Sommerwill -a Devon Family: Tips

 

Tips

If you are just beginning with family tree research and have very little information about your family, you may need to begin by getting key information from other websites. Work backwards from what you know. A good starting point is your parents' marriage, then their parents' marriages. The most useful free website for checking indexes of births, marriages and deaths is Freebmd. Another very powerful and useful site, requiring payment, is Findmypast.

On this website the most direct route to your immediate relatives is via the Marriage Index, on the Sources pulldown menu. If you know the surname of anyone who married a Sommerwill, find them in the index and click on the link at the left hand side. This will take you to the appropriate page. The diagram at the top of each family group page is sensitive. Click on any name to home in on the details about them. Links at the top (and bottom where relevant) take you to previous (and later) generations.

If you cannot find your connection that way, go to the Family Tree page (by clicking it on the menu bar). The diagram shows the different groups and how they are connected, with recent and current generations at the bottom. There are broad indications at the top of the geographical location of each group, and at the bottom of how they spell the family name today. These may help you to select. It's then a matter of trial and error until you find the one to which you can relate.

Another approach is via the Sources pulldown on the menu bar, which takes you to transcripts of parish register entries, civil registrations and censuses. Use the information you have to search these until you find indicators that will enable you to use the Marriage Index. Note, however, that these transcriptions are not complete or recent. The development of indexed versions of them online with powerful search engines has made them nearly obsolete. Not entirely, though, because the online versions have usually been transcribed by robots and contain significant corruptions because of misreading of handwritten originals. It's always worth looking at more than one version of a transcription.