Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (7 page)

Finally, do not forget to visit museums, both specialist – such as the National Railway Museum or National Coal Mining Museum (both featured in
Who Do You Think You Are?
when Sue Johnston and Lesley Garrett went looking for their ancestors) – and local, such as the Rochdale Museum where much research into Bill Oddie's ancestors took place. Museums will be full not only of documents, but objects, artefacts, clothes, engines, machinery, books, sporting memorabilia – anything from the past that shows what life was like for your ancestors. This is where you will finally begin to understand the era in which your relatives lived, to encounter history up close, and find out about some of the events they lived through.

Museums can also help you to identify some of the bits and pieces you've found during your own research within the family. Items of clothing or household objects can be taken to local museums or national ones such as the Victoria and Albert Museum (for clothing and textiles especially), where curators can help you date them. Military memorabilia such as medals can often be interpreted at places such as the Imperial War Museum.

There are various online databases to help you find libraries, archives, record offices, museums and repositories around the UK, and even around the world. Most of these allow you to enter the name of a place or use an interactive map to display a list of all the nearest archives to a particular area. The ARCHON Directory is perhaps one of the most useful databases to start with, and it's available from The National Archives website at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ archon. It contains addresses, telephone numbers, websites and street maps for local and major repositories all over the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, and you can search by region or by entering the name of the place in which you're interested. Visit the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) at www.scan.org.uk/directory/index. htm to find an additional alphabetical directory of Scottish archives.

If, as outlined earlier, you want to find out where the principal records of a particular landowning family are kept, the best way is to search the National Register of Archives, now part of The National Archives. You can view their paper indexes in person at their main search room at Kew, but a quicker route is to key the name of the landowning family into their online database at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra and click on ‘Family Name'. You will then be given a list of all archives holding relevant material. So if you were looking for a connection to the Marquess of Sligo, as actor John Hurt was, you could type in ‘Sligo' and quickly learn that relevant records were stored in the National Library of Ireland.

To recap, your next step after building your family tree is to verify the information you've got. Then you can extend the tree further back in time and, by following a particular branch of the family or story, investigate the historical context. You can start the verification process and extend your family tree online by obtaining certificates, census returns, wills and parish registers, as described in Section Two; but you may find it easier to simply visit the local studies centre or county record office in the area your family comes from to look at paper or microfiche indexes for these certificates and records, many of which are not available on the Internet. In any case, you will certainly need to visit an archive sooner or later to add historical context, so here are some important points to know before you do venture inside.

If you are unfamiliar with working in an archive, here's a checklist of things to do before you visit. Never just turn up unannounced – it's a sure way to have a frustrating day.

The best thing you can do is to make contact with the archive you plan to visit. Call them, email them or write to them. The archivists there can tell you all about the place, demystify the process of registering as a user (or ‘reader'), explain how to search for records, both onsite and online, and – provided you ask simple, detailed and focused questions – may even be able to give specific advice to help you find what you're looking for. If this is the case, you can always ask to talk to the person that helped you when you do eventually visit in person, if they are around and are not tied up with other duties. Don't forget, you can find the archive nearest to you through ARCHON, mentioned above. If in doubt, contact the local studies centre for further advice.

Family history is big business these days, and unprecedented numbers are flocking into archives as never before. Many institutions are fairly small, with limitations on the amount of space available for researchers, particularly as many of the most popular records are only available on microfilm or microfiche. It is therefore important to check whether you need to book a seat before you visit, otherwise you may be disappointed if you simply turn up on the day.

Most archives require you to register as a user before you can view original material or use their search rooms. Usually, you are requested to produce at least one form of official identification, although these requirements will vary from archive to archive. The National Archives asks for one form of official ID, such as a bank card, driving licence, passport, or national ID card for overseas visitors, and then issues a three-year reader's ticket which incorporates your photo, taken on the day you apply. Many county archives also need to see proof of address, and some request passport photos for their records. However, a large number of county record offices have grouped together to form CARN – the County Archive Research Network – and registration at one affiliated archive gives you access to all participating members.

It is not always evident where an archive is likely to be located. Many form part of council or municipal buildings; some are newly built, just out of town; others may have no parking facilities, or don't have good
links to public transport. Luckily, the majority of archives now maintain websites, and provide maps or necessary travel details.

… prepare for an archive visit

1.
Make contact in advance

2.
Book a seat

3.
Check ID requirements for registration

4.
Check location and travel details

5.
Find out the opening hours

6.
Make sure you can access the records you want

7.
Check costs and facilities

There is no standard pattern to archival opening hours, so don't assume that it will be open when you want to visit. Although many open 9–5, five days a week, some now close for at least one day midweek and offer either Saturday opening, or one late evening, or both. There is usually at least one period each year when an archive closes down for ‘stocktaking', when checks are carried out to ensure none of the precious material they hold has gone missing.

It is also dangerous to assume you can simply turn up and expect to see the material you need. Since there are pressures on storage space, many of the less popular documents in large archives are often kept offsite, which means you may not always be able to view material on the day you plan to visit unless you've made prior arrangements. In addition to storage restrictions, there could be other complications. Privately deposited documents – family papers, legal archives or religious collections – often come with their own restrictions. For example, you may need to write to the depositor to secure permission to view material. It is therefore vital to check all these details before you visit to avoid disappointment.

There may be costs involved in visiting an archive. Some charge you an entry fee; others will ask you to leave your goods and belongings in a locker that requires change; and any photocopying you wish to take away with you will have to be paid for. Indeed, you may also want to buy food and drink for lunch and some archives provide snack machines, with larger institutions offering hot drinks, sandwiches or even restaurants.

Having established which archive you need to visit, and made contact to cover the points listed above, you are ready to search their collections in the hope of finding the key documents you need to supplement your family tree. You should already have set your research goals in advance, but it might be worth writing these out, so you can hand them
to the staff at the archive if you need some help. For example, you may have heard that Great-uncle Jeremy fought in the First World War, but don't know where he served. You may therefore decide to restrict your search to establishing his movements during the war. Try to keep this ‘wish list' focused and manageable; it is important to be realistic about how much you can get done in a day, and allow time for unexpected discoveries that may lead you into new investigations. Remember, if you don't have time to complete all you originally wanted to do, you can always resume on a later trip.

Each archive ‘catalogues' its possessions – that is, it gives a unique reference to every item that it collects. Alongside this unique reference there is usually a description of the item that has been catalogued. These catalogues and document descriptions are the main way that researchers identify documents they need to look at, though you should be aware that archives are complicated places, and there is not one uniform system of cataloguing documents that applies to each institution – each archive will have its own catalogue system, developed over time. Many repositories still have paper indexes to their catalogues, which need to be trawled through in person to find document references even if some of their collections have been uploaded into digital catalogues, although these days many archive catalogues are available to search online.

One important project aims to bring all these disparate catalogues and document descriptions together in one place on the Internet. Known as Access to Archives (A2A), it is an online database containing descriptions of over 10 million documents held in around 400 local archives across England and Wales. It aims to increase awareness of these fantastic resources and facilitate easy access to them. You can search the database by keyword, area, date range and repository name by going to www.a2a.org.uk. Full document descriptions are provided along with references and a note as to where each document is held. Many local and county record offices have submitted their catalogues to the A2A database, but it cannot be stressed enough that if you can't find anything related to your
research using A2A you still need to visit the record office itself and consult the original indexes.

The National Register of Archives (NRA) is another treasure trove of catalogue descriptions, but is arranged in a different way to the A2A catalogue. Its database of record descriptions held for around 29,000 businesses, 75,000 organizations, 9,000 families, and 46,000 individuals can be searched using four types of search engine. The NRA database is accessed via The National Archives' website at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra, where you can search under a corporate name, personal name, family name or place name. This database is fantastic for finding out about the location of company archives and the records they hold, especially if your ancestor worked for a major corporate firm.

The Scottish Archive Network has compiled an online, unified index of documents held in many archives across Scotland, which can be searched by keyword from www.scan.org.uk/catalogue. It has descriptions of over 20,000 documents from 52 archives, including the NAS and NLS.

There is even a network allowing you to search the holdings of university archives and libraries, called Archives Hub. It is being added to over time, and can be found at www.archiveshub.ac.uk.

It is always worth finding out if the archive you intend to visit has its own online catalogue accessed via its website. If you have located an archive using the ARCHON database, this should have provided you with their website address. Most of the national archives have separate online catalogues containing descriptions of documents not found on A2A or the NRA.

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The National Archives' Catalogue has descriptions of an impressive 10 million documents that you can search by keyword, date range or government departmental code from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue. The documents held at TNA are categorized according to the government department they originated from, and a departmental code forms the first part of any TNA document reference. For example, WO is the prefix of all document references for records from the War Office. Searching for document descriptions by government departmental code can help to narrow down the number of results you get if you know what type of record you are looking for.

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The National Archives of Scotland has a database known as OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) that can be found at www.nas.gov.uk/catalogues/default.asp. This searches their collections by keyword, place authority, name authority and date, and the NAS website has a list of documents that have not yet been uploaded to OPAC and require a search of the original indexes. You could also consult the National Register of Archives for Scotland (NRAS), which is only available in paper form at the National Archives of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. This is a survey of papers held by private archives in Scotland.

… search for documents

1.
Write down your research goals in advance, and keep them focused and manageable

2.
Every item in an archive will have a unique catalogue reference and description