About Ancestry

Introduction

Ancestry is a collection of different listings and materials far too great to list, which is invaluable for researching the histories of families throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States. Although it does have resources relevant to other countries as well, there are far fewer of these. Each resource has a page written about it telling you what it covers and how to search it, plus a search facility specifically designed for each of the resources/listings. The earliest records go back as far as the fourteenth century. If you go back that far though there are only one or two records, however, as time's gone on there have become more and more directories, records and listings which contain far more names. In conclusion this means that the further you go back the harder it will be to trace your ancestors. You will find that Ancestry and Find My Past are useful stepping stones for researching your family's history, providing you with useful dates, names and places. However, you will have to use your initiative and possibly spend some money getting hold of other important information in the form of certificates and other records.

Ancestry is only available within Westminster Libraries but does not require a username and password.

Starting your search

Family history is always best started by talking to one's family and finding out what they know and what records they have. Advice is available in a number of places but particularly from the BBC who provide a wide variety of tips and interesting methods, including programmes showing how famous people found out about their ancestors; the Westminster City Archives are also useful, especially if you have ancestors from Westminster, Marylebone or Paddington. There are other sites available either providing more advice or helping you with your searches, the best of which we have listed on  the Family History section of the Gateway to Websites.

Using Ancestry

When you first get onto Ancestry you will see a search box. This facility will search all the historical records by default. This means that unless the name is very unusual the number of results you retrieve will be difficult if not impossible to sift through, especially if you do not specify dates, countries and first names.

Therefore it is important to find out as much as you can first so you have a good idea of names, dates and places first. These can be specified when searching Ancestry and you can use your judgement to choose specific sections or listings to search through.

One good method is that when you start searching you can be specific about what you want to look through. For instance: click Search, then further down the page above the map, choose UK & Ireland, and you can then specify e.g. England. You will find that this lists all the historical records which are available for this region/country. If you choose one of these you can then search it specifically.

Saving and printing

Once you have found what you want, in many instances you can even view the original document. When printing try to use any printer friendly versions which are available. You can also save images. One good tip is whenever you see something you want on the screen you can perform a Print Screen (press Shift and Print Screen) then paste the image into a program such as MS Paint, where it can be resized or you can cut off the bit you want and save that as an image such as a PNG or JPG. This is useful not just on Ancestry but all computer sources and it allows you to be must more specific about the piece of information you want.

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Other resources

Find My Past

Our other family history resource is Find My Past. it is especially good for searching through the Census and even has listings for the 1911 Census unlike Ancestry. What we recommend is that you use both these resources in conjunction with one another.

This resource requires a username and password.

Times Digital Archive or Oxford Dictionary of National Biography?

Don't rely 100% on family history resources to find things out. Whilst they may find names and dates for you or even professions and addresses there may be smaller things of interest out there often held within records such as these. You may have famous ancestors or they may've got a mention, paid for an advert, or sent a letter to the newspaper. There's so much out there is is really worth having a good rummage!

• Go to Ancestry
• More of these subscriptions which you can use from home can be found on our Exclusive Resources Page...
• Find more of these sorts of sites on the Gateway to websites whether its in the Family history section itself, or the newspaper, biography, or history sections.