How to start tracing your family tree

Begin with what you already know

Every family tree starts at your own kitchen table, not in a dusty archive. Before you open a single record, write down everything you already know: your own birth details, your parents' full names, their dates and places of birth, marriage and death. Then do the same for your grandparents. You will be surprised how much you can fill in from memory and from the paperwork already in the house — birth certificates in a biscuit tin, a marriage certificate in a drawer, service papers, old address books, letters and photographs with names scribbled on the back.

Then talk to the living. Relatives are your most valuable and most perishable source. Ask about full names, including the nicknames people never used on official forms and the maiden names of the women in your family, which are the single most common brick wall in British research. Ask about occupations, addresses, religious denomination, military service and moves between towns. Record the conversations if you can, and always ask who else in the family might know more. Family stories are usually right in their essentials and wrong in their details, which makes them excellent leads and poor evidence.

Gather birth, marriage and death certificates

Civil registration is the backbone of British family history. It began in 1837 in England and Wales, 1855 in Scotland and 1864 in Ireland, and it is the point from which records become reliable, centralised and reasonably easy to search. Start by looking for your ancestor in the free online indexes of these registers, which give you enough detail — name, year, quarter and registration district — to identify the right entry and order a copy certificate from the General Register Office.

Certificates are worth the modest fee because they tell you far more than the indexes:

• A birth certificate names both parents, including the mother's maiden name, and gives the father's occupation and the family's address.
• A marriage certificate names both parties, their ages, addresses, occupations and, crucially, both fathers, along with their occupations. This is usually how you step back a whole generation at once.
• A death certificate gives age at death, occupation, cause of death and the informant, who is often a relative.

Order certificates selectively rather than in bulk. They add up quickly, so prioritise the ones that will answer a specific question or unlock a new generation.

Work backwards, one generation at a time

This is the golden rule, and the one beginners break most often. Resist the temptation to leap back to a famous name or a distant century. Confirm each generation with evidence before moving to the previous one, and never assume that a John Smith in the right town is your John Smith. British families reused names relentlessly — a firstborn son was often named after his paternal grandfather, and cousins in the same village frequently shared both names and birth years.

Watch for variants too: a surname recorded as Kerby, Kirby and Kirkby in three consecutive records is probably one family. Treat every conclusion as provisional until two independent records agree.

Make the census returns work for you

Census returns are the workhorse of nineteenth-century research. Returns survive from 1841 and were taken every ten years, with the most recent available to the public being 1921. The 1841 census is thin — ages were rounded down to the nearest five for adults, and relationships were not stated. From 1851 onwards, however, each person's relationship to the head of household, marital status, age, occupation and county and parish of birth are given. That birthplace is the clue that leads you back to the right parish, and the household itself — servants, lodgers, visiting in-laws, grandchildren — often reveals family connections you did not know existed.

Step into parish registers and other records

Before 1837 you depend on parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, which begin in 1538 in England and Wales. Many are indexed online, but plenty remain only in county record offices, local archives and diocesan collections, so a visit or a written enquiry may be necessary. Once you are searching this far back, widen your net:

• Wills and probate records, which name children and sometimes grandchildren.
• Military service and pension records.
• Newspapers, which reported weddings, funerals, accidents and court cases.
• Electoral rolls, tithe maps and poor law records.
• Apprenticeship indentures and trade or guild records, especially if your ancestor followed a skilled trade.

Keep a research log, and be kind to what you find

Write down what you searched, where you searched it and what you found — including the searches that turned up nothing, which will save you repeating them in two years' time. Cite your sources, and keep a clear distinction between what a record states and what you have inferred from it. Back up your digital photographs and files, and keep certificates somewhere safe.

DNA testing can confirm relationships and break through stubborn brick walls, but treat it as supporting evidence rather than proof, and be prepared for unexpected results. You will almost certainly uncover illegitimacy, remarriage, bigamy, poverty, criminal convictions or estrangement. Meet it with curiosity rather than judgement — and remember that some of these discoveries touch people who are still alive.