Email address: caroline@thegoodwebguide.com

Website: www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk/genealogy/

Any errors are the responsibility of SHS website only.

In this chapter you will find the websites of major organisations that are likely to be central to your research, as well as some smaller ones that either offer good tutorial assistance or list a large number of relevant links. Some of these websites are so extensive that it is only possible to give a glimpse of their riches. You will simply have to spend some time exploring them to discover the full range of information they provide.

Originally these pages were set up to support BBC2's Bloodties programme, but have been expanded into a very creditable family history section. It offers one of the best introductions to the whole business of doing UK-based family history research on the web. Warning: clicking on any of the headings under 'Find' at the top of the purple, left-of-page margin will take you to the main BBC website, which is not what you want. Move only between the links under 'Jump To'.

If you're fairly new to genealogy, start with this excellent introduction, currrently the first link under Features in the menu. It will guide you through using family resources, searching public records, consulting censuses and other materials.

This excellent eight-part guide by Else Churchill is very useful when you've outgrown the basic information sources and are ready to tackle wills, directories, poor law records, court records, migration records and other less obvious sources.

Heraldry/Coats of Arms are two similarly clear explanatory pages.

History is interesting but probably only of use if it happens to address a topic you are researching, because it is focused on the BBC's own recent programmes rather than being a directory of history resources in general.

Links and Resources leads to good basic lists of all the major websites (detailed elsewhere in this book), helpfully divided by country: England and Wales first, then Scotland, then Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Victorian Studio Photographs gives a comprehensive guide to the family history clues that can be gained from family photos.

Mug Shots is a gallery of rather poignant Victorian photos from the Birmingham Police Museum archive. If you are lucky (or unlucky?) you may find one of your ancestors here.

Afro-Caribbean Family History provides a very welcome overview of the sources available and the particular challenges of tracing afro-caribbean ancestors.

Tips by Kathy Chater could save you some time and effort in your researches.

Message Boards are well used, but are perhaps too general and too populated with newbies to be of much use. For more knowledgeable forums you're probably best to graduate to the subject-specific forums hosted by RootsWeb (see p.39)

GENUKI: The UK & Ireland Genealogical Information Service www.genuki.org.uk

Without question the most important website of general use to UK researchers, and one you will return to again and again, whatever your level of expertise, GENUKI is a 'Virtual reference library' of genealogical data. It is important to understand that this is mainly a library of primary source material, drawn from historical documentation, and is not secondary (or tertiary - see Introduction) material such as GEDCOM files assembled by individuals. To get an immediate idea of its massive scope, click on the logo in the central box. It hosts an enormous number of pages on the GENUKI server and provides links to many more, elsewhere.

Guidance for First-Time Users is the best place to start. Under the heading 'How this information server is organised', there is a link to 'standards observed by each of the providers', and it is these that earn GENUKI its high reliability rating. Further down the page is Published Papers about this Server which, should demonstrate why this website is held in such high regard worldwide.

Getting Started in Genealogy is located in the yellow boxes in the middle of the page, and comprises an article and bibliography to inform those researching family history for the first time. Read this before asking obvious questions on message boards - nothing is more likely to alienate those who can help, if you clearly haven't tried to help yourself.

FAQs is exceptionally useful, and possibly a more immediately informative place to start exploring the site than through Contents at top right of the homepage, which leads mainly to a list of British and Irish counties.

World Genealogy, Newsgroups and Bulletin Boards leads you to a number of newsgroups devoted to various topics and regions, worldwide. This is where internet genealogy comes into its own, harnessing the knowledge, experience and problem-solving abilities of an international community.

Contents and Search, however, has vital information slightly 'buried' in the first few lines. First, at the bottom of the introductory paragraph, there is a link to the GENUKI Search Engine, which will search all GENUKI pages. And immediately below that is an apparent repeat of GENUKI Contents, which does admittedly say 'not to be overlooked'. True indeed, as you will see when you look at it. This will give you a sense of the full scope of this site. Among the very useful pages you will find are listings by county, indexes of surname lists and look-up exchanges, where volunteers with access to original documents or directories willl perform free searches on your behalf.

GENEVA is the list of forthcoming or, as they put it with a gentle nod to American users, 'upcoming' events which appears in the last of the yellow boxes. If the issue of language differences amuses you, try clicking on the top right yellow box, Researching UK and Irish Genealogy from Abroad, and then click on Brit-Speak (English as a second language for Americans) at the end of the Introduction.

RootsWeb.com www.rootsweb.com

This is the internet's oldest and largest free genealogy site, though ironically its excellent works are supported by Ancestry.com, the commercial behemoth that attracts much negative comment from the online community. The homepage offers two search facilities, where you can search either RootsWeb or Ancestry.com for names. Below this, however, is probably the best place to start. Here there are about 60 links under headings Getting Started, Research Templates, Search Engines and Databases, Mailing Lists and Message Boards, Web Sites, Other Tools and Resources, Hosted Volunteer Genealogy Projects, Help (including Frequently Asked Questions), Buy or Sell, and Contributing to Rootsweb.

Hosted Volunteer Genealogy Projects is one of the most useful sections, and most of these have matured in the last two years to the extent that they are reviewed elsewhere; such as FreeBMD (see p.55). FreeReg (p-59) and Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (p.67),

Mailing Lists and Message Boards It is almost inevitable that you will end up subscribing here at some point. To find out why, see pp. 38-40.

English Origins www.englishorigins.com

It is the way of the future: fully indexed and searchable online transcriptions giving you fast access to primary records. But at a price, albeit a reasonable one. After its successful collaboration with the Scottish PRO to put national records online at Scots Origins (see p.85), Origins.net has teamed up with the Society of Genealogists to put some of its precious indexes online, as well as developing their own indexes of records from other sources for the English site. The site is clean, fast and efficient.

Free Surname Search gives you a sense of what records are held relating to your surname (though of course, it may be that none of them are your ancestors) enabling you to decide whether to subscribe. £6 gives you up to 48 hours to complete your research, allowing you to download up to 150 records. Members of the SoG have quarterly free access as a perk of membership.

Indexes and Abstracts Now Online are currently the Marriage Licence Allegations Index 1694-1850, Boyd's Marriage Index 1538-1837, Bank of England Will Extracts Index 1717-1845, Archdeaconry Court of London Wills Index 1700-1850, and London Consistory Court Depositions Index 1700-1713. In each case the completeness of the coverage varies by county, so do check the information on each of the datasets first. New datasets are in preparation.

Help and Tips It is a strong-willed person who will bother to read this section before typing the surnames of those elusive ancestors into the search box, but if you do you will be rewarded with good searching tips and clear instructions about how to access the database. Ordering Hard Copies explains that for £10 each you can order hard copies of records from the Marriage Licence Allegations and the Bank of England Will Extracts. These will then be mailed to you by the SoG.

What's New leads you back to the Origins.net site from which you can access the How to Start Tracing Your Family History, a good introduction for beginners, or transfer to Scots Origins (one look at which will make Sassenachs mad with jealousy at the foresight of the Scottish government in putting its records online).

Discussion Group This forum is hosted on Yahoo Groups, with the aim for users of mutual help in their searches and to find common ancestors, though this may be better achieved on more focused groups elsewhere.

The homepage for this large well-known site is far less cluttered than it was, though it is now dominated by advertisements. It is well organised, however, particularly as the card-file tabs along the top of the page reappear on every page you subsequently open, so moving between sections is easy and rapid. The site is now owned by American media group A&E and has a much more commercial feel, professional but twee. They also own the popular Family Tree Maker software package (see p.158), which is promoted at every opportunity on the site.

Search Use the Family Finder to search for ancestors across the whole of the internet. This allows you to search for names with birth and death dates, and locations, to narrow it down. Site Search helps you to find features at Genealogy.com.

Learning Center is aimed at new users, with 'How to...' articles on building up, recording and sharing a personal family history. There are online courses to follow on further topics such as creating an online homepage at genealogy.com. The Glossary takes you straight to a massive dictionary of archaic and legal terms, as well as commonly used abbreviations. The Helpful Websites section claims to contain over 72,000 links, classified in a way that requires you to dig through several levels to find what you need.

Strangely only two obscure sites are listed for Great Britain as a whole, and one for United Kingdom, but 25 for Albania.

MyGenealogy.com This is where you can create and store an online tree using the Web Edition of Family Tree Maker. Your data will then be compared to other sources to find matches. You can save, print or download your tree or publish it as a homepage, or contribute to the World Family Tree. As you have to be online to work on your tree, this is probably only a viable option for people with unlimited surfing packages. Searching scans both free-to-access sources and the online data collections of the Genealogy Library. These include World Family Tree (submitted by other users), 1900 US census, and International and Passenger Records, but you need to subscribe for access to these ($79.99 per year, $14.99 per month, or free with software packages.) These datasources are more useful for tracing US connections than British ancestors, and you are strongly advised to take the option to 'Get more details about this data' before subscribing or purchasing. For example, UK 1851 census records are offered without making it clear that this is the 2% sample with some additions rather than the whole thing.

Community offers, among other things. The Virtual Cemetery, where you can contribute an electronic memorial, adding photographs if you wish, or view an existing tombstone - an idea that may become very popular. The GenForum message boards and family home pages make up the rest.

Shop takes you to the Genealogy Store where you can buy various Family Tree Maker packages, and subscriptions to the data collections. Book and videos are also offered.

This is a big, big site with plenty of useful material to offer, which makes it a good place to start if you are going to tackle American sites at all. The online Glossary is particularly handy.

Many of the sites listed under other headings in the book will provide useful links to other sources, and these will generally be noted in the individual reviews. These, though, are excellent starting points: sites whose principal interest for users lies in their onward links.

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet www.cyndislist.com

Cyndi's List has become a genealogical institution. This vast, extraordinary website is run by the amazing Cyndi Howells, genealogy obsessive and family-loving, all-American mom. Predominantly purple in colour, with shadowy red oak leaves scattered around each page, it's friendly, chatty and personal in what most UK users will think a very American style. BUT, listing as it does every genealogy website she knows, it's an absolute mine of information. At the time of writing Cyndi is receiving something like 200 emails every day, half of which she answers immediately. She has posted over 100,000 sites and has just welcomed her twenty-millionth visitor.

Husband Mark has put together what UK users may well find is one of the most useful parts of the site. 'Researching Ancestors from the United Kingdom' (his picture's available under 'About Mark Howells' at the end of the article) is a seven-page run-down of how to get going, which you may find worthwhile to print off. To find this, go to FAQs, then

Personal Questions (bottom of page), then Mark and Cyndi's Family Tree, then Mark's Research, Including the UK & Ireland, and, finally, to the required article.

Overall, the site would have merited five stars in every category, except that Cyndi herself gives several very sensible warnings about trusting the information supplied, as it is simply not possible for her to check the reliability of everything submitted.

Cyndi's List Category Indexes &. Search Engine offers her entire list of websites sorted in a number of different ways, such as in a 'No-Frills' form, by alphabetical order or by topics, a useful first method of sifting through this vast resource.

Scroll down the homepage for the Main Index, or choose to search in one the ways offered by the list on the top-right-hand of the home page:

Topical Index is perhaps the simplest way to get on top of the sheer number of sites listed, breaking them down into the following useful categories, each of which is further subdivided:

• Localities (it is worth checking out both United Kingdom and the separate countries. For example, England will also lead you to a very useful list of county-specific links).

• Ethnic Groups and People

• Immigration, Emigration and Migration

• Religions

• Research Tools and reference material

• Help from others

• Marketplace

• History

• Military

• Computers and the internet

• Miscellaneous

Alphabetical Index, 'No Frills' index which omits update dates, descriptions or cross-referencing between categories.

Text Only Index is the quickest to load and navigate, and Search allows you do that if you prefer.

Browse the New Links details all the new sites submitted in the last three months.

CyndisList Mailing List gives details of how to become a subscriber, while How to Submit a New Link to Cyndi's List is self-explanatory.

Internet Stuff You Need to Know gives some very worthwhile warnings about such annoyances as spam, chain-letters, hoaxes and computer viruses, as well as helpful tips on terminology, netiquette, search engines and privacy issues.

Cyndi's Genealogy Home Page Construction Kit is just what it says: a guide to creating your own family tree homepage, with lists of Free or reasonably priced page-hosting services, to putting your details into a GEDCOM format, designing a website either yourself or using a professional, and such important things as how to cope with updating and where to advertise your website.

Ibertek www.tcwaters.free-onUne.co.uk/

This almost bafflingly large gateway website does everything any of the similar American sites do, with the great advantage that it is actually UK-based - in North Yorkshire. It is maintained by T.C. Waters, publishers and distributors of computer, history and education products.

Enter Click this yellow button at the bottom of the homepage to start exploring. The green buttons give access to a number of general categories, of which Genealogy Links i and 2 will be your best starting point. From the first of these a multitude of further links is given, carefully and logically sorted in a subject index that includes International Genealogy, Maritime Records, Maps & Topography, and so on. Within each of these categories another further list of links is given.

Here, you can find out about everything from deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics to getting the letters of your own name put into as many anagrams as is humanly possible. Amazing!

Joe's Genealogy 2000 www.joesgenealogy.com

Below the grey box that runs right across the homepage is a list of all the things Joe's website purveys, from his Hints for Beginners to See Where Joe is Doing a Talk, and a list of Joe's Guides or Other Shareware Genealogy Software.

Click on the blue 'Go' buttons to open any of the pages.

What's New! At the time of testing, this section offered the opportunity to check out the World's Top 100 Genealogy Sites, which was interesting to do, even though they proved to be predominantly American.

Surf Through Many Genealogy Related Web Sites Listed links to a lengthy and most useful list, though several of those tested proved unavailable. This, of course, is one of the hazards of doing research on the internet. When websites close down or are discontinued for whatever reason, usually nobody remembers to inform the search engines and portals where they have been listed.

The penultimate button allows you to sign up to receive Joe's free newsletters by email.

RS Designs www.sarfas.co.uk

Ray Sarfas has his own website here, with a homepage that is less than quick to load due to the ingenious pictures. Don't click on Genealogy unless you want to get involved in exploring the Sarfas family name. Instead, click on Information.

Sites to Visit provides a useful list of links for genealogists, including a good index of local family history societies -though frustratingly not nearly as many as in Mr Sarfas' own booklet 'Genealogy Resources on the Internet'. The booklet, for those who are interested, may be ordered from RS Designs, 60 Grasmere, Macclesfield, Cheshire, SKu 8PL. It contains, like the online list here, only a list of website addresses - but it is a good list.

The works and websites produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS for short) deserve a section all of their own, even though they will be cross-referenced continually throughout this book.

Here you will find the famous IGI (International Genealogical Index), more popularly known as the Mormon Index, created by the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose headquarters are in Salt Lake City, Utah. On your first visit it might be worth consulting About the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (left-hand column) just to understand what this is all about. In no doubt simplified terms, members of the Church believe that they can baptise ancestors, posthumously, into the Mormon faith, so to find those ancestors they are compiling a massive database of family history records. Some record holders have refused access, and those records have not been transcribed. The great majority, however, have been amenable and the result is the most massive, free, online genealogical database in the world.

The main sections of the site are indicated in tabs across the top of the page.

Home provides access to News, FAQs, and Order/Download products. The latter includes free genealogy software, such as the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) in various versions, and other useful documents.

Search offers you an immediate opportunity to start looking for your ancestors. Provided you know the name(s) you are looking for, you don't need to worry about filling in further details of dates and events unless you are very certain of them, otherwise you may get less information rather than more. There are several different databases to search from:

All Resources; Ancestral File (which combines all submissions on each individual); IGI (the most authoritative and useful for UK researchers); Pedigree Resource Files, which have been submitted by individual researches and so are of variable accuracy; US Social Security Death Index; Vital Records (currently only covers Mexican records online through there is a separate CD with British records); and Search Family History Websites.

The only 'required' boxes are the first and last names (indicated by the asterisks above them), though adding the country certainly helps. Having filled in the necessary details, go immediately to 'search' and refine your quest from the list that you are then offered. Tips for searching are offered from a link in purple letters just above the search boxes, and are well worth reading.

Also within the Search section you'll find the Research Guidance. Start by specifying the county you need to research, then the type of event (birth, death or marriage) and the approximate timeframe, and you'll be presented with concise run-downs of the relevant types of records available to help your research and details of where to consult them. It is true to say that the lists that then appear need to be approached with a good deal of selectivity. Small, local family history societies are mixed up with major record-holding bodies, in no logical order, and there are some out-of-date inaccuracies. As a route to the records of other countries, however, this still has to be considered a very valuable starting point.

Research Helps is a library of documents, most available as PDF files, on subjects such as how to use Church records. You can search by place, title, subject or document type. Although rather tucked away this is well worth browsing.

Web Sites can be searched or browsed by category.

Share leads you to Collaboration Email Lists, Add a Web Site to Family Search and Share My Genealogy. All require registration to participate but, once you have your own records in order, you may well feel it worthwhile to do so, more so if you have US relatives.

LIBRARY is mostly of interest if you are planning to visit their vast library in Salt Lake City, but under Family History Centres you can search for the closest centre to you, and they are scattered all over the world. Each of these has considerable holdings in its own right and can help you source other items from the main library. Family History Library Catalog allows you to search the vast genealogical holdings. Items on microfilm or fiche can be ordered for viewing at your local Family History Centres. In general it is not possible to request books on loan, but it is sometimes possible to arrange for the originals to be microfilmed, though you may need to wait for several months.

Latter-day Saints Online http://lds.org.uk

This will send you to the Latter Day Saints' British website. Under Genealogy you'll find a list of the UK Family Record Centres that includes phone numbers plus details of how to obtain their very useful software and CD-roms, including the 1881 Census, and the British Isles Vital Records Index (BVRI), which acts as a supplement to the IGI.

http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/nzsoghamilton/igi.htm

Explains how to find batch numbers and then use them to discover further family members.

The LDS FamilySearch Website: Using the Batch Numbers http://globalgazette.net/gazfd/gazfd36.htm

Gives an in-depth guide to the batch number system and how to use it. Substitute 40 for 36 in this URL to read an article on using batch numbers to obtain original records.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~tyeroots/index4.html

An excellent introduction and the most complete listing of, IGI batch numbers listed by county. The site allows you to perform an actual search on Family Search with the help sections from this site displayed in a separate frame.

Instructions for using IGI Batch Numbers www.rootsweb.com/~engken/batchnumbers.txt

Short, step-by-step instructions are followed by an alphabetical listing of towns in Kent with their batch numbers.