About the Society of Genealogists

The main Society website can be found here

We provide a well regarded programme of education and training enabling people to research their roots and to understand what they’ve found – confident that trees are sound, ancestors belong, and written names can become real and rounded family members.

We’re a diverse community – expert, novice, published historian, first-time tree-tracer – learning and improving together, sharing ideas and advice, generous with our knowledge and time.

We are UK based but international in outlook with members across four continents. We’ve got 110 years under our belt but we’re as committed and curious as ever, staying true to our own history, championing those whose lives lie undiscovered. Knowledge of our past helps illuminate the present and guide the future – so we continue to research, learning from the extraordinary lives of ordinary men and women, of every race and place and class and creed.

We all have roots. Let’s find them together.

Mailing Address: 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA

Record Guides and our Hints and Tips found on the Learn page of of our main website introduce sources and records used by family historians. These will help you get the most out of your family history research.

Our library collections are particularly valuable for research before the start of civil registration of births marriages and deaths in 1837 but there is plenty for the beginner too, including the Free Family History Access area where beginners can get a taste of some of the online sources that will help them start their research.

We have many unique unpublished manuscript notes and printed and unpublished family histories. We hold the largest collection of parish register copies and many nonconformist registers. Along with registers, we hold local histories, copies of churchyard gravestone inscriptions, poll books, trade directories, census indexes and a wealth of information about the parishes where our ancestors lived.

Many of our unique indexes are online including Boyd’s Marriage Index with more than 7 million names, indexes of wills and marriage licences, apprentices and masters (1710-1774), London City Apprenticeships, Boyd’s Inhabitants of London as well as records such as the Bank of England will abstracts, Trinity House petitions and information on Teachers and Civil Servants. Explore our Collections

Membership

Membership of the Society is open to anyone with an interest in family and social history. We cater for the full range from those at any early stage in their research to those already with extensive knowledge. Further information about becoming a Member can be found on our main website. Non-members are welcome to attend our events at the listed price with surcharge.

We run many events for members which are included as a benefit of membership, at no further charge.

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