Good free genealogy sites for the UK 1870′s-1880′s please?

I am helping a friend who has found a letter written in 1883, from Knockholt Manor, Sevenoaks. It is fascinating reading and is probably from a relative to her great uncle, but no names are mentioned. However I have found there were only a handful of houses in Knockholt at the time so it should be easy to link her known family tree here in NZ to the Knockholt area, just need a good site to start looking in. Any tips? It does mention ‘father’ died at Leigh on 9 August 1883. The only death I have found is Dr Robert Moffat (David Livingstones father in law) Any help would be much appreciated, we are enjoying the search very much.

In trying to search down branches of my own tree the advice I keep getting given is start with what you know, that is pretty sound advice, and it looks like you are already interviewing your older relatives. I have found my own relatives to be a brilliant source of storie’s and helpful information in researching my tree.

From things that have helped my own research probably some places that might be of use to you are:

The Knockholt Tourist Information Board

http://www.aboutbritain.com/tourist-information-centres/sevenoaks-tourist-information-centres.asp

http://www.aboutbritain.com/towns/knockholt.asp

Quite often they will be able to give you contacts/information if their are any local historical society’s, library’s, geneology groups, local papers who can all be of great help especially if there is a ‘big house’ involved.

I have also found community boards on various Gene websites to be quite useful – my two favourites are:

http://www.genesreconnected.com, which has both a free and paid for membership option – use the free option and post some of your queries on the community boards which are free to use – there are alot of very helpful individuals, I got alot of census info on a relation that had got me stumped which opened up a couple of branches for me. If you find the site really useful you can always upgrade the membership at a later date to use additional features but the basic free membership is pretty handy for the hobbiest.

and http://www.curiousfox.com/ which is another message board – with quite a handy villages search option. Again it has both free or paid for membership – relativley inexpensive though so worth paying the £5 so non members can email you if they have info. There are already a few queries regaurding the Knockholt area.

And thirdly http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
the free births, marridges and deaths index isn’t complete but it could help point you towards the person you need before having to pay for any certificates to check details.
Remember when seaching to let your dates be a bit fuzzy until you think you have pinpointed the person as quite often the date recorded on the certificate is the date reported not date of death/birth

Leading@Google: Ngahi Bidois

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