Some tips from my own experience

As mentioned in our home page, we don't pretend to be a 'one size fits em all'  genealogy site.  It just isn't that simple and it doesn't have to be that expensive. You can pay lots of money for information that is to some extent freely available.  But you will need to search around and you will need to follow some hunches and make some educated guesses.

My own research requirements were based around my own family in Australia with roots in Scotland, England and Wales.  In my own case, we emigrated from Scotland in 1958, so I knew that all my roots were Scottish, at least  to start with.  My wife's family are mainly 5th generation Australians with roots in Wales and England.  

What's in a name. There are some traditions used in naming children which generally aren't used today.  It can help you narrow your search dramatically if you can match the names to a known pattern.   In Scotland it was also common for people to be given a surname as a middle name to more identify who they were named after.  eg: in my own case I am named Andrew Fraser Hunter, after my esteemed maternal uncle, Andrew Fraser.   In Australia as in America the tradition evolved to name the first son after the father while in recent times children are more likely to be named after an entertainer or sporting identity.  Don't forget that the high level of child morbidity means that often the names aren't registered or sometimes they are used twice ie: where a sibling dies the next receives the same name (more common in England).

So let me start with an example of my paternal grandmother Elizabeth Wotherspoon. My father died 16 years ago and my mother is in a nursing home so very little anecdotal information was available. So I had to start with what I did know.

1. She married James Halliday Hunter sometime before my father's birth in 1917 (my father was a second child)
2. She died in 1978, at a good age, estimated to be in her 80's
3. My father once remarked, and it was noted, that the Hunter's had lived in Lanarkshire Scotland for many generations
4. People of my grandfathers time and class, did not travel extensively, unless they were in the army.

Therefore she most possibly would have been born somewhere near Lanark between 1890 and 1900.

By this stage of my research I had looked at many of the online resources and checked out the British Records Office (BRO) or British Rip-Off  - and decided that it was going to cost me quite a some to track her down that way.  Eventually I discovered the FamilySearch web site run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and what a marvelous free resource that is.  

Using the FamilySearch Online search facility, I searched out every Elizabeth Wotherspoon (don't forget to try all variants as often entries in official records or in transcribing to online can have errors) born in Scotland between 1880 and 1900. Well there was only one and she was born at Newarthill, Lanark, Scotland on 2 Sep 1892 - a perfect fit and therefore safe to assume that this is my grandmothers record.  The record  also showed Father Alexander WOTHERSPOON and mother Elizabeth SERVICE. It also provides exact document source information, should  I wish to order a birth certificate.  But for  my purposes, I had what I wanted - or so I thought.  I had in fact made a very fundamental error, I jumped to conclusions because I later discovered that this Elizabeth Wotherspoon died in 1918 where as my Elizabeth died in 1978.  Back to the drawing board.

On my mothers side, we had a wealth of anecdotal information, however the difficulty was the Scottish Clan system whereby 20 families may live in one area and all share the same surname.  Try tracing Andrew Fraser from Inverness...my great great grandfather.???  However I had some information to go, mainly I knew some of the names of my grandfather Angus Fraser's brothers and sisters.  His first army pay-book (a prized possession) stated his father as Thomas and his mother as Ann. It also states his age as 19 years 6 months, but you can never believe that, and it is dated 19/8/1886.  So that indicates that he was born around 1886 while the family anecdotal date was 1869.

Again using the FamilySearch resource I discovered that there were 26 Angus Frasers born in Scotland between 1850 and 1870. Of these 12 were born near Inverness.  Narrow the search down to father's name Thomas and now there were 2 entries.  Can you believe it, they both have a mother named Ann Fraser.  The first was born in 1864 and the second in 1868  - which to chose ????  Well as I mentioned earlier, We knew the names of Angus' brothers and sisters.  So by elimination and finally an educated guess based on 'why would a 22 year old, put his age back on recruitment - it would mean less money'  I deduce that Angus was born 12th August 1868.  A search for his father Thomas returned only two potential candidates, both from Ross & Cromarty but the first from Lochbroom and the second from Avoch which is much nearer Inverness (Lochbroom is on the west coast) so the latter is far the better candidate.  It shows his mother as Jane (Jean) McKenzie and this fits well with Thomas having a known daughter named Jane (Jean) born in 1877 and from this I can find that Andrew Fraser married Jean McKenzie 14th December 1819.  Anecdotally we believe that Andrew and Jane had 11 children so again this fits well with Thomas being born 12 years after their wedding.

I agree that it is not all conlcusive, but it is very convincing and certainly enough to now build the final evidence upon.