Genealogy is the study and tracing of family pedigrees. This involves collecting the names of relatives, both living and deceased, and establishing the relationships between them, based on primary, secondary and also circumstantial evidence thus building up a cohesive family tree.

Every family has unique stories and precious memories worthy of preserving for future generations.  It is a great hobby but can take a lot of time, and a link via computers to the Internet.

So you have a computer, you’ve got the Internet link and now you want to know who your grandfather twice removed was and where he lived. You might know roughly where but how does the Internet know? Well, it doesn’t but others may know. So a good start is to look at the web-sites dealing with genealogy, type the word’ Genealogy’ in the web search engine (Google) or similar and see what comes up, you’ll be surprised. Other sites like Ancestor.com and the Church of Latter Day Saints are great collectors of data.

And let’s not forget the local church! For southern Wales the Glamorgan Records are on the Internet (see under Useful Links) and St David’s Church also is in the process of collecting and displaying various data. The field of genealogy is enormous, after all it encompasses all of human history but it must be said, if you can go back before 1600 you might be aristocratic!

Best of luck!