Wonder if anyone can give me a starting point...
I'm trying to find out about my fathers family. He died when I was very young and we all lost touch with that side of the family.
Mum's dead now and I'm at a loss to find out much about them. I don't even know if he had any siblings.
Using the Internet, how would I start?

I tried on one genealogy site but it can't find ME let alone my dad.

It depends how serious you want to be - it's very addictive :) I've been researching for 20 years. A subscription to Ancestry or Find My Past would be very useful. I can help if you want to PM me - will get you started. If you tell me your grandparents' names I can find when they married and how many children they had :)

Yes, start a tree on Ancestry.com it is a much better site than Genes Reunited for finding ancesters, as it uses middle names aswell where GR doesnt(or didnt). Okay being a member of GR is much cheaper but I found out so much more info on Ancestry making it well worth the extra money.
I agree it does become very addictive & I have purchased a number of BMD certs(when they were only £7 each)

> when they were only £7 each

Yes - they're £9.25 now, but you need to buy the important ones (grandparents, gt.grandparents etc) otherwise you can't find out names of parents etc.

It's not applicable in Toolz's case because her father has died, but for anyone interested in researching their family trees, the most important thing is to ask your surviving relatives for as much information as possible now :) :) I never knew my grandparents and only knew one aunt, so had a lot to research :) Even after 20 years I still have a long way to go. Only a month ago, I met a second cousin for the first time (his mother and my mother were cousins). I didn't know he existed until last year. It's so interesting finding out about your family and, often, the hidden secrets and feuds :) :)

I use Ancestry - it's not cheap, but it's well worth the money.

Family Search (Indexing) is also good and it's a free site. Originally I was a bit wary of using the site as it is a Mormon project and I didn't want to end up bombarded with invitations to join their religion but maybe I was being biased as that hasn't happened :-)

They have an absolutely enormous amount of information on their site and I actually help to index the information that is put on there - I find it fascinating and have helped index USA census information, British birth, deaths and marriages, passenger lists for ships etc. Worth having a look at and nobody has come knocking on my door so far to convert me :-)

> Worth having a look at and nobody has come knocking on my door so far to convert me :-)

Nor me :) :) There is also FreeBMD which is useful for finding births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales and Scotland's People (for Scotland :) ) plus lots of sites such as FreeReg and Freecen which are transcripts of parish registers and the census. I managed fairly well without having to use a subscription site for many years (obviously had to pay for certificates), but you can't beat Ancestry for breaking down the brickwalls :) It's very interesting going to local County Record Offices to search their records, but it's not always convenient to do this (or expensive to travel a long way) and you have to know what you are looking for before you go to make best use of the time. Another free resource is The Times Archive if your local county library subscribes to it - I've found all sorts of interesting (and scandalous) information about my family by trawling through the old newspapers :) :)

Could go on ........................... :)

Oooooo this all sounds very promising!
I paid a sub last night to Archives.com and it was totally unable to find either my mother or father. It left me demoralised. I asked their customer people why I got next to nothing and they said its about privacy!

Thanks all for the offers of help and advice but I'm afraid I only know my fathers name, his county of birth and his very rough birthdate....not much to go on.

> not much to go on.

Is your father's name fairly unusual ?? If you PM it to me I'll see if I can find it :) Also, do you have your parent's marriage certificate ?? If not you could buy it - it would give you their full names, age, address, and fathers' names and occupations :)

I can't even find my own birth certificate!
My sister is in France at the moment but ill give her a try when she gets home.
I think she got all mums paperwork when she died recently.
Mum was a widow for 30 years so the male side of the family is completely unknown to me.

Thanks

Don't give up hope Toolz :-) My husband never knew his real dad - he knew his dad left the day he was born and nothing else about him other than he was told by his mum that there were no other relatives on his dad's side. We knew his christian names as his mum had to give us that to go on our marriage certificate and we also knew he died in around 1976.

After  Steve's mum died  we were contacted by one of those firms that trace relatives of people who die intestate. To cut a very long story short we discovered that Steve's dad did in fact have 5 brothers and sisters - and the family home where his dad had returned to was less than 3 miles away from where Steve's mum and stepdad had lived. Even more ironic was the fact that my daugher used to park her car outside their house when she visited her in-laws - never knowing it was the house where her unknown grandad had lived. Sadly shortly after the discovery that he had uncles and aunts that he never knew about Steve died and he never got to see a photo of his dad - one of the things he dearly wanted to do. We also never got to meet any of the family as it was the death of the last surviving brother that had prompted the call from the firm who trace relatives. My children inherited a very small amount from their unknown uncle but more importantly the landlord of the house where the "lost" family had lived for 55 years kept some old photos and certificates that he passed on to us.

From these we have been able to discover Steve's dad's grave and that of my children's great grandparents. It also spurred us on to find out more about the family tree on the paternal side and it has been fascinating to trace ancestors back on his side. We have also found a photo that we think must be Steve's dad. It would have been so good though to have discovered all this whilst Steve was alive but at least our children now know some of the family history on his side. For most of his life Steve didn't really want to know much about his dad due to the stories he was led to believe were true - it was only when he became ill and at the same time also found out that the story he was told was rather different from the one that actually occurred  that knowing about his real dad became so important to him.

I hope you are able to trace your dad's ancestry back and find out all you need to know. My children had never really thought too much about not knowing their paternal ancestors but were so pleased that eventually we managed to find out all that we have. We went and put some flowers on their graves on the anniversary of Steve's death and for some reason it helped us.

Daisy has kindly found my dads parents and the fact that my Dad had 2 sisters and 3 brothers...woweee!

Even got the street on which the family lived in 1911.....

I'm so grateful for everyone's help and encouragement.

Ill try to keep you posted.

A brilliant start :-) :-)

Some fascinating stories on here it's just like the TV programme that has been on recently.
My sister has been tracing our family tree, and we were able to trace one of my mothers cousins and meet up. Like Harley's story when we compared family events they were slightly different depending on who's grandmother had told the story. The timing was the same, but who was the villain and who the hero was often quite different.
She did however have some photos of our great grandparents that we had never seen, and it was amazing to see how much like his GG Grandfather my sisters son is.
Just goes to show how genes are inherited, as we had always previously thought he looked more like his fathers side of the family, but when we saw the picture we were amazed how closely he resembled his ancestor.

That does sound fun! My parents are mad on family tree tracing, in their cases I don't quite see the attraction as we have dozens of relations on both sides of their families which I find more than enough to keep track of haha!

> we have dozens of relations on both sides of their families which I find more than enough to keep track of haha

I know - I have lots of cousins I don't know - they live the other side of the country as do my Aunts and Uncles - but the fascination is doing the digging to see where you come from - what your ancestors did - I lost my father some 30 years ago and never took much notice of what he told me about his family.  His father died when he was in late teens and I only have a dim memory of my grandmother.  I had all the bits and pieces of memorabilia that my grandmother kept and my mother didn't know anything about.  It was great fun uncovering all the history - very addictive.  I now know where my ancestors came from - at least back to the early 1800s.