Daisy Goddard
Researcher
Mon Apr 28 2025
•
< 5 minutes read
Your family history is the story of your ancestors, from their day-to-day experiences to the milestones of their lives. You can discover these stories using genealogy records and old newspapers, digitally accessible on family history websites.
Family history explained
Your family history is more than just a list of names, dates and distant relatives. It’s the real-life story of where you came from. It offers a vivid window into your past, with reverberations into the present day. With a little digging, you may discover an ancestor who looks strikingly like your sibling, or who shares one or more of your own passions...
More than just a hobby, family history research is a mission – to uncover the challenges and triumphs of those who came before us and preserve their stories for future generations.
How do you trace your family history?
To trace your family history back through the years, there are two key things you’ll need to do.
Create a family tree with an online tree-building tool
Start your family tree by adding your name and date of birth. You’ll then be prompted to add the same for your parents and grandparents. From here, you can build your tree backwards through the generations.
Search for your ancestors in family history records and old newspapers
To learn more about your relatives, you’ll need to search their name within online genealogy records - like birth, marriage and death (BMD) records and old censuses. Historical newspapers can also help you to uncover rich details that paint a vivid picture of your ancestors’ lives, from the jobs they held to the communities they were part of.
What can you discover about your family history?
With family history research, you can uncover fascinating details about your ancestors, like:
- Their names, where they were born and what their households looked like
- How their earned a living
- Their wartime experiences - perhaps they volunteered with the Women’s Land Army, worked as a medic on the Front or earned bravery medals
- The milestone moments in their lives; weddings, celebrations and the welcoming of a new life into the world
- If they had any brushes with the law
- When they died and where their final resting place is
Every record is a piece of the puzzle. helping you delve deeper into your family’s past and understand the world in which your ancestors lived.
How to get started with family history
To build up a general picture of your ancestors and their lives, start an online family tree and build its branches back through the generations with information you already know.
To discover more about a particular relative, it’s best to search their name and details within genealogy records and digitised newspapers. Birth, marriage and death (BMD) records and censuses are a good place to start.
Whether you start by creating your family tree or searching a name is up to you. As your research progresses, your tree and the wealth of records available to you will work hand-in-hand to unlock exciting personal discoveries.
Is family history difficult?
There are a few things that determine how difficult it will be to trace your family history.
These include:
- Which records are available – this varies by country and region. In some cases, your ancestor’s records may have been lost or destroyed, while others could be hiding in plain sight.
- How much you already know – the more information you’ve already got, the easier it’ll be to build a flourishing family tree.
- Whether your ancestors had rare names – people with more distinctive names are unsurprisingly easier to pin down.
With digitised records and online tree-building tools, researching your family history is easier than ever. While some details may prove trickier to find, there are some handy tricks you can use to overcome the brick-walls in your research.