Your Family Tree
Interested in exploring your family history? We are here to help you get started.
How to start tracing your family tree:
- Book a one-to-one family history session at one of the centres closest to you Localstudies.dunfermline@onfife.com Localstudies.kirkcaldy@onfife.com Localstudies.cupar@onfife.com
- Take a look at Ancestry Institution and its world-wide collection in an Ancestry Taster Session
- Find out how to search the main family history indexes for Scotland and download records in our Scotland's People Taster
What do we offer?
- Local Studies Collections
- Free access to Ancestry Institution via any public access PC
- A wide range of indexes for different trades and professions, a large collection of trade directories and street directories as well as published and unpublished biographies and family histories. Most of these documents can be found using our on-line library catalogue
- Records of the Mars Training Ship that was moored at Woodhaven on the Tay. In its 60 years as a Training Ship for the wayward boys of the east of Scotland over 6000 young people were “sent tae the Mars”. The records are held in Newport Heritage Centre and there is searchable index of names
- Our database of Historical Newspapers includes many references to individual Fifers. Many of the name indexes can be searched using AncestryInstitution
- Copies of Monumental Inscriptions for Fife cemeteries (although the Burial Records are held by Fife Council) and many publications from local family history societies
For more help
There are several family history societies in the area you could try
Remember too that the ON at Fife Archives holds many records of interest to the family historian. The Archives service looks after documents covering the last 500 years of Fife history. This includes the minute books of Fife Council and records of the other official bodies that have been maintaining roads and dealing with other county wide issues since 1709. All sorts of different people appear in the records including schoolteachers and pupils, coal miners, and even witches!
Use the online archives catalogue search to see the sort of records they hold or to look for something specific.
