How-to Guides
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Crime, Punishment and other Family Traditions
Read more: Crime, Punishment and other Family TraditionsThe hidden histories in Georgian and Victorian records reveal fascinating details about family ancestors, particularly those with criminal backgrounds, offering insights into their lives, societal challenges, and the justice system’s impact.
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Navigating Excise Records: A Beginner’s Guide
Read more: Navigating Excise Records: A Beginner’s GuideDiscovering an exciseman in your family tree is both exciting and slightly intimidating. Unlike agricultural labourers or blacksmiths, excise officers generated thousands of pages of official paperwork. The good news is that much of it survives. The less good news is that nobody tells you where to begin. When I first began researching an ancestor…
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The Family History Resources We Don’t Talk About Enough
Read more: The Family History Resources We Don’t Talk About EnoughI have spent the last few weeks immersed in a family history mystery that has reminded me why I find this hobby endlessly fascinating. It has everything I enjoy: conflicting evidence, unexpected twists, several evenings spent muttering at eighteenth-century handwriting and more cups of tea than were probably strictly necessary. It also has one rather…
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Behind the Research: Revisiting John Hardwicke through an Evidence Matrix
Read more: Behind the Research: Revisiting John Hardwicke through an Evidence MatrixWhen I published The Curious Domestic Arrangements of John Hardwicke, readers were introduced to a man who sits at the centre of one of my current family history investigations. By the time I finished writing, I felt I had untangled enough of the evidence to tell a coherent story while being honest about the questions…
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How I Use My Evidence Matrix (and Why I’ve Designed It This Way)
Read more: How I Use My Evidence Matrix (and Why I’ve Designed It This Way)The article shares insights on employing an evidence matrix in family history research, emphasising critical evaluation of records, organisation of findings, and the importance of questioning evidence throughout the research process.
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Why Every Family Historian Should Keep an Evidence Matrix
Read more: Why Every Family Historian Should Keep an Evidence MatrixFamily historians can enhance their research by creating an evidence matrix, which helps organise findings, track sources, evaluate reliability, and formulate research questions.
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When the Register Says “Fever”: Understanding Illness in Family History Records
Read more: When the Register Says “Fever”: Understanding Illness in Family History RecordsOne of the most frustrating aspects of researching our ancestors is how little surviving records sometimes tell us. We spend hours uncovering baptisms, marriages and burials, yet when illness enters the story, the trail often goes cold. Before civil registration began in 1837 there were no official death certificates in England and Wales, meaning that…
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What Family Historians Can Learn from Professional Historians
Read more: What Family Historians Can Learn from Professional HistoriansOne of the biggest misconceptions about history is that historians spend their lives memorising dates and collecting facts. In reality, facts are only the starting point. Historians are interested in evidence: where it came from, why it was created, how reliable it might be and what it can tell us about the people who left…
