Packed with a handpicked selection of 101 top genealogy websites, our Family History Website Directory covers key areas of ancestor research to help you find the answers you seek. Compiled by Karen Clare

Karen Clare

The web can be a bewildering, if exciting, world for family historians.

There is seemingly an entire universe full of websites to explore and many a genealogist has lost happy hours absorbed in their online adventures. As much as that is great fun, quantity is not always as good as quality, and often a little more targeted research can save you time and money in the long run.

With this in mind, we’ve compiled this directory of 101 top genealogy websites (mostly free) to help you navigate your way around the internet as you explore your family’s story. To help you further, we’ve divided the guide into key categories for your ancestor research.

Obviously, lots of websites cover genealogy as a whole, particularly the major subscription ones. Thus, we will begin with them here and will not repeat them elsewhere; take it as a given that you will find coverage of many of the key research categories within their expansive collections.

We hope you find this directory useful to return to again and again. Happy exploring! collections, including Army service records, census records and the 1939 Register, are available online via partnership with some of the subscription genealogy websites mentioned above. TNA also offers free research guides, image library, blogs, podcasts and videos, and more. Use the Discovery catalogue at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk to search the 32 million descriptions of records held in TNA collections and more than 2,500 archives across the country. More than 9 million records can be downloaded – some for free, others require a small fee.

MAJOR GENEALOGY WEBSITES

1 FamilySearch – www.familysearch.org (free to search but you may have to pay to view some records on partner sites)

2 Free UK Genealogy – www.freeukgenealogy.org.uk – the free online gateway to the volunteer transcription projects FreeBMD, FreeREG and FreeCEN

3 Ancestry.co.uk (£)

4 TheGenealogist.co.uk (£)

5 Findmypast.co.uk (£)

6 MyHeritage.com (£)

7 RootsIreland.ie (£)

8 FamilyRelatives.com (£)

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

9 The National Archives

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk The National Archives (TNA) has vast government record collections covering all areas of the British Isles, former Empire and Commonwealth dating back 1,000 years. Many

Tip!

Find tips on using the major genealogy websites in our free guide at www.familytree.co.uk/how-to-guides/ useful-genealogy-websites

10 National Records of Scotland www.nrscotland.gov.uk ScotlandsPeople www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk is the official Scottish site for searching government records and archives, maintained by the National Records of Scotland (NRS). Visit it for access to Scotland’s statutory registers of births, marriages, deaths, census returns; church records; valuation rolls, Scottish legal records and much more. It is free to search indexes but records are payper- view and certificates must be purchased. Go to www.nrscotland.gov.uk to search the catalogues and indexes for the NRS and National Register of Archives for Scotland and the Scottish Archive Network, browse image galleries and access research guides.

11 National Library of Scotland www.nls.uk The library is Scotland’s largest library and one of the major research libraries in Europe. Specialising in Scotland’s knowledge, history and culture, its free digital resources range from rare historical documents to online journals and images. Find a dedicated family history section at www.nls.uk/family-history

12 The National Library of Wales www.library.wales The National Library of Wales aims to make Welsh culture and heritage as widely accessible as possible to all to research and enjoy. Its huge digitised collections include wills, newspapers and journals, manuscripts, maps, archives, books and photographs.

13 British Library www.bl.uk The British Library’s expansive – collections include manuscripts – explore its new Restoration and 18th Century collection at www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-centuryliterature – sound archives, family papers and diaries, India Office records, photographs and more. Explore the Archives and Manuscripts catalogue at http://searcharchives.bl.uk

14 National Archives of Ireland www.nationalarchives.ie The archives’ mission statement is ‘to collect, manage, and preserve the public record of Ireland… visibly contributing to the cultural life and memory of Irish society’. Its free digital resources include census records, soldiers’ wills, tithe applotment books and will calendars. Find a useful guide at www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy1/introduction-to-genealogy

15 The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni Explore many free collections within Northern Ireland’s official archive on this user-friendly website, such as will calendars and historic maps, street directories, name searches and valuation revision books. Learn about its family and local history resources at www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/ archives-family-and-local-history – including the General Register Office Northern Ireland (GRONI) at https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk

16 Society of Genealogists www.sog.org.uk The Society of Genealogists (SoG) is Britain’s largest family history society and maintains a huge family history library and education centre in Clerkenwell, London. Its collections are particularly valuable for research before the start of civil registration began in 1837 and include unique unpublished manuscripts and family histories.