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.

To start, you should:

• 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 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