How do I find ancestors before 1830?

Question:I have traced most of my lines back as far as the census's allow. How do I go back further? I want to find out where two of my lines come from - I want to know if my Forresters are from Scotland and investigate why they moved to Hereford, and also where my Beatrups are from.The census records only show a few Beatrups, so I am convinced they came in from another country, but I would like to know how I find out please.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I have traced most of my lines back as far as the census's allow. How do I go back further? I want to find out where two of my lines come from - I want to know if my Forresters are from Scotland and investigate why they moved to Hereford, and also where my Beatrups are from.The census records only show a few Beatrups, so I am convinced they came in from another country, but I would like to know how I find out please.

Most of your lines? Well, since you already have a bit of info, plug in the names, dates, and places that you already have into ancestry.com or someother such and see where it goes. Many libraries have ancestry.com or heritagequest.com available for library patrons.

If you can connect your family lines to some of the famous family lines (e.g., Martin Genealogy...Germans who settled Germanna, Virginia; the Mayflower passengers; or Burke’s Landed Gentry, Burke’s Dormant & Peerage, Burke’s Peerage of American Presidents, Debrett’s Peerage, Oxford Histories, et al.; Ahnentafel for Margery Arundell by Marlyn Lewis, pub. 08 Oct 1997, Text: Adela of France. G675.FTW
11615-2.ftw; A Lineage to Caesar, www.prenticenet.com/roots/surnames/ancie... Text: d1071 Stenmata Illustria, pub. 1825; Lineage & Ancestry of HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales by Gerald Paget. Pub: Skilton, Edinburgh, 1977, Vol. I, p. 56.
Royalty for Commoners by Roderick W. Stuart, Pub: Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1993, Subtitled: The Complete Known Lineage of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, King of England, Philippa.. Reviewed in TAG, Apr 1994 by Dr. David H. Kelly. Note: Poor, p. 103.
Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1760 by Frederick Lewis Weis, Pub. 7th ed., Genealogical Publishing, Baltimore, 1992 or “Ancestral Roots of 60 Colonists Who Came to New England, 1623 - 1650, Ed. 1 - 6, J H Garner.
Ancestry of Richard Plantagenet and Cecily deNeville by Ernst Friedrich Kraentzler, 1978. soc.genealogy.medieval) you will have a lot of info already available.

Try these:
Free sites: there are several to choose from. Start with:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

Assuming they emigrated from Europe, start with Ellis Island and the Battery Conservancy sites:
http://www.ellisisland.org
http://www.castlegarden.org

For Scotland, check:
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

For ship’s passenger lists, try:
http://www.immigrantships.net/
www.cyndislist.com/ships.htm
www.geocities.com/Heartland/5978/Emigr...
www.immigrantstips.net/
www.searchforancestors.com/passengerli...
www.archives.gov/genealogy/immigration...

For those with native American ancestry, try:
http://www.tribalpages.com/

For a fee, try a DNA test:
When you really want to know where your ancestors came from, try such sites as: www.familytreedna.com, dnatribes.com, dnaancestryproject.com, and, of course, the National Geographics Genotype program, https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/geno...
For Jewish ancestry, try:
www.israelgenealogy.com
Have a look at these sites these are South African ones,
http://genealogy.about.com/od/south_afri...
http://www.rupert.net/~lkool/page2.html....
http://www.jewishgen.org/safrica/website...
http://southafricanfamilyhistory.wordpre...

Meaning of names:
http://www.winslowtree.com/surname-meani...

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f...

Here are some general sites with lists of African names:
http://www.swagga.com/fname.htm
http://www.behindthename.com/nmc/afr.php
http://www.familiesonlinemagazine.com/ba...

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/...

Finding live people:
Two good places I use are www.zabasearch.com and www.peoplefinder.com

Don't forget, use your local library. Ours (a small one, yet) has www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com, as well as periodicals, books and guidance from an experienced genealogist.

Keep good notes on where you find what: sources are very important.

Good luck!

go on your website at 18.29.hoho

type in ancestor on the internet and there a progamme and u download it and there u go

free bmd, ancestrey .com.

yes they can

U know that thing where u pay 300 dollars to get ur DNA checked and they can search who ur ancestors are its really cool but i dont remeber wut it was called but its really cooll like if ur white ur ancestor can be from africa and be black its really cool

Parrish records , they go back to 1400s, there is a pay per view website with the name geneology in it, go onto BBC family tree, tacing you roots and this will give you the exact website.

go on geansreaunited.co.uk i have never been on it but i have seen it advertised

You need to use the Parish Registers these cover Baptisms, Burials and Marriages, you can track down surviving registers by using Phillimore Atlas of Parish Registers or you can use the link below.

Good luck and good hunting

If you are in the UK then I think that it will be a case of looking at the parrish registers. You have probably got to the stage where genealogy will start to get more difficult. You could try the local history and genealogy societies for the area that you are looking at , they may be able to help you. Alternatively if you are a member of Ancestry.co.uk, other people may have researched further back on your family names, and have them in their trees. That way it will save you a bit of time and expense.
I have found a few people on that site who have been great help with missing parts of my family tree.

There is also another site which has been helpful to me; where you can post messages about family you are searching for or about areas. This too has been quite helpful to me. Also there may be another person on there who has posted a message regarding your family or area.

The site is:http://www.curiousfox.com/

This is a UK site.

Put simply, you find your ancestor in the 1851 census and take a note of his birthplace, and then you look at the parish records for the corresponding parish and year (give or take a couple of years either way).

If you're very lucky, the parish registers may have been transcribed and are up on the Mormon familysearch site, or some other local history group might have made them available online, but it's just as likely that you'll have to travel to the local County Record Office that covers the area they lived in and check the baptisms, marriages and burials in person. Of course, you're hoping here that they were members of the established Church of England and not non-conformists, and you're also hoping that they stayed put in one parish for hundreds of years. Even if they only decamped a few miles down the road, you'll have problems finding them, let alone if they upped sticks regularly and moved about a lot, because the records will not tell you where they moved to.

Be wary too of alternate spellings - surnames are rarely consistant in old parish registers, and don't be surprised to discover that Beatrup was spelt differently in earlier generations and won't appear as you might expect it to. You have to be very flexible on spellings in this period - not many people could read and write, and the vicar often spelt a name as it was pronounced to him, which obviously could not be checked with the person concerned to see if it was right or not!

People are very possessive of their surnames, but I myself have had to be creative and accept people into my family with different spellings of our surnames. Common ones are Clark/Clarke and Sharp/Sharpe. One of my names has three variants - Sharwood/Sherwood and Shearwood. Don't assume that it will be spelt the way you want it to!

Build a time machine and go all the way back to the 19th century.

with a shovel