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Before entering into correspondence, or leaving for Britain to trace your ancestors, certain preliminary steps should be taken. It is most important to assemble all the information you can about your ancestors from relatives, old family records, and local and national archives in your own country. Where possible obtain copies of birth, marriage and death certificates for your direct ancestors who lived in your country as many overseas certificates contain much more information than the equivalent British ones. Details of the approximate date of birth, occupation and religion, marriage and births of children if they were born in the British Isles and, above all, clues to the place of origin should be collected. Every attempt should be made to obtain this latter piece of information since without some idea as to where the emigrant came from only a small percentage of enquirers will have any success with their searches in Britain. Generally, a county will be insufficient: it is necessary to pinpoint your ancestor within a specific locality (town, village or parish).
You may be able to obtain this information by consulting the Naturalization and Passenger Ship List Records in your own country or by using the International Genealogical Index (IGI) or census returns. There is no regular series of passenger lists for ships leaving Great Britain before 1890, although a series from 1820 exists in the National Library of Congress (USA). These, however, do not give the emigrant's place of origin. |
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