roots

Tracing your tree

By now many readers of this column may have already started to follow the steps in tracing their family trees.
The most important pieces of the jigsaw, as I've mentioned in previous weeks, are the birth, marriage and death certificates of your ancestors.
If you know when events occurred, you can buy copies of these from the register office that originally issued them, or from the General Register Office (now based in Southport, Merseyside).
But what if you don't know when your grandparents were married, or when grandma died, or even where your father or your mother was born?
Easy! Ever since July 1,1837, the Register General has been keeping a list of all births, marriages and deaths that took place in England and Wales - and a copy of that list is freely available at Hull Central Library on microfiche.
It's called the General Register Office Index, and contains more than 114 million birth records, 86 million death records, and 44 million marriage records.
All of our English and Welsh ancestors back to the beginning of the Victorian era should be in there. It's just a question of searching!
Simply ring 616867 to reserve yourself a microfiche reader (needed to magnify the images) and then come in to track down all those missing relatives.
And if you're computer-literate it's easier still - because the entire index from 1837 to 2004 has recently been made available on the Internet on the ancestry.co.uk * website. Most of the features on this extremely useful site are only available by paid subscription, but the full list of births, marriages and deaths can now be explored free of charge.
Click on the "Search" tab and then select "England & Wales, BMD Index".
You have to register your name and email address but no money changes hands.

Gareth Watkins
Genealogist
Hull History Services