Tracing Your Pre-Victorian Ancestors: A Guide to Research Methods for Family Historians

by John Wintrip

Tracing Your Pre-Victorian Ancestors is the ideal handbook for family historians whose research has reached back to the early nineteenth century and are finding it difficult to go further. John Wintrip guides readers through all the steps they can take in order to delve even more deeply into the past.

Carrying research through to earlier periods is more challenging because church registers recorded less information than civil registration records and little census data is available. Researchers often encounter obstacles they don't know how to overcome. But, as this book demonstrates, greater understanding of the sources and the specific records within them, along with a wider knowledge of the historical context, often allows progress to be made.
Most important, John Wintrip concentrates on how to do the research – on the practical steps that can be taken in order to break through these barriers. He looks at online services, archives and their catalogues, factors that can influence the outcome of research, wider family relationships, missing ancestors and mistaken identity.

Throughout the book he emphasizes the process of research and the variety of resources and search tools that can be used.

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 24, 2017

Reviews

[Mich Must Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be an invaluable source of information for looking for my family History in England. I am in the process of searching several of my family lines. One in particular had me stumped at 1839 for a long time. I was able to find several leads as soon as I read this.

The writing is very clear and it is a very useful guide in approaching family history. There is extra care given in many of the chapters to finding the correct ancestor or proof. Many examples are used to make sure the researcher is as accurate as possible. There is also a lot of time spent going over terminology and types of records. This was very helpful. I have relied heavily on LDS for a lot of my searches. Wintrip goes in detail about possible missteps and solutions when using this search as well as some of the others.

Tracing Your Pre-Victorian Ancestors is a great book regardless of the fact of your looking for family members or not. Surname evolution and naming patterns in Chapter 4 and social status in chapter 5 was particularly interesting and helpful for me. If you love history and details of society, such as social class or record keeping, this is for you.

michmustread.com

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top Line: Great book & resource, would fully recommend

Excellent book for people with a small amount of family tree knowledge looking to either:
* Take the next step and enhance their general genealogy knowledge
* Find theories that could lead to solutions / overcome problems & issues
* Find new ways & systems of thinking about how to develop your tree in the correct way with solid foundations.
* Have an extremely handy reference on where to look for & locate clues and sources.

The book hold a wealth of knowledge on many topics you are very likely to come across when looking into the Pre-Victorian era. The book comes across very well weighted in evidence and its main theme is to make sure you back up everything you add to your tree with a confirmed or well weighted source.

I'm not an experienced reader in the slightest, so it took me longer than I expected to go through the book cover-cover. It is very well written and digestible, and great as a resource to refer to when you're stuck.

[Andrew Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides invaluable hints to research family lines prior to the 1840s, especially when you think you have hit a brick wall. It includes tips on naming patterns within families which helped me establish connections that I had not previously thought of. I would recommend this book to anyone researching their family history.