The most obvious place to begin your quest is with your own immediate family. Most families have some copies of birth, marriage, death certificates and wills stored in a safe place somewhere in the house together with photographs of past and present members. Family Bibles are also a very useful source of information. All of these should be examined and the information copied into the form of a pedigree chart. Once this has been done you should then speak with all the elderly members of your family and ask them to recall all they know about the family and it’s possible origins. You may, of course, be lucky and find that an elderly relative has already begun a search or has had research carried out in the past, in which case your task will be that much easier.

Deciding which line of your ancestry to trace is not a problem, most people chose to concentrate on their male line ancestry but your female lines can be equally interesting. A good example of this is the author’s descent from the Redstone family of the Isle of Wight, via his great-grandfather’s mother. After many years of research a blood relationship was established with the families of Holmes a Court, Barons Heytesbury, O’Neill, Barons Inchiquin and the Simon and Fitzherbert families both of whom were granted baronetcies. All of the above shared a common ancestor in James Redston of Newport (1613-1671). My great-grandmother descended from the elder son of James Redston and the above mentioned families from the younger son. No hint of such a connection was apparent when I began my research. However, it is a classic example of how families moved up and down the social ladder and this factor should always be borne in mind when you are tracing your own ancestry. Do not forget that we all have about 1 million ancestors each, so the potential for tracing different lines of your ancestry is almost limitless!

Once you have had the opportunity to analyse the information you have collected, you must then decide how you wish to proceed and whether you wish you do the work yourself or hire a professional researcher/company. The advantages of doing the former are obvious, not only do you have the pleasure of discovering each new generation of your ancestry but you also acquire many skills along the way and spend many pleasurable hours doing so.