What is the best way to trace family history for free?
The best way is to start by talking to all your relatives, ask to see old photographs, records of birth, baptism, death and marriage, family Bibles, funeral service sheets, etc, and make copies. Find out where all your deceased relatives are buried, visit the graves, transcribe the information on the gravestones and take photographs. If you don’t know where people are buried or are unable to visit the graves, you may find them on www.findagrave.com Too many of us family historians regret not questioning the oldies closely before they popped their clogs, so get all the names, dates and places you can and then check these against the official records. Then work back one generation at a time, using birth/baptism, death/burial and marriage records, and the census. The national indexes of birth, marriage and death up to the 1930s can be searched at http://freebmd.org.uk Civil registration was introduced in England and Wales on 1st July 1837
