I've got an old Which mag somewhere with site info on that topic,i'll dig it out & post any links.

Hi Teresa. My brother looks after the family tree; my role is to debrief our rapidly depleting in number aunts and uncles. I have researched my old schools and have written two papers thereon.

In our respective endeavours, my brother and I have made extensive use of Ancestry.com and free bdm. It has to be said both have their limitations. Best way to find out is to log on and have a go.

You can get at freebmd on your home computer. For Ancestry.com, best go to your local library or county archives. You have very limited access to Ancestry.com at home unless you sign up and that costs ££££. Up to you. My advice is suss it out first at the library or archives.

In Nottingham Archives I had unlimited access to Ancestry.com (my library limits it to one hour per day, which I think is typical of local authority libraries). I managed to find most of my former teachers on Ancestry.com. Some surprising results and a lot of sadness. One chap in particular I was hoping to buttonhole I found had died in 2001.

I've rambled a bit. Hope that helps.

I use all those mentioned, and Genes Reunited as well..... the beauty of that one is that if there are other members researching the same names as you... then you can get Hot Matched with them... I have had some wonderful matches... although I still check out the information I receive. Sometimes it is a new lead... others it is just confirming a suspicion or a bit of research you have done yourself.

There are also a lot of members who will help you get started... and do look ups for you if you have hit a wall... it is sometimes good to get another person to read a manuscript if the writing is difficult to read....

Scotlands people... there are so many good sites out there.... and so many people prepared to give up time to help you

Be warned... it is obsessive, and can be very expensive... like any hobby, money will need to be spent at some stage, to confirm your findings.

Good luck

Daff xxxx

Thanks rapidfire i never knew all these excisted as i am trying to trace my ancesters back from the early 1800s in devon as i am stuck and no hope of tracing them i would like to trace the buriel grounds in stoke damerel but i beleave they are built on now so what happens to all the graves

also if someone died in an asylum would we ever know what happened to them ??

Hi--I find that ancestry co.uk is cheaper than ancestry .com--if you join ancestry co.uk there are county message boards which I have found very good for helping wih queries & look ups.

genes reunited has been of great help to me -have met several connections on there.

Online Parish Clerks--OPC too can be a good source of free information & some are fascinating to read even if not your ancestors--some give a good picture of who lived in a parish as they give occupations. Not all parishes are there unfortunately but more information goes on all the time so worth checking again a couple of months later.

Some of the ancestry type magazines have on line forums as well-have had help from those and there are quite a lot of genealogy boards around with free help---lots of areas have them --just type in your area in your seach engine and see what comes up

Maybe you all know these anyway but hope that some of it helps somebody!

I have never had any luck with Genes reunited so I gave it up as a bad job