The Oxford companion to family history - David Hey

Aimed at those wishing to discover more about their ancestors, this book offers advice on tracing a family tree. The author advises on how to get started, where to look for records, and how to decipher old handwriting. He also suggests ways of finding out about ordinary peole down the centuries; their ways of life, professions, and so on.;Family history is a subject with broad concerns, including the origin, spread, and sometimes the decline and disappearance of families. The work of social historians is therefore of great interest, whether dealing with the size of families, the ages at which people married, or the mobility of the population. David Hey highlights these aspects of social history that are most relevant to family history research and suggests lines of enquiry that may be followed with profit and enjoyment by family historians - the past and present distribution of surnames, the stability of certain families, and the mobility of others.