New starters

We’ll look at how to start your family tree and add the first few generations. You’ll see how building your tree makes it much easier to find new ancestors and discover the details of their lives.

For this lesson, we’ll play the part of Frances Mary Bradshaw. We know our parents, plus limited details about our grandparents. Let’s see how far we can go…

1. Too easy?

   1Start a new family tree. Enter our character’s name and gender, with her birth date of 11th June 1980 and place of Coventry, Warwickshire. Then continue on and add her father James (born 12th May 1947 in Peterborough) and mother Hannah Hall (1st July 1949, also in Peterborough). You’ll be asked to give your tree a name – let’s call it ‘Lesson One’ so we can easily find it to delete it later, and keep it private so people aren’t confused by it in the meantime.

2. Too easy?

   2You can now see what’s called a pedigree view of our family tree. Coming from both our parents are options to add their mother and father. We’ll stick to our paternal Bradshaw line for now, so click ‘Add Father’ above James. We know our grandfather was named Eric and was born somewhere in Huntingdonshire. We remember him celebrating his 85th birthday around the year 2000, so we’ll guess at a birth date of ‘Abt 1915’, and we know he passed away in 2001.

3. Too easy?

   3When you click ‘Save’, you’ll get a message telling you about new Hints. As you build your family tree, Ancestry.co.uk automatically searches for your ancestors’ details in its records. Click ‘See Hint’, and you’ll find a list of three suggestions. The bottom two are from the official birth, marriage and death indexes – they’ll give us all the information we need to order copies of Eric’s birth and death certificates, to learn more about how he lived. The top one looks packed with information and is from another member’s public family tree – review that one, then select it on the next screen and confirm.

4. Too easy?

   4The Hint tells us Eric’s full name, plus his precise birth and death dates. However, the really exciting details are his parents’ names – these are new relatives for us to explore. You’d want to do some more digging to confirm the information – by checking it with living relatives, or ordering those birth and death certificates. For now, though, let’s assume it’s correct. Select each piece of information by clicking the tick boxes, then choose ‘Add’ next to the parents’ names and click ‘Save to your tree’.

5. Too easy?

   5Return to your tree, and you’ll see Alfred Bradshaw and Elizabeth Ann Palmer have been added – and there are now hints for both of them. Alfred actually has nine hints! Click on the leaf to see them all; he may appear in family trees, military records and the National Probate Calendar. We’ll scroll down and review the hint from the 1891 England Census. This doesn’t tell us anything new about Alfred, but it reveals three potential new ancestors: his parents, and a sister named Emily – our 2x great-aunt! Again, you can add all of these to your tree.

Are you finished? Start the next lesson