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It was supposed to be the project that would drag one of the nation’s favourite hobbies into the 21st century.

More than 250 million records of births, marriages and deaths - a family history of Britain since 1837 - should have been freely available to search online by next May.

However, the multimillion-pound scheme has suffered the same curse as many Government IT projects. It is now running over a year late, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and “mid to late 2009” is the new best guess for when the online index will be available.

When budding travellers meet history buffs it is a perfect union for tracing a family tree.

The intriguing business of constructing a thorough history of descendants is easier than it sounds with the endless resources just a mouse click away.

VisitBritain in conjunction with the genealogy website www.ancestry.co.uk found that about five per cent of North American, Australian and New Zealand tourists to the United Kingdom were embarking on ancestry tours last year.

They expect this figure to double over the next 12 months.

PR Director for www.ancestry.co.uk Simon Ziviani says the team wasn't surprised at the increasing interest in family history.

Mr Ziviani says that the internet has made it much easier for people to access massive amounts of historical information.   - www.brisbanetimes.com.au

Information from the National Archives - TNA  
Indexes to the Registrar General's statutory returns of births and deaths of Britons at sea from July 1837 onwards, British Consular returns of births, marriages and deaths of Britons abroad after July 1849, United Kingdom High Commission returns of births and deaths from the date of independence of each Commonwealth country, and marriages there from 1981 onwards can be searched at the Family Records Centre. There are also various indexes to military, naval and Royal Air Force births, marriages and deaths of personnel and their families abroad (including deaths in the Boer War, First and Second World Wars), and to births and deaths on civilian aircraft from 1947. Microfiche copies of the indexes to 1992 are available at The National Archives. Applications for certified copies of the entries can be made in person, directed to the Overseas Section, General Register Office (PO Box 2, Southport, Merseyside PR8 2JD, 0151 471 4801, online at www.gro.gov.uk

Before beginning your family history genealogical research, you should do is find out what information is already available about your family. One of the first places to visit on the internet is FamilySearch - created by the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS).

FamilySearch.org

Start by looking for your family at http://www.familysearch.org. If you use the Search for Ancestors screen, you will search the following databases:

The International Genealogical Index (IGI):  Read more about the IGI

The world's largest genealogy index is the International Genealogical Index. The IGI is a large database containing more than 600 million names. Several million additional names are added yearly. The IGI primarily indexes births, baptisms (called christenings), and marriages.  It rarely contains deaths.

Dates

It is wise to exercise extreme caution and skepticism with information about dates in our family history research. Dates are more difficult to recall years after an event, and are more easily mistranscribed than other types of genelogical data. Therefore, one should evaluate whether the date was recorded at the time of the event or at a later date.

Dates of birth in vital records or civil registrations and in church records at baptism are generally accurate because they were usually recorded near the time of the event. Family Bibles are often a reliable source for dates, but can be written from memory long after the event.

In addition the site has a large range of products for experienced family historians including professional family tree software, census packs,

Service and pension records for more than two million soldiers who fought in the British army in World War I are being put online for the first time.

The documents provide a broad range of detail, from name and next of kin to wounds suffered and conduct record.

The release by the Ancestry website, working in partnership with the National Archives, is taking place in stages over the next two years.

The images are available to view on a subscription or pay-per-view basis.

All the records are already viewable on 28,000 rolls of microfilm at the National Archives in west London, but it is hoped the digitisation process will make them available to a much wider audience.