Exploring your Ancestry with Kirsty Wilkinson

Like a lot of professional genealogists, I first started through tracing my own family history. I was brought up with a strong sense of my Scottish heritage, which comes through my Mum’s side of the family, but it was only after my maternal grandmother died in 2001 that I realised I didn’t really know much about her family at all. I set out initially to answer a few specific questions I had about my grandmother’s family, but tracking down ancestors soon developed into an all-consuming hobby. Eventually I decided to turn my passion into a career and in 2006 set up my own family history research business. In order to broaden my knowledge, I began studying part-time with the genealogy programme from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and after several years was awarded an MSc in Genealogical, Palaeographical and Heraldic Studies.

Tracing our roots has become much more popular more recently. Why do you think this is and do you see it as an ongoing trend?

I think a lot of us these days grow up knowing relatively little about our family history. In the past extended families typically lived near one another, or even in the same household, and family stories would be passed down, but nowadays many of us live a long way from grandparents and cousins. As we get older, perhaps as we start our own families or as the older generations pass away, we start to ask questions about our ancestors and wonder where we came from.

Alongside that, researching family history has become incredibly easier over the last couple of decades as millions of genealogical records have become available online. When I started out, a lot of research had to be done by visiting archives and record offices, most of which have quite limited opening hours, but now it’s a lot simpler to get started online. With sites like Ancestry.com, people can access records of their ancestors in their free time, wherever they are in the world and whatever time of day they choose. It’s opened up family history to many people who perhaps wouldn’t have considered it before. With more records becoming available all the time and DNA testing opening up new possibilities, I think the popularity of family history is set to continue for a long time.

Can you share the story of Ancestry with us?

Ancestry began as a publishing business in 1983 and the website, Ancestry.com, launched in 1996. Since then it’s grown hugely, passing the one billion records milestone in 2001 and launching the dedicated UK website, Ancestry.co.uk the same year. Ancestry began offering genealogical DNA tests in 2012 and since then more than 18 million people worldwide have taken a test. Today, there are over 3 million subscribers to the Ancestry website which currently contains more than 27 billion records.

We all know Ancestry for the family tree building side and I have had a great time tracking down all sorts of amazing characters from my Dad’s side of the family. This was easy as there were lots of military records I could tap into, but my Mum’s side has been a lot more difficult and I am a bit stuck. Do you have any top tips?

The best way to get started with your family history is by talking to your relatives and looking out any family papers that may have been stored away. You may think that no one else in the family knows any more than you do, but once you get chatting to relatives you may be surprised how much they can tell you. It’s always best to start by speaking to the oldest generation, but even cousins may have heard stories that you haven’t, or have inherited photos and documents you’ve never seen before. It’s really important to check everything you’re told by looking at original records as family stories can get muddled in the telling or details be mis-remembered. However, family information can be really useful for getting past the most recent generations for which records may not be available online due to privacy restrictions.

Family Tree Hints come up for me quite a bit and I am always unsure how to check if they are correct or not?

With billions of records on Ancestry.com, knowing where to start looking for your ancestors can be tricky. The Ancestry Hints® tool can be really helpful as it highlights records, or other people’s family trees, that may contain information about the person you’re seeking. However, it’s important to remember it is just a “hint” – sometimes it could be a record of someone else with the same name and not your ancestor at all. With each hint, make sure you look at the original image (if there is one) not just the index entry. Then note the details given and compare them with what you already know about your ancestor – dates, locations and reference to other family members can all help to identify if it is the right person. If you’re not sure if it’s the correct person, you can either ‘ignore’ the hint or mark is as ‘undecided’. You can always come back and look at it again in the future as even hints you’ve previously ignored will still be accessible on the ancestor’s profile page.

Where does AncestryProGenealogists® come in and what is your involvement in this side of the business?

Many people turn to AncestryProGenealogists when they find themselves stuck with a tricky family history problem, or simply when they don’t have the time or expertise to carry out research for themselves. We work with our clients to solve their genealogy mysteries and bring their own family story to life.

The great thing about AncestryProGenealogists is the range and depth of our knowledge. We have researchers based in the US, Ireland, England, Germany, and Scotland and between us have more than 500 years of combined research experience. We can access documents held in archives and libraries worldwide as well as using all the wonderful online resources. Often solving a complex family history problem will involve research in more than one country and using in-depth DNA analysis alongside traditional research. Working together, our team of experts can uncover information that a single researcher working alone might not be able to find.

I joined AncestryProGenealogists in 2017 as a genealogist specialising in Scottish research. Being in Scotland, I am able to access information held locally in archives and libraries. I have since moved into the role of Research Manager which means that, alongside carrying out research, I manage a small team of researchers and work closely with clients to uncover their individual family story.

Do you have a favourite story from customers using this service?

A lot of people have family stories of being related to a famous person but many times these don’t hold up to scrutiny and it’s just that the surname is the same. I was, therefore, excited to discover for a client that their family really did have a distant connection to Robert Burns. Their ancestors lived in Mauchline in Ayrshire at the same time as Robert Burns did and they would have known some of the people he wrote about in his poems. They may well have witnessed Burns’ public repentance in Mauchline church for fornication with Jean Amour, whom he later married, and may even have been distantly related to Jean’s family. It’s wonderful when we can place an ancestor in a historical context like that and get a real sense of the world they lived in.

When I originally spoke to Kyle Betit on your team he explained that you can also bring clients over to Scotland to trace their Ancestors in person and visit key locations of interest in their history. Can you tell us more about how the Travel Program works?

One of the exciting services AncestryProGenealogists offers is our Heritage Travel programme. A lot of clients from overseas contact us because they are thinking of making a trip to Europe and want to visit places connected with their ancestors. Sometimes the information they have is quite vague and so we carry out in-depth research to identify their ancestors and the places where they lived and worked in advance of the trip. But it’s not only research we can help with; with our travel partners, Kensington Tours, we can organise personal heritage journeys for small family groups. Visitors get not only a private tour guide but also a genealogist who can travel with them and help them to learn so much more about their family. It’s a wonderful way to bring family history to life. In addition to personal tours, we also offer Genealogy Cruises and European River Cruises. Obviously, restrictions on travel over the last year have delayed some of these, but we are looking forward to welcoming our clients to their ancestral homelands in the near future.

Any favourite places to bring people to or stories from customers using this service?

I was lucky enough to accompany a group of heritage travellers around Scotland in 2019. We were able to tour some of the major destinations, such as Edinburgh, Inverness and Culloden, and also to visit archives where visitors could see some original documents relating to their ancestors.

Undoubtedly, the highlight of any heritage tour is the Ancestral Home Visit. Visitors can literally walk in their ancestors’ footsteps, visit the churches where their ancestors worshipped, touch their gravestones and even visit their ancestors’ homes, if these still survive. For many it is a profoundly moving experience.

As a business owner myself I can’t imagine working for anyone else so what made you decide to make the move from running your own business to working for Ancestry?

There are some great advantages to being self-employed and I enjoyed my years running my own family history business. However, I ultimately realised that my real talent was for research, rather than business. I had done some freelance work for AncestryProgenealogists previously, and was excited when they offered me the opportunity to work for them full-time. Now, instead of worrying where my next client will come from, I get to spend all day indulging in my passion for genealogy – it’s a wonderful job!

Kirsty, not content with working full time, you have also written a book, 'Finding Your Scottish Ancestors: Techniques for Solving Genealogy Problems'. Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind it?

Writing my genealogy book was really a result of speaking to and working with hundreds of clients over the years. The same kinds of family history problems come up time and time again and many people struggle once they have exhausted the basic genealogical sources. Often, they know there are more records out there, but they just don’t know where or how to begin. ‘Finding Your Scottish Ancestors: Techniques for Solving Genealogy Problems’ is aimed primarily at people who have done some family history research themselves but want to take it further or to overcome a particularly difficult challenge. The book covers online and archival sources, techniques for carrying out research and provides strategies for dealing with some of the most commonly encountered genealogy problems.

What's next for genealogy research?

Improved access to records through digitisation will certainly be an important part of genealogy research over the next few years. Technology may make it even easier to find our ancestors through optical character recognition of handwritten text, speeding up the process of indexing records. With this improved access, I think we will see an even greater focus on learning more about ancestors’ lives, rather than them simply being names and dates.

The big growth areas of genealogy are likely to be outside of Europe and America where a lot of interest had traditionally been focused. A lack of record-keeping is a major challenge to researching genealogy in many countries, and so DNA testing will be particularly important for filling that gap.