Family history question

[bunn]

My sister has decided that she can't let sleeping myths lie, but must investigate the truth behind the king of Barbados.

I know clarienne & louisedennis (and perhaps others?) have recently researched their family history - can you advise on which websites are particularly useful, or which would be worth paying for access? So far as we know, she would be looking at records for Kent, Essex and London. 

I have told her that I don't want to know unless they turn out to be at least as strange and unlikely as the myths, but have apparently been assigned the job of creating an illustrated family tree, featuring cartoon deathbed scenes...

Comments

[clarienne.livejournal.com]

I use ancestry.com and found it ok - although how useful it would be in tracing the King of Barbados I don't know! Since I already have a paid subscription, I'd be happy to do some lookups.

I've done little of my husbands tree, but I know his family hail from Kent, Essex and London, so perhaps you are related. :)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

but I know his family hail from Kent, Essex and London

Which bits, he said, nosily? I write as one who spent six years in Colchester and three years in Rochester.

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

Are she also looking to trace US relatives? If so, bear in mind that each state has responsibility for its own birth and death records. This can get "interesting" if you have to find details in a state where statewide records were not kept until relatively recently, as you will then have to find out what county the birth/death took place in.

Let's just say that I really hope Great Great Granny died in Massachusets, not Pennsylvania...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Ummm - I don't know yet! I suppose it's possible, but at present we don't have any details beyond grandparent level, so even a few UK ones would be a good start!

[louis-soul.livejournal.com]

My family does genealogical research frequently.
This is the site we use. http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

There's information on everyone, not just church members.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I've found GRAMPS to be a decent enough genealogical program. I've also used Brothers Keeper in the past. GRAMPS runs using Python and is fully open source.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

At the moment she is really more at the 'where to get data' stage than organising it. We only have about 10 relatives that we know anything about at all, and even for them we have pretty much only names.

[purplecat]

Sorry for the late reply.

I started out with a one-year subscription to ancestry. I found them very good (though I would wish for a more genuinely regular expression search). They have a reputation for being a bit naughty when it comes to automatically renewing subscriptions though - I had no trouble, but I know someone who is still paying them quarterly because she can't get them to unsubscribe her. Ancestry has all the UK censuses, plus Birth-Marriage-Death index stuff (though that is available free elsewhere) - but you really want both censuses and BMD's to start out with.

I now use findmypast.com, but I'm not sure I'd use it as a starting place, but it's good for filling in gaps.

Start organising straight away, it's a nightmare to do retroactively!