British Intelligence: Digging Deeper

Once you know your ancestors’ county, be sure to join the corresponding family history society. Most of these groups publish journals three or four times a year, carry out indexing projects, transcribe gravestones and maintain lists of the surnames their members are researching. The FFHS and GENUKI <www.genuki.org.uk/Societies> provide links and information about these societies.

RootsWeb <lists.rootsweb.com> maintains dozens of mailing lists dealing with British genealogy. Subscribe to the lists dealing with the places your ancestors lived so you can swap research tips with other genealogists and stay abreast of new resources.

The Family History Library has a terrific collection of British genealogy books and records, but archives and libraries throughout Great Britain have many more useful family history resources. Two huge online catalogs let you identify materials of interest:

? Access to Archives (A2A) <www.a2a.org.uk> describes 7.2 million records dating back more than a thousand years and held by 368 record offices in England. Citations provide the name of the record office that has each item.

? Britain’s National Archives Catalogue <www.catalogue.nationalarchives.gov.uk>, contains references to more than 9.5 million documents dating back hundreds of years. (This agency formerly was called the Public Record Office.) Click on Search the Catalogue; if you’re researching a surname that’s not too common, type just the name in the first box and click on the search button. Then click on the number of hits in a document category to view the matching references. If you get too many hits, search on a last name, the word AND (in all caps), plus a first name or the name of a parish, town or county. Keep in mind that place names are often misspelled in the catalog. Limit your search further by specifying a date range. For information on how to order copies of records, see <www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/legal/recordcopying.htm>.