Census' exhausted where to next?

[MaryThorn]

So have managed to track back as far as the late 1700's using details for census returns and now I'm stuck.  I take it the next place for family information would be to turn to baptisms details but how easy is it access this information online?

Any recommendations for gleaning more Northumberland family information?

[Marmalady]

Parish registers for births, marriages & deaths can be found on Ancestry and FindMyPast

Or more limited (but growing) coverage on sites such as FreeReg: http://freereg2.freereg.org.uk/

[nanny jan]

OPC (online Parish Clerk) sites can be very useful; a variety of free information.  Here's the link to the Dorset one but if you scroll to the end there is a list of the others:

http://www.opcdorset.org/


Nanny Jan

[Tickettyboo]

https://familysearch.org
http://www.freereg.org.uk

are the two main sites that spring to mind, both free, both have a searchable database which will result in a transcription. Free Reg has less coverage but greater detail, Family Search also have some of the Bishops Transcripts and you can browse through the images (time consuming but often rewarding)

https://archive.org have some scanned books of transcribed old parish registers - try a search in texts for the parish name.

Post 1837, civil certs would give the details you'd need to verify what you have found in census returns, but they are expensive at £9.25 each, so parish registers are a good substitute (though I try to get the civil certs for the direct line at least)

Old newspapers - available either on Find My Past or British Newspaper Archive (both subscription sites) may throw up some gems about your ancestors, or perhaps your library membership gives remote access to the 19th Century British Library Newspapers.

Lots of good pointers in the Northumberland Resources and Offers board and I can recommend reading various threads on here, I have learned a lot from reading other people's posts.

Boo

[c-side]

It's also useful to know where parishes are in the county - it's a large county.  Try

http://www.genuki.bpears.org.uk/NBL/Parishes.html

it's an excellent way to get your bearings

Christine

[Tickettyboo]

in addition to Christine's post about Genuki and the great info it gives about the parishes

http://maps.familysearch.org

Allows you to see the parishes on a map - and all sorts of other useful stuff. I use it a lot.

Boo

[StanleysChesterton]

You don't have to just go back.... I was intrigued by my GG-grandmother's siblings, parents and their siblings, to answer the question "Where did they all go? Where did they all end up?"  I assumed they'd all have stayed in the village, but they went all over the place.  Some to villages 10 miles away, some to Canada/Australia - and some just "disappeared", which are more jaunts through the census records to try to find them.

Newspapers are where I've had the most interesting stuff.  OK, so I knew somebody was born in 18xx, married in 18xx, widowed in 18xx, died in 18xx ....but what was more interesting was discovering she'd been in prison and why - and then seeing her physical description on her sheet!

Stalk those ancestors you've discovered....see what they got up to.  I had one who was in court for "buying a soldiers pants"!    Or the one who married a man who died in the loony bin, then remarried and then she died - and as they were laying out her body they discovered a huge cache of hidden gold!

They can be hilarious

[Tickettyboo]

You don't have to just go back.... I was intrigued by my GG-grandmother's siblings, parents and their siblings, to answer the question "Where did they all go? Where did they all end up?"

oh yes, once you can establish the barebones stuff born, married, died and have the structure of the tree putting some flesh on those bones is enormous fun - and frustrating and time consuming :-)

I think the best advice I was given many years ago was save every single snippet of info you find, note where you found it and what the reference is. If you've spent three hours tracking down a piece of info, you really don't want to spend another three hours sometime later trying to remember 'where' you got it from !

Boo

[pinot]

Don't forget that you can access many records free (if you're a member) from you local library that would cost you quite dearly via subscription - BMDs, baptisms, wills etc