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It's a really interesting hobby. I find Ancestry is good, but there are a fair few transcription errors, particularly where folk have mis-read the handwriting on censuses etc, so it helps to familiarise yourself with older styles of handwriting.
Getting original certificates can be expensive, and I hope you are going direct to the GRO rather than through the websites like Ancestry. the GRO is £9.25 I think.
I also found that some people don't really research their info properly and so they publish family trees that are inaccurate, so you can be badly misled if you take everything that's made public as gospel.
I found out that some deceased uncles and aunts had totally different names to those they were called on a day to day basis, e.g. Uncle Fred's name was really Arthur, Uncle Bill's name was really James, and Auntie Lily had a very distinctive Welsh name. It was only by mentioning that we'd hit a brick wall to a very elderly relative, and mentioning the odd names that she suddenly said, oh yes, I'd forgotten, all my sisters and brothers used their pet names.

Some links that I found helpful: http://www.worldthroughthelens.com/family-history/old-occupations.php that helps you identify their jobs
Geography played a large part in my searches, district names/street names have changed so much:
Mapco's london map: london1868.com
Also the list of old & present registration districts (you need to read the details): http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/index.html#S

Sometimes individual towns and parishes have their own records, some are free online, it's worth googling the town or village and or the occupation of your ancestor, for example this type of thing which gave me masses of info: http://www.cimidd.karoo.net/

You can trace forward, but I found it's best to try establish a firm factual base up to 1911 (the date of the last published census) first, and then work forward a little at a time. I spent a fortune trying to find someone whose birthday I knew, parents I knew, full name I knew, got all the certs to find out that it was someone not related at all, just coincidentally had very very similar details.

Best of luck

If you are able to get to your local record office easily & during opening hours, you may well find that they subscribe to Ancestry & you are therefore able to search as much as you want for free. For myself I have subscribed to Ancestry as I live a fair distance away & taking into account petrol & parking charges it actually works out cheaper & I can do it when the mood takes me. I have so far traced my Grandfathers line back to 1585.

You can access Ancestry Library Edition  at various public libraries  and record centres round the country. If you are  in dorset check out http://www.dorsetforyou.com/386805

x

I would certainly agree with Jennym about being careful with older styles of handwriting. Some years ago I sent off for my great grandmothers birth certificate. When it came back it stated father's occupation as a lawyer. Oh that can't be right nothing so grand, I had coal miners and ag labs so far, nothing so educated as a lawyer. So I put it aside and travelled down many different roads trying to track her down.   About 3 years later I looked at this birth certificate again and realized it said Sawyer ( wood worker!). It had been the correct certificate all the time.  I'd wasted a lot of time and effort needlessly.

Quote from: Garden Manager on November 25, 2013, 17:18:13
.........if i carry on the way i have been so now looking at subscribing. Not sure which one though. Pros and cons of each. Like the search engine on Find my past better but Ancestry seems to have more extensive records (although i did discover a big error with one ancestor on the site). Havent investigated Genes reunited yet.

PS is it as straightforward to trace forwards from a particular ancestor/ancestors siblings and discover potential living relatives  as it is to go backwards? Would love to find previously unknown family, however distant.

I agree with you that "Find my past" is much easier to use than "Ancestry".  However, I have used the latter because I can pay for it using Tesco Clubcard vouchers. 
See: http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/search.aspx?Ntt=ancestry&VSI=17&Ns=&Ntk=primary&Nty=1&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchall&Nr=NOT%28P_Product_TypeID%3A5%29

I also use "Genes Reunited" and have found a few people who are descended from some of my ancestors.  I have contacted them, shared photos and even met one of them.  A couple of them have given me further information to add to my tree although most have used my information to add to their own!  Genes Reunited allows you to access other peoples family trees if you have their permission.  I pay £7.96 per annum to belong to their site but it would cost me more if I wanted to search official records such as BMD's and censuses. 

I don't think I want to delve too far into our murky past. Although it was done on my adopted fathers side a few years ago by the Heir Hunters when they found a very distant relative that had a load of property and cash and I was traced to inherit some of it.
Also being born in a home for wayward girls usually brings up the search a bit short on detail.

Thanks for replies. Anyone got any tips or experience of sorting out step families, ie where there has been a remarriage with or without xtra children involved? How best to tackle it? I appear to have uncovered this situation with one set of great grandparents. Thanks.

Ancestry copes well with several marriages and various children.

I have two brothers marrying two sisters and that does give it a nervous breakdown.   I cannot give them only two sets of parents, there has to be four.

I also have one where a father married his dead son's widow, and again it does not like that much either.
I did not even try linking her to the same parents twice.

Another good free link is Freereg.   Great if your area if covered.   I have links to Somerset and there is loads available free online.
http://www.freereg.org.uk/search/

I have a Gt Grandfather who started out as a Brass Founder became an actor and wrote an opera with Henry Wood, THE Henry Wood of prom concert fame.   That was a great surprise.  He also wrote the lyrics for pantomimes in rhyming couples and sometimes I have the ability to think in rhyming couplets.

I have met up with lots of cousins on line.  Traced my mothers side of things back to between 1600-1750 on most lines.  But apart from his birth and marriage certificates there are no records of my father or his family.  I got very excited when they released the 1911 census but again not a dickie bird.   They seem to have systematically avoided each and every census.  His brother died but does not seem to have been born. So I am stuck in 1903.   

You can assimilate parts of other peoples trees in Ancestry.  But I have found people with dubious connection taking part of mine.   Also you have to be wary some people particularly Americans take anyone vaguely with the same name.   One having got stuck took someone with the same name living 200 miles away and then managed to connect herself back to Henry Plantagenet.

Just discovered something quite odd about a great grandfather. As far as i can work out he married twice. First marriage was to the mother of my grandmother in 1915, who it turns out died in her late 50s in 1947. Two years later it appears he remarried a lady with not only the same christian name initials but the same first name as well! Very confusing as you can imagine. At one point i was only finding the birth and marriage of the first wife but the death of the second. The two women were born less than 10 years apart so the age at death in 1983 would have been plausable. What made me doubt that this was all the same person was the newspaper death notice i found for the first wife (true great grandmother) dated to 1947, confirming what i had found in the records. This then made me doubt my own memory, as i have a recollection of meeting what i thought was my great grandmother when i was very young. This it turns out was the step great grandmother, not long before she died. Confusing or what?

Another search of marriage records for great grandfather clarified matters, and gave me the premarriage name of the second wife. Which of created more questions than answers. Who was the second wife, when and where born, was it her second marriage too? Searching for her under pre marriage name didnt help as it came up with 2 women of the same name, in the most likely registration district, born only a year (or less) apart. Great! Not sure how i am going to sort this out. Get certificate ordering i think.....

Still its all good fun isnt it?

One of the reasons I like Genes Reuntied is because you can tap in a anme and it will bring up amyone with the same name in their tree and there is a facility to contact that person and ask to see their tree, if it is right you can find dozens of rellies on one go and then if you still wa nto to get cerificates you can use the info from them,, I have bought quite a few cetificates after researching at the library only to find they were not mine when they  arrived XX Jeannine

I've found reading old newspapers helpful, the small town newspapers. In the 1800s in America they'd list who was traveling to meet whom, which woman poured tea at a lady's meeting, who returned from the hospital and how they were feeling etc. And property transfers were listed. All these had lots of clues.

I surf the internet sometimes plugging in the name and as much info as I've gleaned. Sometimes something comes up. Of course it takes loads of time and everything has to be verified. It has been fascinating though.

Something i have recently discovered with the main 3 genealogy sites is that if you are a mamber of cashback site Quidco you can get cashback on subscriptions or pay as you go credits (particularly Find My Past). This can be as much as 30% in some cases. Not to be sniffed at. I just bought a load of credits this way to try it out and keep me going until i decide on a subscription.

So far i have managed to take two family branches back to the early 1800's, (after a false start with one of them). Still working on other branches. One or two ancestors proving to be elusive in the online records. Enjoying it though. particular like finding out where someone lived and trying to find the address/property (if it still exists), on Old Maps site, Google Earth and Street View.

It can get funny too, we discovered a bit of a lad on one side a man with two families, either side of the Humber and even today the decendents make it very clear which side of the Humber( cough cough) blanket they belong to.

We also found a relative who was a street walker in jail on census night...

We turned up a crook who escaped the law, and a "lost cause: kid who was sent into the army to correct him, it did too he ended up as Master of the Kings music.

Finally we discovered a baby that was born before the parents had married and that baby didn;t know till we met..mmmm

Sometimes you have to tread lightly.

XX Jeannine