That probably sounds like a weird thing to be asking on a family history blog and perhaps it is, but the thought crossed my mind quite some time ago.

I am a bit on the fence about reincarnation – I would like to believe it is possible. It would be good to get another try at life to see what you could make of it the next time. However,  even though I would like to believe in it, not knowing of any way to find proof that this is possible, I will remain on the fence.

What I wondered was, if a person was reincarnated – how could you justify Family History? What I mean is, if you had been someone else a number of years before your present life, how could you research way back in history and collect all these ancestors?

Would each incarnation have its own family tree?

Now I write this down it does sound really odd, but I wondered if any other person had thought about this and what conclusion had they come to?

Please don’t write me off as some kind of nut, I am not, I am just curious and sometimes my mind flies off at a tangent and this is the result of one of these flights of fancy.

If anyone has anything to say about this, I really would like to hear from you.

I can speak for British certificates, i.e. birth, marriage and death, although I am sure that the US and other countries will include the same details.

On a Birth certificate for instance you are going to see the name of the child, the birth date, the names of the parents and their address at the time of the birth and the occupations of Father and/or Mother. Also you will see the registration district where the birth occurred and was registered.

If you know that this child was the first in the family, you could generally look for the marriage somewhere around 1 year previous. I say somewhere around because it could be that the birth occurred quite soon after the marriage or even longer than a year.

If the child was not the eldest then you can’t get that sort of help unfortunately.

If you can determine the ages of the parents this can sometimes help you guess when they were married. The woman could have been married from age 17 onwards [although further back in time they could have been married at a very early age. The aristocrats sometimes married their children off when they were merely small children in order to gain the family alliance that they wanted].

If you are in the UK and are searching in the St. Catherine’s Index for the particular event, birth, marriage or death, and if you don’t find the details in the first year you look at, just search each year backwards [and forwards] from the year you first searched. You should come across the event you are looking for if it was after 1837.

If we are talking about births, marriages and deaths back to 1837 [in the UK] when registration became mandatory you will also have the benefit of census returns.

The earliest available census would have been 1841 [in the UK] and onwards every 10 years. You might be lucky enough to find an index which would help you locate the family you are searching for, if not you need some idea of where the family lived

You will have access online to UK census records for England and Wales from 1841 to 1911.

The census return would list the Head of the Household, usually the Father, but sometimes the Mother in the case of a widow. The family were listed in order of age and their occupation shown and relationship to the head of the house.

In the earlier census returns there would also be notes on persons who were deaf, mute, or lunatics!

Sometimes you would find people at the house on census night who were not the immediate family, perhaps nieces and nephews, grandchildren, parents or in-laws.

These can also be very useful pieces of information because you would see their surnames and in the case of grandchildren you would know the name of the parent who was not of the immediate family. In-laws [Mother's in law and Father's in law] also can furnish you with surnames which are different and this helps when finding their marriage.

If you follow the census every 10 years and find family members not there from one census to the next you could either assume they have left home, got married or have died.

This gives you two possibilities you could follow up, marriage or death. Taking into consideration what happened was during the intervening 10 years this gives you a time frame to research.

When you locate details of a birth, marriage or death from the records you should take note of the reference number because this will be needed when you order your copy.

It is possible to order these documents online now so that is good news for anyone wanting these documents who is not living in the UK, or any other country where the birth, marriage or death took place.

I will be following up this information with marriage certificates and possibly death certificates at the earliest opportunity.

Family documents are not necessarily old – even contemporary paperwork can be useful.

People do seem to accumulate a huge amount of paper in some form or another. For instance, all the usual certificates, birth, marriage and death. Details of scholastic achievements, property deeds and details, scrap-books, photograph albums, newspaper cuttings perhaps and any number of other types of information.

It is the historical type of document that needs to be very carefully cared for, such as house plans, old correspondence, diaries and journals. Anything in fact that gives an insight into life in a different era.

There are some types of ink that actually corode paper and you really need acid-free ink to avoid this.

Any acidic paper is going to turn yellow with age and also become brittle. This can lead to anything stored with this paper item becoming discoloured also.

You need to be very careful with photographs because the surface is very vulnerable and can be easily scratched and marked by greasy fingerprints.

It is best to handle photographs or transparencies only by their edges. Do not touch the surface even though you consider you have clean hands the natural secretions can damage a photograph over time.

If you have original photographs hung on your wall in a frame, make sure they are not in direct sunlight.

If you currently are using a digital camera you need to consider long term storage of the photos. Perhaps you have transferred them to your PC, but what if your hard disk crashed, or you upgrade your computer? It would be advisable to store your images onto archival quality DVD and/or CD’s.

Stored papers are actually a larder for insects and pests. Any paper, ink or photographic paper is seen as a food source to many insects etc.

You need to also think about keeping papers together with paperclips and staples as these can rust and cause damage to the paper.

In some instances when you are handling particularly old documents you may choose to wear surgical or cotton gloves to avoid your actual fingers touching the paper. This is good but if the paper is very delicate and fragile, wearing gloves may reduce the sensitivity of the fingers and could actually cause damage.

If you can avoid folding items this is best because repeated folding can cause weakness and possibly worn areas in the document.

It is definitely essential that you store your precious documents in acid-free folders and boxes. Any old brown envelope or plastic bag just will not do.

If you can label each box with its contents this will avoid unnecessary handling when looking for a particular item. Also, it is best if the box is about the same size as the papers stored inside, this avoids any extra movement of the papers in the box.

You need to make certain that where these boxes are stored is clean and dry, with a preferable 45-60% humidity, it also needs to be cool and dark.

It might pay you to make photographic copies of your older documentation for display purposes. For instance if you are setting up a display at some Family History Fair and the papers are likely to be out in the open for some time. Always try to conserve original documents as well as you can, they are irreplaceable.

Try not to use sticky tape on documents, they leave a residue which turns yellow and this leads to the paper deteriorating. It is so difficult to remove this stickiness so it’s best never to use the tape in the first place.

A lot of conservation do’s and don’t are really just common sense. Naturally you shouldn’t handle old documentation roughly or carelessly. All of these items are, as I mentioned before, irreplaceable.