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There are loads of little things I'm grateful for when researching, here are a couple:

A Smith family who gave all their children two middle names each. Makes them SO much easier to trace.

The parish records of Steeple, Essex, in the early 1800s, where the mother's maiden name has been annotated on the baptism register for several records, including one of my ancestors. It helped me find out who my 4xgreat-grandmother was.

Feel free to add anything you're grateful for today.

I love using the British Newspaper Archive as a source of information for my tree.

But an added bonus is the adverts.

Here's my favourite so far - please share any amusing ones you find!

A year ago I started transcribing for FreeREG. Despite not spending as much time transcribing as I could have done, I've completed nearly 6000 records. It's only a tiny proportion of the 37 million records in FreeREG's database, but hopefully my transcriptions have helped someone.

So here's my mission for 2017:
1) Transcribe more! Finish the post-1813 records for Burnham-on-Crouch, and either tackle the earlier records (aaah!) or start a new parish
2) Recruit more transcribers

If you've ever thought about transcribing, why not give it a go? If you've been researching your own tree for a while, you'll be used to the handwriting (yes, you'll find the occasional bit of appalling scrawl, but you can always post it on rootschat for others to help you with). It feels great to know that you're putting good-quality transcriptions online, and helping others with their research.

My tips - volunteer for a part of the country you're familiar with, pick a small parish to start with (so you feel you're making progress) and start with post-1813 baptisms and burials (standardised forms and generally easier handwriting).

I find WinREG really easy to use, and it's easy to upload your work (and importantly, you can make corrections and re-submit it).

Of course it's not just FreeREG - there are other projects to get involved in too.

So who's in?

I'll start us off with a few tips:

1) Don't forget the death indexes! They go up to 1957, and show middle names in full. This might help you track down the death of a relative with an unusual middle name - for example, I've tracked down a Mary Angela who was previously indistinguishable from all the Mary Anns!

2) Deaths up to 1866 show the age at death. (A warning though, sometimes an age in months/weeks can appear to be in years - e.g. 14 months just appears as 14. I wonder if the GRO are working to correct this?)

3) Have a look for babies born in the second quarter of 1911 - they may have been born just after the census was taken, but previously the mother's maiden name was only recorded from the third quarter of 1911 onwards.