Genealogy has been a significant pastime for decades, but it's only with the wide availability of the internet and the establishment of dedicated ancestry websites and social networks that the hobby has become more practical for people with limited time on their hands.
The internet has made tracking down ancestors easier than ever before, especially as more public records and other important documents are scanned and stored in digital archives for ease of browsing. Rather than travelling to the home town of your distant relatives and poring over old records in libraries and council buildings for days on end, those interested in finding out key details about their ancestors only need to sign up to an ancestry website and make use of keyword searches to bring up the results they're looking for in seconds.
Before you start your online searches though, you should arm yourself with as much information as possible about your ancestors by asking the people who should know best - other surviving people in your family, and common acquaintances. Encourage your family to tell you everything they know or have heard about the individuals in question, as even a seemingly inconsequential detail could prove to be extremely significant.
You may be surprised to find that online family history records can date back several hundred years and your ancestors could bearchived in birth records, censuses and other digitised public records. People might be talking about your ancestors for various reasons, or you may find them featuring in old news stories or photographs. If any of your ancestors served in the military or occupied other notable positions, this could open up even more possibilities for obtaining reliable and detailed information.
Carrying out a person search is perhaps the easiest and most comprehensive way to find out everything that's available under a certain name, and if you're able to narrow the search down by criteria such as location or year, this will lead to more targeted results. There may be reasons that people are not going by the names you first assumed too, in the case of marriage or emigration, as many people travelling to the UK and other foreign countries from their homelands adopt anglicised versions of their names in order to better fit in - especially during times such as the Second World War, when Germans living in other countries may have felt pressure to change their surnames.
Fiona Roy writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.
