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Marriage licenses are great sources of family history information. They usually show ages, parents, witnesses and in some cases where the bride, groom, and parents were born and their occupations. Death certificates are also useful. They show death dates, birth dates, parents, who reported the death, but also often contain other key information like place of residence and much more in depth family history information like causes of death
In both the US and the UK there are volunteer based initiatives to digitize and index Birth, marriage and death records for family history purposes. In the US you can refine your family history search by county, state and names. In the UK you can access the index of births, marriages, and deaths from England and Wales from 1837 to 1983. The free BMD database includes over 68 million family history records.
For many Canadians (unless you are of First Nations descent) your family may only have lived in Canada for several generations. The Links to Other Sources of Information and Websites found in this website will help you contact different institutions or archives for documents that may assist in establishing your family's past, including immigration records, military records, census information, and naturalization or citizenship papers.
When hiring a family history expert it’s a good idea to get references from people who know the persons work or pick someone who has well know family history qualifications like the IHGS or membership of the history society. If you are paying for your family history its worth setting out to the person you are hiring what you are trying to achieve. Do you want to search back through your family line, look laterally for living family members, flesh out the history of a specific family member or explore a particular side of your family history first.
