How To Make A Family Tree for Free

A new partnership project between The National Archives and S&N Genealogy Supplies means that you can now access images of these records online. BMD Registers provides access to the non-parochial and nonconformist registers 1567-1840 held in RG 4 and RG 5.

Birth, marriage and death records are crucial tools for anyone researching their family history. Before 1837, when civil registration was introduced in England and Wales, church registers provided an important source of information on births, baptisms, marriages and burials.

The National Archives holds 5,000 registers of a huge variety of nonconformist congregations, including Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Protestant Dissenters (known as 'Dr Williams Library') and Independents. There are also registers from a small number of Roman Catholic communities. Basic searching is free of charge, but there is a fee for advanced searching and to download images.

The entries are rich in detail and may include material about up to three generations of a family, helping you to add many branches to your family trees.

As well as discovering details about your own family history, you can also find records of famous names from the past, such as Mary Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin), Florence Nightingale and William Blake.

When the project is complete you will also be able to access further miscellaneous birth, marriage and death records from the series RG 6-8, RG 32-36 and BT 158-160. These include records of Quakers, of foreign congregations in England and of clandestine marriages before 1754, as well as miscellaneous foreign returns, and records of life events occurring at sea.

Article taken from:

http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=11504 

Seems everyone is interested in finding out how to make a family tree at the moment, the guardian reports that 6.5 million people tuned into watch the BBC's "Who Do You think You Are?" show. For those who haven't seen it they have various TV personalities on, and show them their family history.

"BBC1's genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? returned last night with more than 6 million viewers tuning in to see BBC newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky attempt to discover the fate of her grandfather's Jewish family in Eastern Europe.

The show pulled in 6.5 million and a 30% share between 9pm and 10pm, the highest rating first episode of any of its previous three series, according to unofficial overnights.

The BBC said the rating was 2 million above the slot average. Last week, 2.6 million people tuned into Panorama in the same slot.

The big ratings for Who Do You Think You Are? pushed ITV1's Hell's Kitchen into second place, with 3.9 million and an 18% share in the same slot."

 from the Guardian website

The national trust are going to be offering people who visit their sites the opportunity to look up their name on a surname profiler, which should detail how and where your surname origins come from.There will also be the opportunity to discuss how to begin your family history with professional genealogists.

They are also asking people to record their stories for posterity!

Story from the Dorset Echo:

AS part of this month's Heritage Open Days initiative, the National Trust is opening many of its properties for free on Saturday.

The scheme aims to encourage more people to make the most of their glorious national heritage by visiting National Trust properties all over the UK.

And as an added bonus this year, the trust has joined forces with the Society of Genealogists to offer opportunities to find out how to begin tracing your family tree at many locations.

To support these events, the trust has launched a major online resource to provide a wealth of hints and advice on researching your family history and heritage.

The site includes a surname profiler' to discover the roots of your name, a memory map on which to upload and share your memories, and top tips from family history and genealogy experts on researching your family tree.

The National Trust's Dorset representative Alex Brannen said: "This is a once-a-year opportunity for people to access our properties for free and learn a bit about what we do. advertisement

"This year, we are also offering people the chance to find out about their own history and chart their memories. We are encouraging people to write down memories of their day with us as well as days they have spent at our properties in the past.

"Today's history is really someone else's present from a long time ago and by collecting people's memories, we will be building up an archive of memories. I think people will love the idea that they can contribute themselves to what we do."

Fiona Reynolds, director general of the National Trust, added: "Everyone's lives have shaped our collective heritage and increasing numbers of people want to know more about their past and to explore their roots.

"Whether you have memories or experiences you want to record for posterity, would like to hear those of others, or are tempted to begin researching your family tree, there are lots of ways to get involved. We hope everyone will be encouraged to come along and share their stories."

There are quite a number of questions on whether we should expect genealogy information to be free, for what its worth, I purchase the Ancestry subscription, I use it regularly, and therefore can have no complaints about its cost, yes I like free sites, but they cannot conceiveably do everything. The cost of putting together indexes and putting up images, etc is just not feasible unless you charge for it, or unless you have thousands of volunteers.

 My view is that it probably could be free as long as you were willing to do some field work. That is the user who wants it the information should have to transcribe at least 10 records before getting access. Anyway enough of my ranting, there is a good article here at about

http://genealogy.about.com/b/a/255996.htm 

The Church of the LDS who make lots of information available for free on genealogy, have sent out a Request for Information to lots of organisations asking them if they would like to join forces in making more documents available through its family history centers. In return for which they will electronically image any records for free, and provide to the original source. This would normally cost a huge amount of money to organizations so I can see quite a few taking this up. Hopefully the church will then makes this information available for free.

 Here are samples of the sources they are requesting:

* U.S. Federal census records

* England and Wales census records

* U.S. church records

* Spain parish registers

* U.S. county military discharges

 The RFI can be found here in PDF format