How do I do a free history search for living or dead relo's in england.?

[David]

I have found a birth certificate for my wifes grandfather. His father came from Bournemouth Dorsetshire UK and was born around 1878. This is the first mention of her family from the UK. I was interested in knowing of present or past family on her side. Their last name isn't common so I have tried to access the UK telephone directory without any luck.???

[Rromabella]

You may want to try family search.org. They have a new search engine pilot under the Search Records tab. Good luck!

[Maxi]

http://www.192.com online directory/electoral roll, you are looking in the county of Dorset
search for local newspapers in Bournemouth(Daily Echo is one)....use the sites search bar with the surname to see if there are any stories
Facebook, name / area
http://www.freebmd.co.uk which is a free database of m/b/d information.
http://www.genuki.org.uk good basic information re UK researching, written by UK researchers
http://www.familysearch.org. LDS site and has the 1881 UK census, transcribed by UK family history groups and given to the LDS on the agreement they would not make money from it and offer it for research free, the LDS sit also have the IGI which is collected parish records by the LDS missionaries, however it is also lots of donated records sent in by anyone and not verified material, so don't trust it, just use it as an opportunity to look for other information and the tree on there are not verified, copied and copied again lots are wrong
rootsweb forums are a good source of reference for the name you are researching and the area, with others tracing and some who live locally will do free look ups or share information with you.

http://www.bournemouth.gov.uk/Residents/...istory.asp
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/fe...ory_Group/
http://www.curiousfox.com/history/hampshire_10.html
http://www.communigate.co.uk/dorset/slyf...ndex.phtml
http://www.weymouth-dorset.co.uk/ ( Weymouth is close to Bournemouth so there will be members researching the whole Dorset area
http://website.lineone.net/~ralphjohns/f...istory.htm a personal site of someone researching

This should give you a good start and each site will give you links to other local information...I would also suggest you get on multimap and look at the area so you get to know it, it is a holiday destination( I spent most of my holidays there as a child) beautiful place, lovely beach and the New forest with all the free roaming ponies...so lots of possibilities as far as occupations for your 'people' from farming, horse trading, branding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Forest_pony, fishing, etc so there will be lots of records/information re: membership to organisations, indenture papers etc

[Joyce B]

You could post names here and someone will come along to help. We will help the the deceased members of her family.