Have you ever actually been in to a records office mate?
I think that will need to be my next move and I was wondering what the procedure was and what you did in there.
We've been to the records office in Huntingdon which helped us get back a bit in that area. I can't remember the exact process we went through now - you don't usually have to book, just turn up. At Huntingdon there were a load of books for the different towns and villages, in there are lists of names. They sometimes contain the transcription, though more often it contains a reference to a microfiche that you stick in a machine they have there and you can look at the original record. We spent a day in there.
We're hoping to go to the records office in Liverpool ASAP to research more in that area.
I'd recommend having a list of names and locations ready when you go so you've got something to concentrate on, otherwise its quite easy to go off on a tangent.
Something I noticed last night that was interesting was that my great great great Grandad was born in Covington, he married my great great great grandma who was born in Liverpool, but they lived in Covington. In those days (around 1840-1850 they will have got married), how on earth would they have met up? Its not as if she would have moved to Covington for work and met him there - I can only assume he went to Liverpool for work, met her, then they both moved back. I need to find out more about that.
Id like to look into this. Ive not got a very English surname so shouldnt be too hard but fucked if i can find anything. Any ideas?
I'd start with
www.familysearch.org - its free and does contain a lot of useful info, including the names of parents. If you can get hold of birth/marriage certificates they often contain useful info such as parents names (
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl allows you to search and view some records, though to get the actual certificate you usually have to order from your local records office/council).
Because the above sites are free to search you can gather quite a bit of information from there and once you're confident its correct you can then register with somewhere like Ancestry.co.uk and get the census records and start gathering even more info - they contain all the family names which is helpful. I'm not too such I'd register with ancestry initially due to the cost and having little information to go on, though their searches are very good.
Also, if you're not already I'd recommend joining
www.genesreunited.co.uk - you can build up your family tree on their and can store loads of info on your family members - without this I would have got lost ages ago. Other members can also contact you if they think there is a link to their tree (they only see the name, location and birth year of your ancestor in searches). If you get a link saves you a lot of work
I've only managed to get back on my fathers side of the family because he's been most interested in it and managed to give me a lot of info (plus the fact his ancestors were lazy and kept giving their sons their own name) - my wife wants to research hers but her family aren't interested in helping her so got nothing much to go on, which can make it difficult because its a lot of guess work unfortunately.