Sometimes it's hard to know where to start. As cliché as it sounds, start with what you know. Hopefully you know your details, and you probably know a fair deal about your parents, if you know the basics about your own grand-parents, good on you! And here's where it starts getting tricky. Most people are not so lucky to have their Great-Grandparents still alive, although these days with technology and medicine, it's more common. I was not so lucky. But I knew their names and that was enough. And thanks to my mum and other family members I already had a basic tree back to my Great-Great Grandparents.
What makes it tricky in my case is my mother is adopted. So a brick wall was hit for some time. But I'll get to that one day.
I personally started at my local library in the Births Indexes, starting with the name of my Great Great Grandfather, knowing his birth date and rough place of birth, I found his parents with the help of the local historians. Something no one in the family knew! And even as little as 5 years ago, not as much information was available on the internet.
But where to find more information about them? I'll give a listing and what you can find!
- You can do a blanket search here, or narrow it down in the digitised Newspaper section. We've hit gold here ourselves. You type in a name and more than likely it may just be a notice in the Births/Deaths/Marriages (BDM's) section, sometimes you might even get an article. You just never know! And some very interesting information can be gleaned from these simple notices too. And your ancestors didn't just advertise their local BDM's. We've had notices about their family back in Ireland. Where Irish records are hard to find and view, we found a date and location.
- I've linked directly to the indexes of the NSW BDM's. It's easier this way. States and countries may vary as to what they put online, but I'm happy to say that NSW is pretty good at their on-line indexes. To show you an example as to what you can find follow the below steps to find my Great Great Grandfather:
- Open the NSW BDM's link
- Under 'person you are searching for' type the last name Cotter and first name James.
- In the years to be searched, enter 1850 to 1870.
- Ensure 'Births' is selected and not 'Deaths'
- Click on 'Search Now'
- A handful of findings are displayed. But which one?
In our case we knew that our Great Great Grandfather was James Phillip Cotter. And as our ancestors are known to do, is to throw their own name into their children's names. So it was a fair bet his parents are Philip and Catherine.
Now if you want to know more information, rather than purchasing a rather pricey certificate, we have gone through a transcription agent. Also keep note of that 'Registration Number', you'll need that if you are going to use the following.
- For half the price you can get the same information! You can find out the full names of your persons parents, if they had any other children, where they were born, occupations. A gold mine! You'll need the Registration number from the BDM index to use this service as it's a unique identifier in the millions of records kept at the BDM.
- If you know your ancestors came from overseas, you can search shipping records. You can simply type in a surname and unless you are unlucky enough to be searching for a 'Smith', you can generally be assured of finding the right people. You can find sometimes that other family members might have come out first, scouts if you will, then invited or sponsored the rest of the family to travel. Sometimes they were assisted meaning they were helped with money, or unassisted, generally you had to be pretty well off to make it on your own. Or you might have been a convict, getting a free ride! You can order these records online, or you can visit them in person. Refer to your local State Archives. Sometime to note with shipping, NSW incorporated QLD until it became it's own state, so even if you know that your ancestors arrived in Moreton Bay, or Brisbane, keep an open mind that it might be listed as NSW.
- Provided by the Church of the Latter Day Saints, they are keen on their records! Don't go past having a little search here, obscure places in Ireland we've found the records lacking on this site, but the larger well know County's seem to be well represented, and naturally the American and English records are great.
- Then there is the well advertised Ancestry websites, with the American and English sites. Search the forums on these websites too, you'll find people just like and maybe find someone looking for the same information you are!
You can find a lot on-line without having to pay for it. But at some point you're going to have to pay for clarification and to make sure you are looking at the right person. You don't have to 'go back to your homeland' to find information. I've heard of one lady who went all the way to Ireland and found nothing and found more information in her local library.
This isn't all that is out there, this is just what I've found that has helped us tremendously.
And once you've got a little information under your belt, have a simple Google search. Search for Graveyard inscriptions, search for phone books, search for occupations. The mundane might be where you find gold.
