Finding your ancestors at Lancashire Archive's Cafe event in Preston

Have you ever wondered who your ancestors might be? Well, those curious about this had the opportunity to research their heritage as Lancashire Archives held for the first time this year their Café Archive event, together with a family history surgery.

 

The event was organised by Friends of Lancashire Archives as part of a fundraiser for financing the archive’s future projects (Photo credit: Andreea Dulgheru)

People from all over the world interested to find out more about their predecessors were able to attend the free event at Lancashire Archive’s offices, organised by Friends of Lancashire Archives charity. They were able to discuss queries with members of staff, look at historic documents and start their own family trees.

In addition to this, visitors were able to buy a variety of cakes, savoury treats and refreshments such as tea or coffee, as well as purchase books and CDs about the history of various cities in Lancashire.

The Café Archive event was organised by the Friends of Lancashire Archives charity. The money collected from the sale of the baked goods, refreshments, books and CDs will go towards funding the Archive’s current project: cataloguing the Horrocks archive. 

“We decided that we wanted to put something else on at the same time as the cafe as a sort of extra attraction so we chose the family history surgery because we want to attract more people who are tracing their family tree back to the archive,” says Jacquie Crosby, manager of the Lancashire Archives. 

“The numbers [of people coming to the archives for family history enquiries] has gone down over the years. About 10 years ago, approximately 80% of the people who came here were doing family history, but it's now dropped to about 60%, so we're trying to increase it again,” she adds.

Infographic on tips for researching your ancestors (Credit: A. Dulgheru)

According to Crosby, visiting the archives and consulting with experts is the only way to get a full and accurate family history, as opposed to browsing online in the comfort of your home. She claims that while there is some information that can be found on websites, it is often not enough, or worse, that it is unreliable due to wrongful interpretation of handwriting.

“By coming here, you can actually see the real thing, the real archives, the original documents parish registers that your ancestors signed and there's a sort of excitement about doing it that you just don't get from just looking at photographs on a website,” she adds.

Some of the documents found in the Lancashire Archive’s

 strong rooms on Bow Lane in Preston 

(Photo credit: Andreea Dulgheru)

Anna Watson, member of the Friends of Lancashire Archives committee and former archivist also encourages anyone who is interested in discovering their heritage or who hit a block in their research for their family tree, to come visit the Archive and consult with experts.

“People can bring documents if they can, if they've got them, sometimes that helps. It might be that they've got a document in which they can't read something, because sometimes handwriting can be a bit of a problem with older documents, so it might be that they've got a query about maybe what somebody's occupation says or they can't read a surname, or they might not understand the document they've got and they want to know what it is, so we can help with all those things.

Helen Morley, 21, is researching her family 

history using only online resources

 (Photo credit: Andreea Dulgheru)

“The First World War is a very big topic at the minute, lots of people are trying to trace their family ancestors from back then. We've had a number of people bring diaries that their ancestors have kept during the war into the office, and those are absolutely fascinating because that way, you're getting a very personal view from somebody who's maybe at the front fighting and they'd be recording their experiences, maybe in the trenches, that sort of thing," she added.  

However, there are people who decide to go against the traditional route when searching for their family history and instead, opt for the more modern way of searching online. Helen Morley, student of Fine Arts at the University of Central Lancashire, is one of them, who has managed to go back in time up around the 1720s with just online sources.

“I do think it’s possible to do it solely online, but I think if you intend to document your family past 1800, you really need to visit the archives in the area they were living to fully grasp all information surrounding them,” says Morley.

"Going further than 1800 gets pretty difficult when trying to find people, because I'm relying mainly on census records. A census is an easy way to find other members of a family; you've found the person's birth record, hopefully with the father's name and the birthplace and so, the next logical step is to either search for the father's marriage, or search for the father and child residing in the same house in a census and see who else is there. Going past 1800, you've lost the census records," she adds.

 

However, while she believes it can be possible to build your family tree just by using online sources, Morley does agree that it gets harder and harder after reaching a certain point back in time and that visiting the local archives is the way to go when stuck.