Records before 1837

This is where things get interesting! Records before 1837 – when the official registration of births, death and marriages began – are a bit hit and miss. You have to rely on parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials (birth and death dates often have to be estimated). If they survive, parish registers are often to be found in county records offices, and you may have to make an appointment to consult particular documents. The Familia website (see 'Using the internet') lists family history resources in public libraries in the UK and Ireland.

Church of England registers can date back to 1538, when Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister, ordered the clergy to start keeping records. Nonconformist church registers date from about 1800 onwards. Some parish records for a very limited number of surnames and parishes have been transcribed and are available on the internet: http://www.obliquity.com/family/parish/

International Genealogical Index
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known as the Mormons, have compiled the names of 400 million dead people in their International Genealogical Index <http://www.familysearch.org>, mostly from UK parish records (but also from those in the US and Scandinavia) dating from about 1600 to 1900.

These records have long been available on microfiche at larger libraries and Family History Centres. However, on 24 May 1999, they were made accessible on the internet. The website became the seventh most visited site on the internet, with over 100 million hits per day. Built to cope with an estimated 25 million, it had to resort to rationing visitors to 15 minutes per session.

Note that these records were compiled by volunteers, and errors are not unknown – it is best to check the primary sources yourself. However, that will involve travelling to the county record office for the county in which your ancestor resided.