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Can you name all eight of your great-grandparents? Do you know what they did for a living? How about where they lived? Recent research has revealed that over five million of us know nothing about our great-grandparents. Although most people know a lot about their grandparents, just 10% of Brits know basic details about their great-grandparents, such as their names, birthplaces, and occupations. News of this generational knowledge gap is worrying - it reminds us of the importance of researching and preserving…

At Findmypast, we want to connect you with your family's amazing story. And with millions of online family records, an easy-to-use family tree builder and help at hand along the way, we'll be introducing you to unknown relatives in no time.Family history guru, Estelle Calfe is here to show you how she traced her ancestors all the way back to 1911 in just five simple steps. Follow Estelle's lead and you can too.What is really important is that you…

Almost every family has a connection to the First World War and you've come to the right place to discover more about yours. At Findmypast, we've got the most comprehensive collection of First World War resources available. A collection that includes millions of Army, Navy and Air Force records, carefully indexed to include many more soldiers' names than you'll find anywhere else online. Findmypast is the best place to start searching for your First World War ancestors and to help…

Delving into your family's past is one of the most fulfilling things you'll ever do and getting started has never been easier. If you're new to the fascinating world of genealogy research, follow these four simple steps and you'll be well on your way to a flourishing family tree in no time. 1. What do you think you know? Write it down: First things first. Write down everything you already know about your family, with a question mark next to any…

If you're just getting started with your family history, it can be tricky to know where to look first. As one of the most recent publicly available record collections covering all of England and Wales, the 1939 Register is an obvious jumping-off point.Watch our video masterclass to find out why and how to make the most of this wartime Domesday Book.Throughout the masterclass, which was recorded live, viewers put their questions to our team of in-house experts. A select…

To successfully build a family tree you'll need to use information on the family members you already know about to discover those you don't. The documents that help you do this can vary from prisoner lists to business indexes, military records to archived newspapers, but while those resources can be amazing for painting a picture of what your ancestor may have been like as a person, more often than not it's BMDs that allow you to identify them in the…

We've all been new to family history at some stage, and we'd be lying if we said we hadn't made (and continue to make) a few mistakes here and there. Luckily, genealogy is a marathon, not a sprint, and so there's time to learn from our errors and become better researchers along the way. Here are a few of the mistakes we made when we started out that we are sharing in the hope you'll avoid making the same ones.…