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Try Family Search, the website of the Mormon church, they have a vast amount of data and it is free. Free BMD is also a great site for UK births,deaths and marriages and as its title suggests is also free! Good hunting!

Fandango
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Do you mean for keeping a record ? If so I use Legacy http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/

Puzzled- Isn't Genes Reunited a bit slow now ? I find it quite cumbersome and prefer Ancestry for an online tree, but Ancestry isn't free.

For searching http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/ can be useful and http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp plus http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/

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Thanks everyone that's great information to get started with !

Basically I want to plot my family tree back as far as I can on a computer programme and then print it out on paper - ( I have records back to the early 18 century so far, but is is all in bits of paper in a large carrier bag ! ) . I have recently discovered a half sister who I have never met and she has a son who married a french lady and they are coming tio visit next week - exciting times !

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[quote user="fandango"]Try Family Search, the website of the Mormon church, they have a vast amount of data and it is free. Free BMD is also a great site for UK births,deaths and marriages and as its title suggests is also free! Good hunting! Fandango[/quote]

One of the main problems with Family Search is the accuracy of the information sent in by their correspondents.  Whilst it is good for very general basic information, anybody using it should also cross-check the information that is published online because it IS (and the Mormons accept this figure) only 60% accurate.  Many of the correspondents can't even properly transcribe the printed material that they use, often without the author or copyright holder's permission and that is becoming a major issue for many research groups.

If you do get a reference from FS, it's always good just to use the other on-line sources to double check what they've written.

None of the professional genealogists I know use this as a primary source and I don't for sure.

And I use Family Tree Maker, pay for it, because of all its facilities AND its book facility which allows  you to publish your reults in a good format.

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If you're looking for a good free program to get you started, then try the free software at www.myheritage.com - I believe it has unfortunately been changed so that the free version has a lower size limit, but once you get near that you will be up for a paid-for program and you can export the data in a standard format that most other software can use.

I think all the paid for programs are pretty good - Roots Magic is another one that gets good reports, though I personally don't like it that much. Like Russethouse and puzzled, I like ancestry.co.uk for research; Find My Past is another good source. And I agree with Tony F that any information, from whatever source, should be double-checked because even official censuses can contain errors or misleading information; I have found several instances in my own forebears of people with the same names, born in the same area at about the same time, living in the same parish. If I had believed the 1881 Portsmouth census I would be aristocracy, and a descendant of a leading light in my particular profession - but that's another story altogether.

 

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French family connections seem very difficult to research. My wife's family originated in Brittany just the other side of St.Breiuc. We went to the archives there and to the Mairie of the village where the family lived in 1804. The staff at the Mairie were very helpful and we managed to obtain photo=copies of the birth/marriage certificates and when some of the family went to Jersey the papers from there with photo's, signed with a cross or thumbprint. However, it seems that each area has it's own records,no central registery of B.M.D's. So unless you knew the town or commune where any death etc took place,it was impossible to go any further. For example, in St.Malo don't expect to find any record of someone who died in Cancale or Rennes.

We know my wife's grandfather died in a fire during the 1960's but don't know exactly which area so although we have been to the Archives in St.Brieuc,Rennes etc even as far as St.Lo, we have found it impossible to find any records.Even tried the Ouest France archives at Rennes.

Any body out there got any ideas?

Regards.
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I hadn't looked at Genes for a while, then an email prompted me to take a look this week, I thought it was pretty dreadful layout wise....but hey, if I hadn't seen it change so much I may like it.

Ancestry does cost but one feature I like is that when you add someone to a tree if it matches with someone else you can click on it and follow it up.

 There are lots of people with duplicate names, mainly I guess because boys were named after fathers and grandfathers, that can be confusing.

The Hugh Wallis site is useful as is the www.rootschat.com forum

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