Tracing Your Channel Island Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors is an expert introduction for the family historian to the wealth of material available to researchers in libraries and archives in Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. Full information is given on how to access the civil birth, marriage and death records which are only available in the islands and differ in format from those in England and Wales.

Marie-Louise Backhurst covers the census, church records, nonconformist registers, rating lists, newspapers, wills and inheritance, official records, and the variety of other sources that can illuminate a past life and make family history research so rewarding. Migration has played a large part in the history of the islands and details of the records are fully explained.

This authoritative and easy-to-use guide to these collections, and the author’s advice on how to use them and get the most out of them, will be invaluable to anyone who is trying to find out about the life and experience of an ancestor who lived in the Channel Islands or was connected with them.

This book will equally be essential reading and reference for anyone who wants to explore the history of the Channel Islands.

Historian Marie-Louise Backhust is married to Advocate Michael Backhust, with two children and five grandchildren.