The Oxford Guide to Family History

by David Hey

Who were your ancestors? Where did they live? How did they earn their living? At what age did they marry, and how large were their families? Throughout the ages and across the world people have had a natural curiosity about their ancestors, but only recently have amateur historians begun to
trace their forebears with such fervor and delight. Written by a leading authority in the field, The Oxford Guide to Family History is a practical introduction to finding out about your family.
Much more than a guide to the mechanics of constructing a family tree, this helpful book suggests ways of broadening your own family research to look at what life was like for people of centuries past. Drawing on the oral tradition, financial records, gravestones, or census records, one may, for
instance, learn how a family earned their living, what a person was like, or what religion they were. While many of the examples are based on British family histories, David Hey offers much practical advice on the basics of family research. He suggests, for example, that a family historian not start
with some famous person who had the same surname back in the fifteenth century. The golden rule is to work backwards from the known to the unknown. Among basic sources for the beginner are municipal records, census records, and church registers. And Hey also points out that many surnames are
intensely local in their distribution, and that as a result, tracing the geographical pattern of a surname is an important task, as it may lead towards the original home of the name.
Offering practical advice such as how to get started, where to find records, and how to decipher early styles of handwriting, The Oxford Guide to Family History is essential to learning the most about your family history. Lavishly illustrated with pictures of family groups, houses, monuments,
and archive records, here is an authoritative guide to this fascinating hobby.

Genres: History, Reference, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 1993

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the whole, a disappointing introduction to British – well, no, mostly English – family history for amateurs. The book starts out with long chapters on surnames and their mobility, clearly subjects that interest the author very much, but which have limited utility to the amateur genealogist in actually finding ancestors. The chapter on “Family and Society” is intriguing, but again, mainly useful for context. On page 155 one finally reaches “A Guide to the Records,” which does deal with locating ancestral documents, though a beginner would be well advised to start with another book before attempting this one. There are some nuggets of good advice here, but also a great deal that has become obsolete in the digital age. On the other hand, the book is very well illustrated in color.

[Gary Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

1998 paperback (issued with corrections and additions to the 1993 edition) read.

[Susan Khaladkar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book if you're interested in English social history - but it's not for everybody. Hard to rate from a general readership viewpoint.