Find My Family History - Resources
There are a lot of online resources available for people tracing their family trees and looking to find out about their family history. Some useful online sources are listed below.
Free Family History Resources
Familysearch provides access to selected parish records.
Rootsweb contains lots of useful information and discussions covering many genealogical topics.
Freebmd contains free copies of birth, marriage and death certificates for England and Wales.
British Genealogy website contains lots of useful family history resources and forums.
National Archives has useful resources and information on family history.
Interment provides free cemetry transcriptions and tombstone inscriptions.
Paid Family History Resouces
Genesreunited contains birth, marriage and death certificates as well as Census returns for the UK. It also includes software that allows you to build your family tree online. Once you have built your family tree Genesreunited will try to identify any names on your tree that are similar to other members trees allowing you to contact these members and share details.
Ancestry contains birth, death and marriage certificates as well as Census returns.
Scotlandspeople contains copies of birth, marriage and death certificates for Scotland as well as copies of Censuses and other useful information such as Wills.
Findmypast contains birth, marriage and death cerificates for England and Wales as well as copies of Censuses.
Familyrelatives contains birth, marriage and death certificates for England and Wales as well as Census returns.
Other Useful Resources
Free online web course on Finding your Ancestors from Brigham Young University.
To see the distribution of people with the same surname in the UK look at National Trust Names.
Download free family tree software from Legacy.
There are also a number of free family tree applications available from the Family History section of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints website.