What Are Our Sources?

Our research starts using internet sources, most of which we subscribe to. Once we establish we have found the "right" person we begin to work backwards.

Looking at census records:

• we discover and define unusual occupations, tenters weren't people who made tents - they were in charge of "tending" machinery in a factory, commonly found in cotton mills in northern England.

• finding villages/towns that have since changed names, Connie's fourth great granduncle Lewis Livingstone Leavell founded Lewisburg, Kentucky now known as Trenton Kentucky in Todd County.

• in the USA we can follow migration routes and changing fortunes of ancestors through the years.

• the migration of Europeans to Canada and the USA through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.

Birth, Marriage and Death records are more readily available for England [from 1837] and Scotland than the USA. The majority of states in the USA control access to their own records which are mainly from the twentieth century.

It normally takes 14 to 17 days for a certified copy of a birth, marriage or death certificate to arrive from the General Register Office in England. If the records are in Suffolk or Lancashire we can get the information from the certificate within 1 working day by using our contacts in those areas.