I began my family tree research in my late teens.  I sat down with my father and listed all family members past and present that he could remember.  Still only eighteen, I moved from Merseyside to Wimbledon and bought a copy of Tracing Your Family Tree, by Jean Cole and Michael Armstrong.  I was ideally placed to visit the capital’s repositories, but then hit a giant stumbling block.  I was too shy to visit anywhere.  The thought of going to St Catherine’s House and asking questions terrified me.  Fast forward twenty-odd years and I’m a veteran of archival and record office research.  I believe the advent of the digital archives on the internet was the gateway for me to continue with my research.

Around the time of the millennium, my husband bought a computer and went online.  Whilst he thrilled at looking up prospective train fares for me (for fun), London to Liverpool (yes, really), I rediscovered my interest in my family tree.  Success occurred the first night I sat down in front of the computer.  Via Cyndislist, I was led to the archives of Canada.  Here, I searched for my maternal grandfather, William Gray, who had fought in WWI for the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and my paternal grandfather’s brother, Bernard (Barney) Boyland, a British Home Child, who also fought for the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  I was able to print their attestation papers and record physical characteristics such as height, hair colour and tattoos, thus adding some colour and life to my imaginings of them.  Both men, having died before I was born, had previously only been viewed through the medium of black and white photography.  My grandfather, born in Drogheda, Ireland, spent some time in America before heading to Canada to join up.  He was said to have worked for Buffalo Bill’s circus.  His attestation papers revealed that he had a Buffalo Bill tattoo on his right forearm and a woman’s head on his left.  Immediately, the internet and a digital archive had opened up my research options, had fed me hitherto unknown information, I was hooked.

I researched the 1881 census, via the Church of the Latter-Day Saints Family Search website, which furnished me with data about my paternal two-times great-grandparents and their family, who were living in Milton Street, Liverpool.  Having five generations live in Milton Street, situated off Scotland Road, at one time or another, I was confident that I had the correct family group.  I bought a CD-ROM version of the 1891 census for Lancashire, to avoid online search fees.   I ordered birth, marriage and death certificates from the General Register Office; often using the volunteer transcribers website Free BMD to get specific reference numbers required for locating entries.  I emailed Nugent Care; the Catholic organisation that holds archives relating to St George’s Industrial School, where Barney was placed while awaiting transportation.  Barney, who was somewhat of a hero to his nephews, had, according to my father, been taken from the family, aged nine, for ‘sagging school’.  The surprising response from the archivist was that Barney was taken using the Frequenting the Company of Prostitutes Act 1880.  Documents revealed that his father was dead, his mother’s address unknown and was living with his aunt.  It was noted that he had red hair and it was stated that ‘he could say part of his prayers’.  My mother’s response was, ‘Don’t tell your Dad!’  I used the Rootsweb forum and searched for possible family links, but also, was assisted by people either with an Ancestry account, or who owned one or more of the censuses that were not yet digitised, who generously checked addresses for me.  Even before Who Do You Think You Are? online amateur genealogists had plenty of options.

Armed with data, I then plucked up the courage and the confidence to head to Liverpool’s Archives and Local Studies Searchroom (age and motherhood had ironed out many of my hang-ups and forced me to speak when I would otherwise run).  In Liverpool, I learned how to search the BMD indexes and census on microfiche, practised archive etiquette and procedures, such as foam book supports, weights to hold pages and to always carry a pencil and NEVER use a pen. I read leather-bound baptism and marriage registers noting down seven, eight, nine, ten children’s baptisms, all children born to my paternal grandmother.  Number one child was the hardest to find, I hadn’t anticipated that my staunchly Catholic grandmother would have had her baby two months after her wedding, in 1911!  My mother’s response was, ‘Don’t tell your Dad’!  I then tracked the similar maternal career of my great-grandmother via the same ledger.  This enriched my family tree by highlighting names that had never made it into the census, as they had not survived infancy or childhood.

Archives fast became my favourite resource.  I visited the Family Record Centre, St Catherine’s House having closed.  I went to Dublin and researched my maternal line via certificates bought over the counter in the General Register Office.  I visited the archives and library searching for census data, and travelled home after four jam-packed days researching and marching around Dublin, using a very useful free tourist map.  My friend shared my first experience of the National Archives at Kew.  Here, I searched for my paternal grandfather’s WWI military file.  I was pre-warned that the records were burned during bombing in WWII and that only a low percentage survived.  When his name appeared on the microfilm reader’s screen, I literally got the shakes.  I was so excited and happily printed off all documents so that I had a physical copy to show my family.  These documents revealed that my grandfather continued in the Territorial Army for over a decade after WWI, listed his growing family and spouse, his role as a rifleman during the war and his demotion, his poor dentistry, and like the Canadian attestation papers, bore his signature.  To me, the youngest of his grandchildren, born too late to meet him, unable as yet to find a record of his birth, this was something tangible, proof of his existence.

Whilst enjoying the fruits of archival research, I still used many online resources and repeatedly visited my favourites.  I even joined Ancestry for free trials, forgetting to cancel the account the second time I did this.  Pay-walls annoyed me frequently and I carefully judged which data was worth spending my money on.  After a time, my tree diverged, and I searched on Scotland’s People for my husband’s ancestors, thrilled with the bargain £12 spent over two nights to reach several generations back.  I revisited this site recently, and though cheaper than a trip to Scotland, I was reluctant to part with any money.  I became a member of Genes Reunited and drew up quite an extensive family tree.  Hours later, I was messaged by a paternal uncle’s grandson, who lives in Australia.  The power of the internet was able to reunite descendants of the same common ancestors.

The 1901 census led me to new data regarding my grandfather’s family; my grandfather had a cousin named Columba who died towards the end of WWI, aged nineteen.  The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website led me to his grave in Wallasey.  He is buried in the cemetery next door to the local reference library.  This time my children were included in my research and after a quick visit to the library, we were armed with a plot map and on the hunt for Columba’s grave.  My children were also included in my trip to Ford cemetery, Liverpool.  I researched the Ford burial index on microfiche for all the family names that could possibly have been listed.  Like treasure hunters, we followed our map, finding my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ headstones, including one grave that was the final resting place of six of my ancestors and another, from the paternal line, that contained three ancestors, that was now, and maybe always was, without a headstone.

The digital versus physical archives pendulum swung slowly from left to right with each new discovery.  Favouring the ease of the digital archive for research with a young family that would consume a large amount of my time and income, the digital sources, with judicious, and cost effective, use of the occasional pay-per-view website, was a boon for family-friendly research, often done in the evenings when the children were in bed.  However, the information garnered during my family history research frenzies, which were always followed by quiet periods of reflection, usually sent me gleefully to the archives.  One amazing visit to the National Archives, saw me led into a small CCTV’d room, the only place permissible for me to view the documents that I had requested.  In my hands, I held my father’s British Seaman’s Identity Card, and various ephemera, which included the youngest ever photo that I have seen of my father.  Taken in 1944, he was aged fourteen, and was about to sail to New Zealand, having followed his brothers into a typical Liverpool occupation of ‘going to sea’.

The physical documents that I have saved in my own family history box come from a variety of sources.  They are special to me in many disparate ways, some show my tenacity at following a lead (I have been called Miss Marple by one of my sisters) others are precious as they contain personal data or signatures that are from long dead relatives.  Some research is now out-dated as illegitimacy was proven (effectively cancelling out my link to a nineteenth century Lennon in my Liverpool line) and many birth, marriage and death certificates that demonstrate the authenticity of my family tree.  My abject failure was to never find my paternal grandfather’s birth registered in the indexes, several dud certificates saw me give up the quest.  However, just before embarking on my academic career, one final fling in the archives with a cousin had me hoping to have finally won the prize.

My cousin, armed with a 1923 copy of my grandfather’s baptism certificate, joined me.  Both our fathers now dead, he had spent years cajoling it from our now only surviving paternal uncle.  We failed again.  We could not find a John Boyland, born on the 28 October 1890, listed in the baptism register.  But the Miss Marple in me would not let it rest.  The following day I returned alone.  Reading every individual record carefully, I spotted a child born on the correct date and baptised a few days later.  My grandfather, John Boyland, was born and baptised John McCarthy, his parents recorded as Patrick and Mary McCarthy, the record was annotated in pencil in the margin, recording his marriage to my grandmother in Latin.  Undoubtedly, this was he.  A discovery that threatened my cousin’s joy in researching his family name, questioned his identity and wiped out several years’ of my research.  Columba, whose grave I had searched for, was the cousin of Barney, but not of John.  The 1923 certificate records the parents of John as Patrick and Mary Boyland, however, Patrick Boyland died in May 1889.

For me, the search has been dormant for several years while other research was prioritised.  Genealogy taught me that I loved history.  As my personal account attests, I used digital and hard copy primary sources.  I revelled in the detective work required to build a robust tree, investigated alternative sources when the obvious sources failed to illuminate and in the process developed a new set of skills.  I view digital and physical archives with the same degree of appreciation, for both have their uses.  The digital archives were a conduit into physical archives, whose footfall was on the wane prior to the popularisation of family history.  They may not be convenient, you may have to travel, they are sometimes cold and uncomfortable, but occasionally the little nugget of information that takes your story further is worth all that.  I use digital archives for expediency’s sake, and for that I salute them, but there is something wonderful about holding an aged manuscript, opening up a ledger and deciphering reams of difficult script, imbuing a sense of pride, achievement, and primary knowledge that may not be available online.

Photos author’s own