Whenever a new series of Who Do You Think You Are? airs, there is an uptick in the number of people who decide to trace their own family history. Watching the show, it is tempting to think that conducting this research is easy. But underpinning each episode are hundreds of hours of research conducted by expert genealogists and historians – only the most exciting moments make it to your TV screen. As you do your own research, it is important to bear in mind that it can be a time-consuming and frustrating – as well as deeply rewarding – process.
There is a wealth of information to help you get started with tracing your family history, including online guides written by Laura Berry, lead genealogist on Who Do You Think You Are? As a social historian with a particular interest in the history of family, I frequently draw on genealogical research techniques in my teaching work – as well as tracing my own family history in my spare time. Here are four tips I have found particularly useful.
1. Branch Out
Whenever you discover an ancestor in your family tree, there is always more to uncover. A good start is to find out who their siblings were. Trace their relatives not just back in time but forwards too, and make a note of every person who is documented in their records. At some point, you might manage to connect back to your common ancestor. While this will undoubtedly take time, this collateral research will give you a better understanding of the family, its size, structure and social class – and maybe lead you to more information.
For example, I was having problems confirming an Irish ancestor's maiden (birth) name. By tracing forwards, I learned that one of her sons had emigrated to Queensland, Australia in 1885, possibly under the short-lived bounty scheme of 1883-6. He married shortly afterwards. The wonderful thing about these Australian marriage records is that they record the bride and groom's birthplaces and the names of both their parents, including the mother's maiden name. The marriage record gave me my ancestor's birth name, meaning I could now conduct further research in the Irish records.
2. Join the FAN-club
It is always exciting to see how far back you can trace your ancestry, but sooner or later you are likely to meet a brick wall. I find it both useful and interesting to build up an idea of an ancestor's broader network of family and friends. It is a technique known as cluster analysis or the FAN (friends, associates and neighbours) principle, a term coined by American genealogist and historian Elizabeth Shown Mills. Who was the informant on a birth or death record? Who were the sponsors of a baptism or marriage? Use the census to find out who lived within the same building or on the same street. I used a similar technique with researcher Ciara Breathnach to locate sex workers in the 1901 and 1911 Irish census, and when analysing the inhabitants of a street in the Irish town of Gorey, Co. Wexford, in the 1860s.
3. Wildcard Searches
A particular favourite when it comes to names on my family tree is the Cornish surname Tregascus. You might think it would be easy to find my seafaring ancestor in the records as this is quite an unusual name – but officials found it incredibly difficult to spell. So there are all kinds of variations in the records: Tregaskes, Tregaskis, Tregaskers and Trigasgus, to name but a few. Instead of trying to search sites like Ancestry, FamilySearch and Find my Past on all possible combinations, a useful technique is the wildcard search. In this kind of search, a symbol is used to take the place of any letter. Generally two symbols are used – a question mark replaces a single letter, while an asterisk can replace from zero to five letters. In my case, some of the sounds in the name are unmistakable, so I have left them in my search term, replacing each of the less clear elements with an asterisk: Tr*g*s*s. The search engine scans the database for matches that include the provided letters, in combination with 0-5 letters in place of each asterisk. I have found this very useful when searching on a number of genealogy sites, and used this technique when matching people in the Irish census.
4. Drop the Hint
Some of the big genealogy websites allow you to create a family tree on their site. After adding a few people to your tree, you will start to see that the system sends you suggestions of people who might be related. Research has shown that you should treat these hints with caution. The information is generated from other people's trees and from AI tools that search the records for matches – but this does not ensure it relates to the person you are tracing. The onus is on you as a researcher to verify that the suggested information is correct. My Irish great-great-grandparents James and Mary rented a small farm in the inland county of Carlow, which would continue to be held by the family into the twentieth century. They are likely to have married in the early 1840s, before civil registration commenced in Ireland. The marriage registers for the parish they lived in do not survive, although they might have married elsewhere. I received a hint that another researcher had their marriage on their tree. That marriage turned out to be in Scotland, which was surprising, but I looked at the digitised record on Scotland's People. The names were a match, but James's occupation was “mariner” – and more tellingly, the date, 1811, was before “my” James or Mary were born. I suspect this person had simply accepted some hints and added them to their tree without thinking. Hints can be useful, but should always be verified yourself.
It is Not Just About Creating a Family Tree
These are just a few strategies you can adopt when you come up against that inevitable brick wall – DNA testing is another option. But family history is not just about creating a family tree. One of its most rewarding aspects is understanding more about each person's lives – learning about their society and culture, exploring the history of their area, and seeing how economic and political events impacted their life. It is this combination of family tree and context that makes Who Do You Think You Are? so successful. You can learn more about your family's historical context by reading books, joining a local history society, signing up to online groups, or taking a course. Studying the stories of our ancestors, whatever their background, is a deeply enriching experience, contributing to our understanding of past lives.
