Doing some late night browsing, found my Nan's birth on a register, interesting seeing it there in the olde style.
Anyone on here done anything of the sort? How could I take it further? Anyone know how to go about it and any good resources?
The very first thing you must do if you want to find out about your family history is to make contact with elderly relatives and visit them. They are a wealth of information and will save you hours of time.
Visit them with a camera and a notebook. You might even want to take along a voice recorder although some people aren't always comfortable with this.
With their permission photograph family documents they may have and also family photographs making sure that you know and record who is in them. Get them to help you with the beginnings of your family tree. Write down important things they say and if you write it up after your visit send them a copy and ask them to check it.
If you want to be confident about what you are told make sure you can verify the information against official records such as Parish Register entries and birth, death or marriage certificates. Don't believe what other people have written on websites unless there is supporting evidence.
If you know the places they lived then a visit to a County Record Office will give you access to all sorts of information. If your family are from Southampton then visit the Archives in the Guildhall as they have excellent records and very helpful staff. My family are from Berkshire so I used to spend quite a bit of time at the Berkshire Record Office in Reading.
A general rule is to start with what you know and work backwards from there which is what they do on Who Do You think You Are?
If you really want to get involved in researching your family history see if anyone else in your family is doing the same as you will be able to work together and save costs.
A copy of a birth death or marriage certificate is over £9 and membership of a good family history website is about £100 a year. If you are going to do this as a serious piece of historical research which is factually correct then it can become very expensive.
Some people publish their family history and tree on line. Be wary of this as it contains information which may be abused by identy thieves. Also you will often find a lot of information is is not accurate or even true.
Even in official documents such as birth, death and marriage certificates people sometimes lied or entry errors were made.
For example a great Aunt of mine was base born and when she married she put an invented name for her father on her marriage certificate.
Another great Aunt who had a base born daughter and lived in lodgings maintained she was a widow as her daughter visited her from time to time and the daughter maintained the fiction after her death by putting the non existent husband's name on her mother's death certificate.
Be aware that surnames can have various spellings and in families that could not read or write this may not have been be corrected.
The LDS Church are a free resource but be careul with data provided as it may not always be accurate.
https://www.familysearch.org/learn
On their website you can get a free database to record your family tree which is as good as anything you can buy:
It is called Personal Ancestral File and you will find it here:
https://familysearch.org/products
Visit a family history fair, you can find them on the web and there will be one near you for sure.
Finally this is my own personal opinion but be very careful who you share your information with and also be very careful when entering data onto family history websites as you may lose control of it.
Finally never share any information about anyone living without their full permission.
Family history can be great fun and will tell you a great deal about your family's circumstances. Try to find out more about their lives and don't just collect names or build a family tree. Try to make it into a story of your family's life.
You can do this using school log books, local history books, wills and newspapers etc.