Discovering Your Family Tree

Every family has a history. Most people in Britain and Ireland are able to trace their ancestry back through a dozen generations (or more) discovering along the way a pageant of forbears - rich and poor; heroic and tragic; good, bad and ugly. In this completely new, enlarged and updated revision of a popular title, David Iredale and John Barrett describe how, step by step, the history of a family may be discovered and a pedigree drawn up. DISCOVERING YOUR FAMILY TREE shows how the framework of a family tree may be constructed from the accessible official records of birth, baptism, adoption, marriage, divorce, death and burial. From these bare branches the family tree blossoms into life with biographical information gleaned from the archives of church, state and local administration. Family stories, reminiscences and family secrets, passed by word of mouth from generation to generation, enliven the narrative and color of the dusty data gathered from family papers, legal accumulations, business records and estate muniments. The study of surnames helps in establishing connections with medieval forebears. Genetic research may reveal a distant Viking, Saxon or Celtic ancestry while also, perhaps, confirming surprising relationships in more recent generations.About the authors: David Iredale is the author of "Local History": Research and Writing and the prize-winning populat textbook "Enjoying Archives". John Barrett has written an episodic history of Forres, Moray, and an edition of the memoirs of the Presbyterian preacher and traveller James Allan (1670 - 1740). Both are professional archivists whose lifetime experience of local records, genealogy and historical fieldwork has been shared in published articles on family history, local history and archive administration. Thet are co-authors of three other books in this series: "Discovering Your Old House", Discovering Old Handwriting" and Discovering Local History".Iredale, David is the author of 'Discovering Your Family Tree', published 1990 under ISBN 9780785563358 and ISBN 0785563350.