Heritage Resources for Genealogy & Family History

The Family History Guide provides a learning guide for each country. Learn through steps, how to start your research, places to look, and more.

Over the course of family history research, many people around the world will find that their ancestry leads back to the British Isles in one way or another. If you are a part of this group, congratulations: you’re about to step into some of the world’s oldest and richest archives. In this guide we introduce you to the key sites, sources and strategies to help you find these ancestors.

Your free and independent guide to finding your Irish ancestors. You'll find all the information and contacts you need to help you to discover your heritage in Ireland. Whether you're just starting out on your family history search or you've already made some headway on your journey, Irish Genealogy Toolkit will lead you to a greater understanding of how your ancestors lived and where you come from.

Welcome you to irishgenealogy.ie the website dedicated to helping you search for family history records for past generations. The website is now home to the historic records of Births, Marriages and Deaths of the General Register Office. These records join the Indexes to the historic records of Births, Marriages and Deaths that were already available on the website.

Learn how to find and use military records, wills, the census and a wide range of other records to trace your ancestors.

Free UK Genealogy provides free, online access to family history records. We work with a team of dedicated volunteers to create high-quality transcriptions of public records from governmental sources, parish churches, and other trusted institutions. We believe that Open Data and Open Source are key to making and keeping public records accessible to all. We work with others with the same concerns.

GENUKI provides a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland. It is a non-commercial service, maintained by a charitable trust and a group of volunteers.

Use this page in the FamilySearch.org Research WIKI to connect with other countries in the area of the United Kingdom.

No genealogy research is without its challenges, and (for once) the difficulty facing English researchers is not a lack of records—it’s how to find your ancestors within them. Between common names (John Smith, anyone?) and geographical boundaries, researching your English ancestry sometimes resembles looking for a needle in a haystack.

Whether your ancestors arrived on the Mayflower or came over during the 19th century to work in New England’s mill towns, most New Englanders who were here by the early 1800s trace the bulk of their ancestry back to England. NEHGS has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of English genealogical resources in North America.

This guide introduces you to the basic principles of family history research and looks at many of the essential records and resources you can use to research your ancestors from the British Isles. In this guide we are using the term British Isles to cover the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands (Guernsey and Jersey). you will find a list of the key steps that you should follow when undertaking your family history research. Each of the following pages contain information on the many different resources you can use and indicates where and how you can access these collections. Click on each tab to be taken to an introductory page or hover over the tabs to find separate information pages for each country.

All editions of the newspaper from its foundation in 1856 up to and including 2010 are freely available electronically, allowing the worldwide audience to view and search it using any name, place, or other search term.