Getting started in family history
- Our Family History Starter Kit provides guidance to sources you will find onsite at Hampshire Record Office, and also signposts off-site sources which you may find helpful.
- Write down everything you know about your family, starting with yourself.
- Talk to relatives and record what they remember
- Ask relatives to look for family mementos like letters, diaries, photographs, news cuttings and family bibles
- Write down everything, with a note of where the information has come from. Make sure you also record when a search has been unsuccessful. This will stop you looking in the same place twice
- Start to draw a family tree, leaving plenty of space to add information as you find it
- Explore free access to Ancestry and FindMyPast in Hampshire libraries and Record Office
- Read a book on genealogy. It will give you a good idea of what sources you will need to use and the information you can expect to get from them