Tracing your roots

Q: Can I have my family history please?

The record office can help you research your family tree

A: If you want to find out about your family’s history, there are a number of ways to get started. You might be lucky in that someone in your family may have got hooked on genealogy and already gathered together full details – so check with relatives. But for most people it won’t be as simple as seeing a ready prepared family tree and they will have to do the digging themselves. This will ultimately involve a trip to the local record office to where your ancestors came from, but most people can make some headway before that.

Start by gathering as much about your family as you can from home. Begin with yourself and work backwards, trying to compile details of dates and places of birth, marriage and death of relatives known to you and other members of your family.

You may find that old certificates of birth, marriage and death help or that older family members recollect some details. Many of the sources that you will consult are church records so it is helpful if you can find out what denomination your ancestors belonged to, and in which parish or parishes they lived.

Find out more by looking at one of the many published guides on family history research. These will save you a lot of time, familiarising you with the steps you will have to take and the variety of archives that are available in record offices.

You can borrow books from your library, or consult one of the on-line guides to family history in England and Wales such as the BBC’s at www.bbc.co.uk/familyhistory. After that, one of the free or pay-per-view websites may have entries relating to your ancestors; try www.freebmd.com and www.familysearch.org for free (or Cumbria’s Libraries have taken out a subscription to the popular site www.ancestry.com).

The further you go back the increased need you will have to visit a local record office to look through a large number of original documents for the details you need. You can look for information on your Cumbrian family tree by visiting one of our Cumbria Record Offices – for those of you with West Cumbrian ancestors, visit us in Whitehaven.

We will do our best to help you and we are sure you will have great fun, acting as the detective, and piecing together the jig-saw pieces of the past!

Your local Archive: Cumbria Record Office, Scotch St, Whitehaven, CA28 7NL. www.cumbria.gov.uk/archives gives further details and opening hours.