Go Slow With Internet Searches
As a general rule, the farther back you go in time, the more effort and resources it takes to collect the information. The quality of the information tends to deteriorate and it also takes more skill to find the appropriate records. Discovering an ancestor who lived two hundred years ago is fun, but often the amount of effort it takes to research just this one person can equate to the amount of effort it takes to collect information on dozens of living relatives. To be successful in building a family tree, you need to think in these terms and be ready to make tradeoffs. As well, until you gain some experience in searching genealogical records, you might end up frustrating yourself if you try to go back in time too far too quickly.
Finding old records can be difficult. Unless you are prepared to travel to the source of a document, you will be dependant on the internet to examine such records. Unfortunately, historic records tend to be handwritten. After all, the first commercial typewriter did not appear until 1867 and typewriters were not standardized until 1910. Most official government records before this time (and many non-government records after this time) are likely to be handwritten. Handwritten records from this period are not machine readable. This means someone has to attempt to read the writing and retype the information into a database. This is both time consuming and expensive. As a result, many old handwritten records have never been put into electronic form in a manner that can be searched on the internet (see UK Government Digitization Program Suffers Indefinite Delay). Or, if the record has been put on the internet, often there is a fee to access it. After all, someone has to pay for the expense of manually retyping all those old handwritten records (Genealogy In Time™ keeps a list of the most recent genealogy record sources as they become available on the internet).
Searching old records on the internet can be expensive. Many internet sites that contain such records charge either a monthly access fee or a pay-per-record fee. One way to keep costs down is to locate free alternatives to such subscription services. Free records do exist on the internet, but it can take some digging to find them. Another way to keep costs down is to use your local library. Many libraries maintain internet subscriptions to the most popular genealogy databases. By using your local library to access the information for free, you can avoid the cost of paying for this service.
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