The Genealogy / Family History group first met with a kick-off meeting in May 2025. Here is the initial presentation (PDF) and below are a selection of resources for group members to use. Feel free to make any suggestions to Mike who will be happy to add them to this page.
Free Resources
The following resources can be used free of charge.
The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints (LDS) provides a huge amount of online resources and in person help for family history researchers
- familysearch.org - the best freely-available family history site. It has a massive library of genealogy sources that can be searched. It also allows you to add people to their single global family tree. This has two advantages - firstly you can often come across your relatives and ancestors that have already been added to the tree by others; and secondly it lets you preserve your research work forever and for the benefit of everyone else.
- Family Search Centres - mostly located within LDS Chapels, they have family history meetings during the week where you can sit and work 1:1 with a LDS experienced researcher. The centres have free-of-charge access to many normally-chargeable websites and also many many digitised records that you can view. It's a really great place to go if you're stuck on something. It's a good idea to book ahead. Here's the Weston-super-Mare centre and their email is uk_westonsupermare AT familyhistorymail.org
- FamilySearch Wiki - this is a global directory of free family search resources. Drill down to your country then county of interest and you'll see a wealth of societies and websites with local information, e.g. Somerset.
Libraries in the West of England provide free-to-use computers that include one or more of the normally paid-for family history websites.
- Somerset Libraries - computers have free-of-charge access to the global version of Ancestry. Cheddar Library, which is open on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday has two computers plus a large area upstairs where you can meet with others and use the free WiFi. It's an ideal place to work on your family history.
- North Somerset Libraries - computers have free-of-charge access to the global versions of both Ancestry and FindMyPast. Our nearest library is in Winscombe, which is open on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The library in WsM has a free monthly family history drop in run by the Weston-super-Mare and District Family History Society on the first Saturday of the month from 2pm to 3.30pm.
Websites
- familysearch.org - details above
- freebmd.org - free searches of birth, marriage and death registers in England and Wales. It's an ongoing project to transcribe these registers, but what's there is impressive
- The General Register Office (GRO) - free searches of birth and death registrations. Births are covered 1837-1934 and 1984-2023. Deaths are covered 1837-1957 and 1984-2023. Birth records are particularly useful because it tells you the mother's maiden name. Once you find a records you can pay £3 to get a digital scan of the register entry which will give you additional information like the date and place of birth and the parents names.
- FreeREG - parish registers from England, Scotland, Wales and the whole of Ireland. This site is a good complement to freebmd because it covers church registers while freebmd covers the civil register. Church registers may have additional information.
- FindAGrave - superb free global graveyard directory which often contains high-resolution images of gravestones and links to other relatives, e.g. spouses, parents and children. You can suggest edits or add photos to existing entries, you can add your own entries, and sometimes the "owner" of a grave entry may be happy to hand its management over to you if it's one of your family graves.
- FindMyPast free records - some content on paid-for site FindMyPast is available free
Local archives - county councils in the UK host local archives and often have research centres that the public can visit free of charge. Facilities vary and at some you may need to pre-book, but there's often a lot of stuff available that isn't online. There are also sometimes staff willing to help you out / point you in the right direction. Here's a couple of examples:
Paid-for Resources
These resources may attract a one-off fee or need a recurring subscription. Always look out for special offers though as sometimes you can get a trial subscription at a substantial discount.
- Ancestry - probably the biggest worlwide family history research website
- FindMyPast - another huge website. Some of the content is free - see above.
- Newspapers by Ancestry - claims to have over a billion searchable newspaper pages. Available as a standalone subscription or add-on to an existing Ancestry subscription.
- Lost Cousins - rather unique approach to finding people with shared relatives i.e. lost cousins. The premise is simple - when you identify any relatives in the 1881 census, you add their details to Lost Cousins and you can then match up with other people who have added the same family members. It's free to add people and search, but you can only contact other people if you're a member, which costs a reasonable £10/year.
- BillionGraves - a "freemium" graveyard directory. You can search for free but to see any detail other than the name and death date you need to pay. It has a lot of entries, maybe even more than the superb free FindAGrave.