Ancestral Trails
by Mark Herber

Lavishly illustrated, Ancestral Trails guides the researcher through the substantial collection of British archives, giving a detailed view of the available records and published sources, analyzing each, and guiding the reader finding aids and indexes.

The early chapters help beginners take their first steps: obtaining information from living relatives, drawing family trees, and starting research in records of birth, marriage, and death, or in census records. Later chapters deal with records that are more difficult to find and use, such as wills, parish registers, civil and ecclesiastical court records, poll books, and property documents.

The book is ideal for the beginner and the experienced researcher alike, and will enable persistent researchers to trace their ancestry back to the Middle Ages.

According to Directory Anthony Camp, of the Society of Genealogists (London), "No other publication gives such comprehensive and up-to-date guidance on tracing British ancestry. … Ancestral Trails is the essential companion and guide for all family historians."

688 pp., hardcover, 1998, ISBN 0-8063-1541-5