This is a guide to using the internet for researching your family origins. You do not have to be an expert in either genealogy or the online world, just interested in both. It is not intended to be a comprehensive look at starting genealogy. There are already many excellent guides available, including several published on the internet. However, by reading this supplement it is hoped that you will be able to begin your research in an informed way, avoiding some of the pitfalls and learning from some of the mistakes I have made, if nothing else.

Up until a couple of years ago, I was a confirmed Luddite as far as the internet was concerned. I had been researching my family history for about ten years quite happily without using anything more technologically advanced than a microfiche reader. I am also an experienced professional and academic researcher, and thought that I was a little too long in the tooth to start "surfing the net" and learning a whole new way of finding information that I could, after all, discover

perfectly well by other means. In any case, back then, there was also the question of just how good the information available was. But every day, more and more information is being added to the web on an incredible array of subjects and it began to look a little churlish, even cowardly, not to have a go.

With the encouragement of the children, my husband and I took the plunge and went online at home and, much to my surprise, right from the first evening spent exploring the web, I was hooked. I love the way the internet can lead you from one thing to another and help you to make surprising discoveries, links and - most emphatically - point you in different directions. I began using the internet more and more for my research and then, in May 1999, the International Genealogical Index (IGI), compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons, for short), went online at the Church's genealogical website, www.familysearch.org.

Those of you who are experienced genealogists will appreciate just how significant this was and I will discuss this invaluable resource in some detail later on. Suffice to say that I sat down at the computer the first day the site was available and within an hour of messing around I had found one of my 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents or 32 great-great-great-great-grandmothers - and a fairly exhaustive list of her children.

Mary Ann (Polly) Lucking was born in 1775: one year before the American Revolution, though it's doubtful if she had any idea about that as she spent almost her entire life in the Essex village of Latchingdon, the illiterate wife of an agricultural labourer.

She was 14 when mobs stormed the Bastille and 18 when Louis XVI was guillotined. At the start of the Napoleonic Wars she was already married and a pregnant mother of two and spent the entire course of that great conflict raising her nine surviving children and burying at least two or three others.

She lived through the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the threshing machine (which would have decimated her already meagre winter income) and the steam engine, the Whig Reform Acts and the reigns of George III, George IV and William IV.

She was 62 when Victoria was crowned Queen, and could no doubt be found at the cottage door watching some of her (at least) 25 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren playing in the same quiet lanes where her own children had once played. She died in Latchingdon, aged 75, just before the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace.

As far as I know there is no gravestone for Mary Ann Lucking, but 150 years after her death I was able to find her (and her father and husband and some of her long line of progeny) on the internet. It is the possibility of this kind of discovery that makes researching genealogy on the internet seem such an exciting idea for so many.

In this guide I want to show you how you can find your ancestors using the web, as well as information about the way they lived, where they lived and the times they lived through, and how you can share what you find with others. Perhaps you will even discover some long-lost relatives.

This is intended to be a simple and straightforward guide to the powerful information resource and research tool that is sitting right there on your desk, ready for you to use whenever you want in the privacy and comfort of your own home. It is aimed primarily at UK researchers, who are researching their British roots, but there are general areas covered too, which hopefully will be of interest to a wider audience.

Incidentally, if you want to know more about starting family history then the internet is as good a place as any to begin your study. There are several excellent sites full of information on genealogy and research methods in general. Cyndi's List of Genealogical Sites on the internet (www.cyndislist. com) carries over 60,000 links to websites of interest to genealogists and has a very comprehensive beginners' section (go to the home page, click on Main Category Index, scroll down the page and click on Beginners). You will find, however, that here, as with much elsewhere on the internet, the information has been compiled with US researchers in mind, so for my money the best site for British genealogists is Genuki (short for Genealogy UK and Ireland) at www.genuki.org.uk. From there you will find over 20,000 pages of information as well as links to other websites.

I will consider Cyndi's List, Genuki and all the other pages I mention in passing in more detail as we go along, but for now you could try visiting the Genuki home page and clicking on the Getting Started In Genealogy button.

You can also look at the FAQs. FAQs is web-speak for Frequently Asked Questions. Many websites have FAQ pages, and they usually have the answer to your question somewhere on them. I hope that this little guide will, too.