Trace one family line back to your great-great-grandparents
A friend has invited you to do this with them.
Census pages, service records and ship lists turn names into people with addresses, trades and neighbours. Each record you find tends to raise a better question than the one it answers.
ModerateUnder £100 / $130MonthsIndoorsAlone or with othersUK and US
How to start
- Write down every name, date and place you already know and ask relatives for more.
- Read the national archives guidance for people starting family history.
- Pick one line and find it in the most recent open census.
Where to go
We opened these links on 6 October 2026 and found them to be what we say. Dates, places and prices are on the official page, where they stay up to date.
Plan this
Pick a day, or a month, and we will set out how to get ready, step by step, with a date and a reason for each. Projects run over months and stall without a rhythm, so the plan sets milestones you can see.
Read next
“Education has no expiration”: Virginia Ordaz and her mother finished their degrees in the same class
How a retired fire dispatcher from Stockton, California, finished the degree she started in 1989, and how her mother finished hers more than 40 years after her last class. How to find out what your own old credits are worth, in the US and the UK.
Sixty paper hats on a table in Bridlington: David Smith and the shape mathematicians had sought for decades
David Smith of Bridlington, a hobbyist with no training in mathematics, found 'the hat': the first single shape known to cover a flat surface only in patterns that never repeat. How he found it, why he could not prove it alone, and the free tools that let you put the same tiles on your own table.