The components of effective research never change, even in the age of lightening fast communication and billion-name databases. Whether you are new to genealogical research or new to English research in particular, it is important to acquire some basic knowledge for yourself before you delve into research.

Also, become familiar with key English research Web sites. The next time you visit FamilySearch.org, don’t go straight to "Search for Ancestors." Instead, seek out the research information about England. Among the four main tabs along the top is "Search," and within this category is "Research Helps." Select the "E" and scroll down to the England titles. Be sure to select the "England Research Outline"; you will find all sorts of links to research topic categories.

Anyone starting English research learns quickly about the GENUKI Web site. On the home page are several sections that introduce you to the organization and content of GENUKI. "Guidance for First Time Users" and "FAQs" are the best ways to review the site and learn how to get around on it. "United Kingdom and Ireland" takes you into the geographical and topical structure of the site. "Contents and Search" takes you to the lists of contents for each country and county and to the powerful search tool.

Next, visit local libraries (public, university, genealogy, etc.) and your nearest Family History Center. Explore the services and equipment, browse the resources, and inquire about tours or lectures.

The General Register Office (GRO) was established as the authority to collect all the birth, marriage, and death records. At the same time, laws were changed to legalize more than marriages performed according to Church of England, Quaker, or Jewish rites. Couples could marry in a Catholic church, a nonconformist Protestant church, or a registry office. Registry offices were set up throughout the country, and all of England and Wales was divided into registration districts. There were some adjustments to the boundaries in 1851 to eliminate any situation where a district boundary crossed a county line.

Currently, civil vital records are in the custody of the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In recent years, the department has responded to the increasing demand for certificates by cooperating with the Public Record Office (PRO) and establishing the Family Records Centre in London, reducing document fees, and occasionally opening up the storage facility near Liverpool for visitors.

The original national volumes of registered events are held at Southport. Local volumes are held at registration district and sub-district offices and they contain the events registered at those locations only. Over the years, offices have been closed or moved due to the shifts in population density. Therefore, the register books are in two places: the locality and the national ONS repository. A list of local registry offices with addresses and telephone numbers can be found at GENUKI under England—Civil Registration, and in the Family and Local History Handbook.

Family details vary with the type of record. Death certificates in England do not give parents’ names, and ages can be approximate or even a guess by an attendant. Marriage certificates list the father’s name but not the mother’s, and the addresses may be temporary. Birth certificates give both parents’ names, including the maiden name of the mother.

Fortunately, the indexes are available in many places. A complete set of the large volumes is at the Family Records Centre in London. These volumes have also been filmed and microfiched and deposited in the Family History Library. There is also a voluntary project underway to get as many index entries as possible on the Internet. The indexes are alphabetical and give the full name as registered, the name of the registration district (which may differ from the birthplace), and a reference code. If you explore the information about the project you will see that work has progressed well for marriages, with several years in the 1860s completed.

Accessing post-1837 vital records can be accomplished in person in London, in person or by post to a local office, by application to the ONS at Southport, and by consulting indexes in LDS facilities or on the Web, and then by applying to one of these three. For information on ordering directly from ONS, including fees and methods of payment, visit the ONS Web site. (see p. 32)

Parish registers can take the family tree back many generations, perhaps to the first entries in the 1500s. In 1538, parishes in England were ordered by the government of Henry VIII to begin recording baptisms, marriages, and burials. Not all the parishes complied. The order went out again about sixty years later with the requirement that entries back to the accession of Queen Elizabeth I (1558) be copied into a parchment book. Again, not all parishes complied, which means that there are various start dates. In addition, conditions such as pests, fire, humidity, even the interlude of the Civil War and Protectorate (1641—59) have interfered with the survival of registers.

Nearly all surviving original registers are in the custody of county record offices in England. Most genealogists, however, consult microfilm or microfiche copies to protect the ancient volumes from wear and tear, or because the research is being done from a distance. The Family History Library has an extensive collection of parish registers on microfilm. Much of this has been indexed and the names have been incorporated into the International Genealogical Index (IGI).

In fact, the IGI is the way most researchers outside of England are introduced to parish registers. The IGI is available at FamilySearch.org and is accessible via computer and microfiche at Family History Centers. Many researchers consult it, but only a small percentage of them fully understand what it can and cannot do.

The IGI indicates the essential facts in baptism and marriage entries for thousands of parishes; it permits searches filtered according to location, time period, and spelling, and by specifying the name of a spouse or parent or child. However, it does not cover all surviving parish registers (some counties are poorly represented); it does not indicate whether any baptized children died young; it does not say whether a baptism and marriage with the same name are the same person. Use it with caution, preferably with full knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses for your area and time period, and always order the films of the registers to see the original entry, check for additional details, and look for burials. Information on using the IGI is available at FamilySearch.org and from Family History Centers.

If you discover that the IGI and the Family History Library collection of filmed registers does not include your parish, you must discover what is in the country record office, what has been indexed locally in England, and what is in the collection of parish register transcripts at the Society of Genealogists in London. Turn to the Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers, local family history society Web sites, and the appropriate Gibson guide.

By the middle of the 1700s, many people were being baptized in nonconformist Protestant chapels. And registers survive in good numbers from about the 1780s. You may have heard or read that nonconformist registers were turned in to the PRO in the middle 1800s. These registers have been filmed and are in the Family History Library and are indexed in the IGI. However, this is not comprehensive. Many registers are not within this group; they are in local record offices and libraries in England, and may or may not have finding aids.

Starting in 1743, nonconformists began, in spite of the fee, to take advantage of the private, voluntary birth registry (which are housed at Dr. William’s Library in London). If your ancestors were Methodist, Baptist, etc. check the LDS Family History Library Catalog, consult the LDS British Vital Records Index (sold on CD-ROM) which contains a significant number of this class of entry, including those of Dr. William’s Library, and make inquiries through local family history societies and archives.

All available census returns have been microfilmed and can be consulted in local libraries in England, in the Family Records Centre in London, and through the facilities of the Family History Library and Family History Centers. For communities in England with a population of over 40,000, street indexes have been prepared and can be consulted in these communities. There is a complete index to the 1881 census, on CD-ROM and on microfiche. Indexes, usually in booklets or on microfiche, exist for the whole country for 1851 and many family history societies in England have ongoing census indexing projects. Find out about local index projects through the Web sites of individual family history societies, which are accessible through GENUKI.

The start dates for nominal census returns and civil registration are close together. Therefore, it is logical and useful to use the information of one record to initiate a search for the other. For example, all certificates show addresses, so use these in census searches, and all census returns have age and birthplace columns that give useful details for certificate searches. These nineteenth-century records are the building blocks for family reconstruction and for planning searches in the 1700s.

Many inhabitants lists exist before 1837. Some are fragments of the first four official returns and others come in many forms from tax lists to militia musters. Any inhabitants lists that show all heads of household serve as excellent census substitutes.

Enumerators of the first four government census returns (1801, 1811, 1821, and 1831) were not asked to collect names of all inhabitants. But some of them did anyway. Similarly, the returns were ordered to be destroyed after the statistical analysis, but some were not destroyed. This means that there are a few early lists, mostly head of household, but a few nominal, that are available. They are worth searching for; first check in LDS resources and then check local archives and libraries.

The Hearth Tax was collected in England from 1662 until 1689; two shillings for each hearth were required by the occupants of the house twice a year, on Lady Day (25 March) and on Michaelmas (29 September). Many returns survive, especially for the years 1662—66 and 1669—72 when collection was not contracted out. Those households receiving parish relief were exempt from the hearth tax, but in many cases the lists of exemptions are included. In a way, these returns are equivalent to a head-of-household census because they provide names, locations, and number of hearths, which indicate relative prosperity. There are different types of records (assessments, arrears, accounts, etc.) now deposited in local record offices and the PRO. Many have been indexed and published. There is also an ongoing project to microfilm them. The collection at the Family History Library is not extensive, but there is enough in the collection to give a researcher reason to investigate.

Before 1858, probate was heard before one of several hundred church courts that were organized in a hierarchy. Smaller estates were usually dealt with at the local archdeacon’s court. Next were the diocesan and consistory courts. Finally, there were the two prerogative courts, York and Canterbury (PCC). Canterbury was the superior court and was used by those whose property was spread throughout the kingdom, by the wealthy of southern England, and by those with overseas holdings. Its use increased as the prosperous merchant class grew, because nonconformists preferred its more secular character and because in 1807 all estates involving Bank of England investments were required to use it.

All of the wills and most grants of administration (in cases of intestacy) for the PCC have been indexed from earliest times (beginning in 1383). There are annual indexes for all years, as well as some more convenient, consolidated indexes to groups of years. The records have been filmed and can be found in the LDS Family History Library Collection, and in the Family Records Centre in London. Records of the Prerogative Court of York, for the wealthy of northern England, are at the Borthwick Institute in York and in the Family History Library.

A researcher should never try to second-guess what court was used by an ancestor’s executors. It is important to discover all the probate courts with authority in the region of interest, and then to find out where the records are, both the originals and the copies. There is an extensive array of probate records for the lower courts in the Family History Library.

Also investigate the names of your English families. Questions about names invariably arise, but answers should not be sought in popular surname dictionaries of meanings and origins. Instead, carry out your own analysis. The IGI is an excellent tool for exploring the frequency and distribution of a name, except for the counties that are poorly represented (e.g., Somerset). If you are interested in technique, read Surnames in Genealogy. Another resource is H.B. Guppy’s Homes of Family Names of Great Britain. This is a county by county study of the names of English yeomen produced in the 1890s. Also, The Guild of One-Name Studies in England is an umbrella organization that is helpful to genealogists researching all occurrences of a single surname.

No genealogist is properly equipped without a good selection of maps. Research issues will often arise that involve boundaries and topography, and finding maps is easy, either in print or on the Web. For more than two hundred years, the primary mapmaker in England has been the Ordnance Survey. Not only does the Ordnance Survey sell excellent printed maps, it also has a Web site where researchers can "roam" around the country, zooming in and out of a series of maps with a click of the mouse. Also, the GENUKI Web site references parish boundary maps, a mid-nineteenth century atlas, and gazetteers.

Finally, take yourself back through the interpretations of modern historians, and through the eyes of those recording the events of the day. The Annual Register began publication in about 1757 and it incorporates a chronicle of interesting local events. It is one of several fascinating serial publications now accessible on the Web through the Internet Library of Early Journals. Thirty years earlier, Daniel Defoe published A Tour Around the Whole Island of Great Britain, leaving an intimate and readable portrait for posterity. Since the 1890s, volumes of the Victoria History of the Counties of England have appeared at intervals, telling in detail with excellent documentary references, the history of each county, district by district. You can dip into this on the Web.

Pay attention to the records, the methods, the context in time and places, and your research into English origins will always be interesting and enriching, even if your ancestor proves difficult to find.

Probate Jurisdictions: Where to Look for Wills J.S.W. Gibson. Birmingham: Federation of Family History Societies, 1997.

Marriage and Census Indexes for Family Historians J.S.W. Gibson and E. Hampson. Birmingham: Federation of Family History Societies, 1998.

Militia Lists and Musters 1757—1876 J.S.W. Gibson and M. Medlycott. Federation of Family History Societies, 4th edition, 2000.

Local Census Listings 1522—1930 J.S.W. Gibson and M. Medlycott. Federation of Family History Societies, 4th ed., 1999.

Homes of Family Names in Great Britain H.B. Guppy. Clearfield, 1996.