show pages 'flying' from the globe on the left into an open yellow file. Having done all this, you then have to find the file in your hard drive, going in through Windows Explorer or equivalent. It will be pretty recognisable anyway because of the large memory requirement, and will be in there under a title something like 'rs4o5eng'. Double click on that to 'unzip' it, and follow instructions. Now, returning to the file you originally wanted to download and read, you should have no problem. Finally, I refer you to a very useful, relatively recently posted web site called - Newbies Helping Newbies. A group of friends in Forbes, New South Wales, Australia has been meeting for some time to pool their collective knowledge of computers and share their enjoyment of genealogy. The next obvious step was to put their assembled information together in a computer-accessible form, initially just fot use by themselves and others who asked. Now the Newbies have a website, which is a model of clarity and does a remarkably good job of de-mystifying both the Internet as a whole and genealogy web sites in particular. For de-bugging problems of internet use, they are especially helpful. The genealogy stuff is, of course, written from an Australian starting point, though it is still very good. See Newbies Helping Newbies at - www.angelfire.com/mt/forbesnewbies/index.html. Updated . . . 29 / 12 / '04 |