Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 40

There are a number of websites that aim to link up family trees, but the most exciting is www.genesreunited.co.uk. The site allows you to enter details of your family (or upload a family tree already typed in ‘Gedcom’ format), building an online family tree, which is easily altered and amended.

A number of search tools then enable you to find out if surnames on your tree appear on other trees on the site. In return for a £9.50 a year membership fee, you can email the contributors of other possibly relevant names and work out if you do indeed have ancestors in common, and if so create a link between the two trees. Those with common surnames will be relieved to know that the searches can be honed, by personal name, year of birth and by place of birth.

The site was launched in November 2002 and at the time of writing has 8 million members worldwide and over 111 million names. It is therefore becoming a formidable research tool, which can already be used to localise where people with particular surnames were born and communicate with people actively researching them. The site is one of several that provides access to many important sets of data, particularly the quarterly indexes to General Registration indexes and 1841–1901 census returns.