Laura Berry reveals how the WDYTYA? researchers find those genealogical gems that bring an ancestor to life
The backbone of every family tree consists of birth, marriage and death certificates and census returns, but more often than not it’s the hidden archival treasures that really make an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? stand out from the crowd. As every new discovery is made in the staple family history sources, the WDYTYA? research team try to think what else might be unearthed in additional records.
Were any male ancestors the right age to have fought in the First World War? If so, we should look for surviving service papers for them. Have we got any farmers or yeomen living in rural communities on the 1841 census? We’d better check to see if tithe maps and apportionment books exist for those parishes to help us identify their properties. Were any of these people doing reasonably well financially? Let’s make sure that we’ve searched high and low for wills and probate inventories, and checked death-duty indexes. It’s important to look for names as well as all of their addresses on the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) too.
Digitised newspapers were instrumental in dramatising actor Claire Foy’s relations’ ordeal at the Manchester Assize Courts when they were tried for murder and accused of being Fenians, but there are thousands more historical regional papers and niche journals kept at the British Library (bl.uk) and in local archives. Occasionally we have to trawl these on microfilm or in paper form to locate an ancestor’s obituary, having failed to find one online. If we have a date of death from a civil registration certificate or burial record then that helps to narrow the search parameters.
You can find various specialist collections on Ancestry (ancestry. co.uk), FamilySearch (familysearch. org), Findmypast (findmypast. co.uk) and TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk), including swathes of military, probate and land records that can reveal useful leads. However, there are plenty more record sets that haven’t made it onto the main family history websites, and require a little more digging to access.
Research Guides
The National Archives’ (TNA’s) online research guides are an excellent place to turn if you’re looking for something specific such as court records or personnel papers from the armed forces, because they outline what records you will find online and which items you’ll need to visit an archive for, whether that be TNA in Kew or another repository.
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