10 Websites to Find UK Genealogy Records Online

If you have ancestors who were born in England, Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland, you need to know where to find UK genealogy records. In this post, find ten places to search for your ancestors online.

Many people all over the world have ancestors who were from Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, which make up what is now known as the United Kingdom.

While I have many ancestors from England and Scotland, my most recently-born-in-the-UK ancestor was Simon Shapland, born in Devon, England in 1850. While I know a great deal about Simon's life in the United States, I still have more to learn about his life and family in England before he left.

Fortunately, there are many great websites that I can use to learn more about my ancestors who were from the United Kingdom right from the comfort of my home. While some of the places that I've found records do charge a free, many are free to use.

Sure, I would love to travel to the UK someday to do research in person. For now, I am going to be content with seeing what I can find in digitized records online.

Even though I won't be traveling to the UK any time soon, I have spent a lot of time studying maps of the places where my ancestors lived. This is one of my top tips for doing family tree research for the UK.

Ancestry

Ancestry is one of the most popular places to do genealogy research online, and for good reason. The have managed to get excellent access to what likely adds up to many billions of records for places all around the world, including the UK.

You will often find that Ancestry has some of the same collections that you can find on other sites. Sometimes, the records on Ancestry are more likely to be indexed, and thus, more easily searchable, than records you can find in other places.

You can do a general search on Ancestry, and narrow down the search criteria. Or, you can use on the links below to directly search the various collections.

You'll find hundreds of millions of records on Ancestry, but you will likely need a subscription to view most of them. I recommend getting an active subscription for Ancestry during the time that you will be most active with your research.

Family Search

Family Search is a really great, and completely free, online genealogy resource. It is run by the Mormon church, but you don't have be a church member to use the site.

You will be able to access a great number of the indexes, transcriptions and images online. Occasionally, you might find a record that you might need to travel to a Family Search research center in order to view.

Fortunately, there are centers located in every state.

All you need to do to use Family Search is create a free account!

You can use the links below to access the Family Search guides for each country and search the collections:

Family Search also has separate research pages for the Isle of Man. Jersey, and Guernsey.

If you don't find what you are looking for on Family Search, try checking out their experimental full-text search to see what you can find. It's powered by AI, which makes it able to find and transcribe details on pages that humans might not notice.

Free BMD

Free BMD is another completely free website that lets you search through almost 300 million records to learn about your ancestor. This website is specific to the United Kingdom, so it definitely has a focus on England/Wales/Scotland/Ireland research.

I have found information on this website for my ancestors, so I highly recommend giving it a try. In addition, you can click to access the images from which the index/transcription was obtained, which was very nice.

The website is definitely an older-style site that isn't super user friendly, so I recommend that you be patient with yourself while you learn how to use it.

If there is interest in a tutorial for the site, let me know in the comments and I will write one for you.

Groni Online (Northern Ireland only)

If you know that your Irish ancestors were from Northern Ireland, and you have a general idea (like a 5-year range) for when they were born, etc, you might be able to make use of the Groni online site to request vital record certificates for them.

You can do a free name search, but to view/download records, you will need to purchase credits. However, the credits are not very expensive and are well-worth the access to vital records.

Find My Past

Find My Past is a paid site with billions of genealogy records focusing initially primarily on the United Kingdom. However, their records access has expanded to include North America, as well.

I have had good luck finding information about many of my English ancestors on Find My Past. They had a great number of record types that I had not seen on any other website.

In addition to researching my England ancestors, I also used Find My Past to try to find out more about my Irish ancestors. However, the only information that I have about my most recent Irish ancestor is his very common name, so I did not have any luck.

Scotland's People

Scotland's People is a site run by the Scottish government that provides resources for anyone to research their Scottish heritage. You can find vital records, church records, old maps, and other information to help you with your search.

Much of the information is free, but you would need to purchase credits to view/download some records or purchase certificates.

Free Reg

Free Reg is a completely free site run by volunteers that is transcribing and indexing baptism, marriage, and burial records for the UK. Some of the records may go back as far as the 1500s.

Free Cen

Free Cen is another completely free site that allows you to search for census entries for a specific person in the UK. If your ancestor is listed, you will be able to see the information transcribed, which means you will see everything that was written for your ancestor in the census.

If you do find an entry for your ancestor, you can use that information to track down the original image in a different database.

General Register Office (England and Wales)

This website is run by the UK government and focuses on providing records for people who lived in England and Wales. If you know the details about where your ancestor was born, you might be able to, for a fee, obtain a copy of their birth, marriage, or death certificate on this website.

Find-a-Grave

If you know where your ancestor lived, you might be able to learn more about their death and their family members by finding them on Find-a-Grave. There are millions of memorials for people who lived in the UK on this free website.

For example, I know that my Shapland ancestor was born in Devon, England. When I search for his last name in the town where he lived, there were dozens of results.

It would be a lot of fun to figure out whether/how they are all related.

Conclusion

I hope that this article has helped you understand that there are many, many resources online that can help you find genealogy records for your ancestors who were from England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland.

While there is a lot to learn about doing genealogy research in the UK, the results can be very rewarding!

If you have any questions about something that you read in this post, or if you would like to share your favorite place to do family tree research in the UK, please join in the discussion below.

Thanks for reading today!