Ancestral Trails : The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History

"Intended for both beginning and experienced genealogists, this guide to tracing British records provides material for navigating archives and a variety of printed sources. Early chapters outline basic steps such as drawing family trees, using census records and searching for birth, marriage, and death certificates. Others outline strategies for organizing research and making use of the Internet and other technology. For experienced genealogists there is detailed information on legal, military, professional-association, and property records. There is extensive information regarding Church of England parish registers, as well as information for tracing Catholic, Jewish, and other nonconformist records. The book is further enhanced by almost 100 illustrations of various records, wills, gravestones, and family photographs."--"Outstanding Reference Sources : the 1999 Selection of New Title", American Libraries, May 1999. Comp. by the Reference Sources Committee, RUSA, ALA.

Herber's book is billed as "the complete guide to British genealogy and family history," and that is exactly what it is. Thoughtfully designed, this orderly, comprehensive, and elegant work guides the researcher (beginner or advanced) through the entire process of tracing British heritage, from obtaining information from living relatives to drawing family trees and starting research in the birth, marriage, death, or census records. Later chapters guide researchers to records that are more difficult to find and use, such as wills, parish registers, civil and ecclesiastical court records, poll books, and property records. Written for practitioners by a practitioner (Herber is a member of the Society of Genealogists in London), this complete, current, and beautiful guide ultimately helps the researcher focus on how the ancestral trail begins and how to form a coherent picture of past generations and their links to the present. Highly recommended. Howells's Netting Your Ancestors, on the other hand, is less elegant in delivering its guidance to genealogical research on the Internet. Nothing that it covers?the selection of hardware and software, getting a direct internet connection, E-mail, mailing lists, and newsgroups?is tied uniquely to genealogical research. In fact, a good 95 percent of the skills and tools it covers could be gleaned just as effectively from any basic computer book. This seems to be written as a how-to book?how to get to the author's popular web site. Not recommended.?Scott Hightower, Gallatin/NYU
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.