When I discovered that Sir Anthony Standen had been a spy delivering detailed intelligence to Walsingham, on the preparation of the Spanish Armada, I wanted to find out if he was an ancestor, because my mother’s maiden name was Standen. I was already using Ancestry, more to help my wife Claire’s family tree research, than mine. I hadn’t known I had anyone of interest to find.
It was helpful that I had someone in particular I was looking for. What I knew about him, from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), is that his father’s name was Edmund, who died in 1571 in East Molsey. I also new that he had younger brothers, also Anthony and Edmund.
So I set off from my mother Mabel, up through the Standen line. I had some notes in the family bible concerning birthdays, but only for three generations. Nevertheless, that and family knowledge got me going in the right direction. Ancestry has pretty good data from censuses, birth, marriage, and death certificates. I made notes of every piece of evidence attached to each male Standen: birth, marriage, death, occupation, siblings, place. Ancestry is constantly offering tips on possible relations and evidence, certificates etc. If the tip matches the information I have so far, I click yes to accept the tip. If it doesn’t look quite right, I select maybe. If it doesn’t look right at all, I select no to reject it. Your responses to the tips help Ancestry to narrow its search. When I got to an Edmund Standen, I got quite excited. When I got to his father, also an Edmund, who died in East Molsey in 1571, I jumped out of my chair. I’d found him. Sir Anthony, was my 10th great-granduncle.
Now as I said, I had a defined target, and a known starting point. If you’re just browsing and hoping there might be a king, queen, or somebody of interest somewhere, then you will wont know which branch to follow. I was firmly set on the male Standen line, from my maternal grandfather.
As an example of the difficulties you might have, I got excited about my 3rd great-grandfather, Elias Standen. According to Ancestry, or to be more exact, an unknown relative of mine, he was a sergeant farrier at the Battle of Waterloo. Unfortunately there was no source for that information quoted. The only evidence I have that might support that is the gap between his son Charles born in 1815 and his son William born in 1818. I did some searching via the National Records Office, the National Army Museum and the National Archives. I was told via the chat at National Archives that you can search army records via Find My Past (FMP) but that there is a fee.
Ancestry and Find My Past seem to be the biggest players in the genealogy market. According to genealogy stories, they seem to have very similar databases but different ways of searching.
I found some good advice on genealogy research here. Good luck!