As a result of my brother digging out the "family history book" that my Grandfather did in the 1930s to show my daughters, and then talking to them in the car on the way home about ancestors and family trees I've momentarily caught the family history bug. Whereas my mental picture was of the Burdens coming from Lincolnshire I now find that that was my paternal grandmother's side, and that the Burdens actually came from Eynsham in Oxfordshire, only a few miles away from my in-laws. Having spent the weekend on the on-line history sites I think I've got the tree back to around 1800, and it looks like someone else can then take it back to the 1600s. Mind you we were only farm labourers so there's no riches buried away. The next step is to go "real world" and pop down to the village to look at gravestones, the Oxfordshire Family History Society and maybe even the Family records Office in London. Finding my way throughthe maze of information has been a real nightmare, so I've added an idiots guide below, mainly to help me and the kids when we return to the topic later, but it may also be of use to someone else. Once I've got a fuller firmer picture of the tree I'll post the relevant data here for any other Burdens to read.
Family History Source
As ever these break down into general, primary and secondary sources. Use them\ in that order.
GENERAL
The best place to start is GENUKI for information about how to, and for information summaries and surname lists for each county.
RootsWeb is another good place with general information, although more US focussed and less structured. It hosts GenWeb which is similar to GENUKI and has country and county focus.
The main Mormon site - Family Search - has a lot of general info, as does the official UK Family Records Centre.
The monster link site is Cyndi's List.
PRIMARY SOURCES
There are 4 main primary sources, the Census, Civil Births Marriages and Deaths records, Parish Registers, and others.
Census
Censuses have been carried out every 10 years since 1801. A summary of what is available on and off line is at GENUKI. They are great to work out family relationships and who lived where. In practice the main on-line censuses are:
- 1841 - only a few counties in the south, use Origins Network. £5.95 for 72 hours access.
- 1861 - only a few counties in the south, use 1837 Online. £5 for 55 units of research (printing original documents etc), valid for 45 days.
- 1871 - National Archive/Ancestry.co.uk. Free index, £6.99 for 20 records in 7 days.
- 1881 - widely available for free. The best sites are either Ancestry.com or Family Search.
- 1891 - National Archive/Ancestry.co.uk. Free index, £6.99 for 20 records in 7 days.
- 1901 - only available from the UK National Archives. Searches of the index are free, but you pay £0.50 - £1 to see family members or get print outs of the original pages.
Official Birth, Marriage and Death Records
This data is widely available from when it started in 1837. The best site is Ancestry.com if you're after marriages, or FreeBMD if you want to filter by place. All the indexes just give the basic details. To see the full certificates you have to buy them from the General Register Office or loacl Register Office at about £10 each. To order one use the index to get the GRO reference, of the form Burden 1881 Sep Eynsham 2a 241.
Parish Registers
Before 1837 the main sources of info are the parish registers. These are mostly hard copy with microfiche indexes. The best route to them is through the county Family History Societies (see GENUKI) as these societies have typically built indexes and made CDs available of the data. Many will do searches for you at a small price.
The Mormons have also been collecting this information from registers and placing it on Family Search in the International Genealogical Index section. A good place to start for pre 1850 information.
Other Sources
Origins Network and Ancestry.co.uk and .com have a wide variety of other records available, such as marriages by licence, burials, immigration, apprenticeships etc. A bit hit and miss, but can go a long way back.
Likewise Family History Societies have also collected other regional data. Particularly useful are Monument Inscriptions, ie the writing on tombstones.
SECONDARY SOURCES
The secondary sources are where people have already done some research and built the family trees. The best route to these is through GENUKI, ROOTSWEB and GENWEB, or the Family History Societies. Even Google can come in handy at this stage.
There is also some numercial analytical data around, such as the surname frequency maps produced by Ancestry.com.
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