Links
There is a huge range of genealogical web sites. Here are some of those I have
found useful in my own research.
Sites which charge
It's always useful to use more than one major site. Coverage varies, and
so does indexing. These are the two I use most:
Ancestry.co.uk
Ancestry has a huge and growing range of material with powerful search facilities.
A recent addition is the first phase of
British Army WWI
Pensions. This does not sound very exciting, but it can give
you much more information than you expect, such as the names and birth dates
of children born after the 1901 census, and a physical description of your
ancestor.
TheGenealogist.co.uk
Although not as large, the Genealogist site contains material not available
on Ancestry. The indexing is done by UK volunteers who are familiar with the
"peculiarities" of British place and personal names. This gives
you a very high quality of index.
A particular delight is the 1984-2005 BMD database search. Looking for the death
of Maurice Sullivan, for example, produced a list of 7. Clicking on the link
against each person displayed not only the date, place and registration details
for the death, but also the precise date of birth and a link to the appropriate
page of the births index. I was quickly able to find which one was "my" Maurice
Sullivan.
Free sites
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
The National Archives of the United Kingdom includes wills, medal records,
family documents. It is free to search, with a growing collection of
document images available to download for a modest fee.
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl
Free BMD - an index to births, marriages and deaths.
LostCousins.com
Join Lost Cousins
for free, enter your ancestors from the 1881 census, and the automated
matching process finds other people who share the same ancestors. The matching process, unique to Lost Cousins, generates matches with 100% accuracy.
http://www.gazettes-online.co.uk/generalArchive.asp The archive of The
London Gazette contains bankruptcy announcements and information about
appointments and promotions, amongst other things.
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp
is a Family History service sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. It can provide you with an extra generation or two that
is not available elsewhere on the internet, but its content needs to be
treated with caution as sources are not always given.
http://www.cyndislist.com/
Cyndi's List is a huge, categorised list of links on all things
genealogical. It has been running for more than 10 years and is frequently
updated.
http://www.1914-1918.net/index.htm The Long, Long Trail focuses on the
British Army in the First World War. It gives masses of helpful information
for those researching relatives who served in the war.
Non-Genealogical Sites
Project Gutenberg is is the oldest
producer of free ebooks on the Internet. It has a catalogue of 20,000 titles
amongst which are titles of interest to local historians and genealogists. I have hosted
a number of titles on this site, which give you a taste of what is available. See the
eBooks Index.
http://www.protopage.com Nothing
to do with genealogy, but I find this a brilliant way to keep all my links
handy. You can set up and save your own protopage which is then available
to you on any computer. I have mine as my home page on both my personal and
work computers, with "work" links on private (locked) pages, and genealogy
links on public pages that anyone can access. You can include to-do lists,
pictures, live pages from other websites and a host of other things.
