• Advise beginners on how to start researching their family history, and get them started if they want me to

• Help people who have started their own research, but are experiencing difficulties

• Continue work for people who cannot get to Worcester, or are too busy to do the research themselves

• Provide copies of documents where permissible

• Continue research until local sources are exhausted, if requested

• Type out documents that customers cannot read (in full, or a summary, if preferred)

• Advise on other sources when records are not held locally

I will search appropriate sources as outlined above as cost-effectively as I can. No job is too small or too large.

WHAT RECORDS ARE USED?

Family history research uses some national records, copies of which are held locally (e.g. indexes to births, marriages and deaths - since 1837; national probate indexes - since 1858, naming persons who left wills and of letters of administration, where appropriate).

But most records for Worcestershire are held at the Worcestershire County Record Office. Many, such as most parish registers and census returns are on microfilm or microfiche (copies of films and fiches may also be held elsewhere, e.g. at the Family History Centre in Myddelton Street, London, or in one of the Family History Centres run by the Latter Day Saints). But many records are only held locally.

Local records include non-Conformist and Roman Catholic registers, wills (before 1858), churchwardens' accounts, accounts of overseers of the poor, rate assessments, parish apprenticeship indentures, settlement records, local newspapers, manorial records, property deeds and other family papers, land tax records, tithe maps and apportionments, enclosure awards, and so on.