Starting out on your journey to find your ancestors can be quite intimidating if you don’t know where to start. We get a lot of emails every day asking about relatives in the licensed trade and though it would be great to put together a guide to help you on your way to finding out your family history.
What is Family History and Genealogy
Family History and Genealogy has become very popular over the past 10 years or so and with so many resources now available, it has never been better to get started. Now, what does it actually mean? Both of these terms are very similar. They both refer to researching and creating a list of your ancestors, often by using a family tree.
There are some debate about if Family History and Genealogy mean the same thing or if they have different meanings. Typically Genealogy is the term used for creating your family tree and Family History is a more personal touch on genealogy that involves researching the lives and stories from your ancestors.
Where do I start?
Free online Courses
I would recommend getting started by taking a free course by the University of Strathclyde called Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree. I have done this course and highly recommend it to give yourself a basic understanding of family history.
Start your Family Tree
If you don’t have the time or want to take part in the course, you can jump into your Family History straight away by downloading a family tree chart from here.
Now that you have the visual representation, your next stage is to start documenting your current family that you are aware of. Use this time to also speak to your relatives that might have more knowledge about family members what you are not aware of.
You should get yourself over to MyHeritage to start your free trial. They have a fantastic database of records and also offer a DNA test that will tell you who your ancestors where… What an age we live in! This site will give your family tree a push forward with more information and records that have been digitised.
Hobby Sites
Once you have got a solid tree started, now you can start to research the lives of your ancestors and get a glimpse into their lives. What were their lives like? Where did they live? where did they work? Did they have any hobbies?
Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic resource out there that will tell you all of this information, but when you find our what a person’s job was, you can then use this information to look for more information about them. For example. If your ancestor was a publican (also written as a wine and spirit merchant) you will likely be able to find out about them on our website (www.oldglasgowpubs.com) and hopefully, get some stories too!
George says
Looking for information and pictures of the dog watch pub on dyke road Glasgow think it changed name to cushions at sompoint