Cheat Sheet
Researching Your Family History Online For Dummies (UK Edition)
Researching your family history online can be like digging up a chest of buried treasure. This Cheat Sheet directs you to the most important websites to check out in your quest to discover your family history, and equips you with a handy list of genealogical abbreviations you’re likely to come across.
Some Genealogical Websites to Remember
This handy list of the main genealogy websites will help you get started in researching your ancestors. Each site can provide you with lots of information about your research and ways to progress your family tree.
For links to lots of other genealogical sites
For family history societies
To search for ancestors and share your successes
For birth, marriage and death records and certificates
For census records
For further information on resources both on and offline
For professional research in the UK and overseas
Genealogy Abbreviations
Genealogists love to abbreviate. Their documents, letters, reports and emails are full of long words crammed into little spaces, or of the same words repeated over and over again. Many of the abbreviations that you come across in genealogy are fairly self-explanatory – ‘gt grandfather’ is your great-grandfather; ‘Fred’k Smith’ is in fact Frederick Smith. But other abbreviations may catch you out for a moment or two, so here’s a list of some of the most common genealogy abbreviations:
b – born
bach – bachelor
bap/bap’t – baptised
bur – buried
c/ca – circa (approximately)
cert – certificate
Chr – christened
d – died
dau/daur – daughter
dec/dec’d – deceased
do – ditto
d/o – daughter of
f – female
FS – female servant
gdau/gdaur – grand daughter
gson – grandson
h/o – husband of
m/mar/marr – married
m(1) – first marriage
m(2) – second marriage
m – months
m – male
MS – male servant
NK – not known
occ – occupation
OTP – of this parish
PM – post mortem
s – single
s/o – son of
un/unm – unmarried
w/wid/widr – widow or widower
w/o – wife of
