Tips for beginners researching family tree without much info

[Moxiechick]

Hi,

I've recently started researching my family tree on ancestory and started with my mums said. Followed lots of lines back to late 1700s/early 1800s. The beginning was relatively easy as I know my mums family and some cousins had already made their own trees.

Now I want to start researching my dads side. I never knew him but have his name, year of death (2008) and found the marriage certificate from his marriage to my mum. My mum doesn't remember my paternal grandmothers name but does remember my paternal grand fathers name. I've tried searching the name and guessing round about when he'd have been born, also I know he must have died before 1985 as my mum never knew him. Nothings coming up! Any tips on what to do next?
Thanks

If you get yourself onto a site like Rootschat or Genealogists Forum, people with more expertise will try to help you. They're great at getting newbies started and breaking down brick walls.

My sister is doing our Family Tree and found that the Mormon Genealogy site is free and much better than the ones you pay for. She also said that it is easy to use.

Assuming it's not a super common name, if you know your father's name and year of death you can go to GRO website and find his year of birth: www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp You can then use his name and date of birth to search the birth index on freeBMD. This would then give you his mother's maiden name. Depending on how common the surname is you could search the records to see how many marriages there were between people with your grandfather and grandmothers surname. You might get lucky and there's only one like for my parents and this would then give you their first names too or alternatively you could order a copy of your father's birth certificate from GRO for the information. You could then order a copy of your grandparents marriage certificate to get more information.

If you can find the record of your father's death on Ancestry, that will also show his date of birth. You can then use this to try and find his birth record, either on Ancestry or the GRO index. If he has a very common name and you don't know where he lived or anything that might be harder, but you can use the information you have from the marriage (any middle names etc) and the death record.

Once you have found his birth record, then you can see what his mother's maiden name is and you can look for a marriage between someone with that maiden name and his surname around the time of his birth (maybe before or after!). As AlphabetDinosaur says, you can order certificates at any point to get more information and to check the details match up but that will cost money.

Once you have details of grandparents, you can look at things like the 1911 census and the 1939 register to check the information and get more information about them. You can use the same process - birth record, mother's maiden name, marriage working backwards through the 19th century where you have the census to help you out further. Good luck!

Thank you all for your help. Havent found his record of death yet but I will see if the GRO website can help. I'll also check on the other groups mentioned.

I just remembered on my birth certificate it said he was born in west Germany but my mum says it was on British army ground. Maybe that could help find something!

I'm happy to try and help if you want me to PM me, but totally understand if you want to do it yourself!

FutureLearn used to offer a free genealogy course introducing all the sources available and how to access and interpret them.
It was useful even for an outsider like me (I search in a different area).

@Moxiechick

Thank you all for your help. Havent found his record of death yet but I will see if the GRO website can help. I'll also check on the other groups mentioned.

I just remembered on my birth certificate it said he was born in west Germany but my mum says it was on British army ground. Maybe that could help find something!

It may depend then whether his birth was registered with the British Consulate as well as the West German authorities. Either way, if he was born in West Germany, he won't be in the England and Wales Index, but believe the consular births may be on Find My Past.

Did your dad have any siblings? If so, it might be easier to find their birth certificate, which would show your grandmother's name.

Have you found your grandparents' marriage record?

It might also be worth searching for a will for your grandfather, to see who the beneficiaries were.

he may have died abroad? even if on holiday abroad his death then wouldn't be registered her in the uk

did he remarry? this certificate may give you further information

try searching probate records for both wills and administration

from your mothers wedding certificate you have a name of your fathers father - your grandfather, can you find him on the 1939 register?

@Prokupatuscrakedatus

FutureLearn used to offer a free genealogy course introducing all the sources available and how to access and interpret them. It was useful even for an outsider like me (I search in a different area).

They still do and it's excellent.

www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy

If you have your parents' marriage certificate this should give his full name and age, and allow you to calculate an approximate year of birth. It will also show the name of your father's father (if you are in England or Wales) or the names of both parents of your father (if you are in Scotland).

This should help you start to build a family tree. Sites like FreeBMD are brilliant for marriage, birth, death record indexes but obviously work better with less common surnames. I would advise using a site like Ancestry to start building your tree, you don't need to subscribe to access that bit of the site if you don't want to.

So for example, you calculate your father's birth date from a marriage certificate as being 1952. You know his father's name (from the same certificate) is Peter Irving. And you know the family lived in Devon. So the next step is to search the marriage indexes for marriages between about 1940 and 1952 for anyone called Peter Irving, paying particular attention to any results in the West Country.

Not all deaths are indexed on Ancestry, especially the Scottish ones. My two grandparents who died in 1994 and 2000 aren't on there (but are on Scotland's People).

Are there any other aunts, uncles or cousins on that side who could help?