The Internet is loaded with information about Englishmen and women from the past. One needs only to know where to find it. As a result of Britain's decision to build an empire circling the globe centuries ago, people of English descent now dot the planet. The sun never set on the former British Empire.

Today people in Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States — not to mention English people themselves (where family history is a national past time) — all trace their family trees back to common ancestors who lived in England. Many of them are cousins to early LDS converts and thousands of websites are becoming available to study them.

Where does one begin an online search? Price and Associates, Inc., has created a free research tool to help you find your English family history on the web titled Expert Links: English Family History and Genealogy. The site contains links to more than 500 databases of interest to beginners and advanced researchers alike.

Expert Links' unique features have gained praise from around the globe. All links appear on a single, compact, easily-navigable webpage. They are divided topically and differentiated by color to distinguish free from fee-based sites.

The first databases under each category are the most comprehensive and often lead to nationwide indexes. Thereafter, you'll find county-specific databases listed alphabetically. Twice a month, a database is spotlighted as a “Featured Site” with explanations of how it can benefit your research.

To get started, check online census records. Taken every ten years from 1841 through 1901, this source provides snapshots of historic English families. Several companies have indexed or are in the process of indexing these valuable records. Ancestry and Roots UK currently provide the most comprehensive collections (see “Census and Census Substitutes”).

Approximate dates of birth, marriage, and death taken from census data can be easily enhanced using England's civil registration records. Beginning in 1837, and indexed nationwide, you can find references to birth, marriage, and death certificates in England online. Using this information, you may then order certificates to learn the exact dates of these events in your families.

Start with FreeBMD and if you don't find the person you're looking for, check subscription sites (see “Civil Registration”).

Bring the places your ancestors lived alive by checking historic maps, gazetteers (place-name dictionaries), and finding photographs of old churches online — a great way prepare for a trip to the Old Country (see “Maps and Gazetteers,” and “Genuki”). Orient yourself to the general region in England where ancestors lived by viewing historic county boundary maps produced by the LDS Church.

Learn about towns, parishes, and villages as they existed in the nineteenth century with the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1872) and Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887). Find a list of parishes within ten miles of your ancestor's place of residence to help locate relatives in the area, using the free downloadable software Parish Locator .

Use Old Maps to explore detailed depictions of the English landscape. Map the distribution of your surname in 1881, 1891, and 1998 using surname distribution maps produced by the National Trust and Ancestry .

Finally, take a look at old stone churches, where ancestors took children to be baptized, receive communion, celebrate weddings, and bury family members. The old buildings differ in color depending upon the types of stone available locally. Digital images of old English churches can be found by googling for the name of the parish or browsing the Genuki website.

Follow the movements of British emigrants to the four corners of the Earth using Brits in South America , British Home Children (Canada), the Convict Transportation Registers (Australia), the Immigrant Servants Database (Colonial America), Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 , Ellis Island (USA), and the US Immigration Collection (see “Emigration Records”).

In order to network with living descendants of your English ancestors, take a look at the affordable Genes Reunited site. Also try chatting with people in BBC Family Trees Message Boards , Gen Forum , Roots Chat Forum , and Roots Web Mailing Lists . You'll find topics about particular surnames, occupations, or counties in England (see “Networking with Others”).

Find “genetic cousins” by browsing the nearly 5000 surname projects at Family Tree DNA , or locate enthusiasts who study every instance of particular surnames, affectionately known by the acronym “GOONS,” at the Guild of One-Name Studies (see “Networking with Others,” “DNA,” and “Surname Studies”).

As research progresses back in time to ancestors born before 1800, you'll wish to learn about new types of English sources, including parish registers, wills, migration records, records of the poor, and heraldic visitations.

As you probably already know, the International Genealogical Index is the best place to start your parish register research online. Learn which parish registers are indexed in this collection by checking Hugh Wallis's IGI Batch Numbers — England . Boyd's Marriage Index and Pallot's Marriage Index are excellent databases for locating marriages missing from your pedigree.

Check out county-specific indexes, such as the Staffordshire Marriage Index or Joiner's Marriage Index (northern England) if other searches fail. The National Burial Index has become the starting point for English burial research. If you're fortunate, your ancestral parish is the focus of a one-place study. The leaders of these projects, of which Wirksworth, Derbyshire is a prime example, attempt to reconstruct all families in a particular locality (see “Baptisms Indexes,” “Marriage Indexes,” “Burial Indexes,” and “One-Place Studies”).

English men and women took their wills to local (or sometimes regional) probate courts run by the Church of England before 1858. Some counties had one probate court, while others contained multiple. Of the more than 125 probate courts whose indexes are now online, some of the most notable are the PCC Wills Index 1384-1858 (nationwide, includes images for a fee), the Cheshire Wills Database Online 1492-1940 , Hampshire Wills and Admons to 1858 , Lancashire Probate Indexes 1541-1858 , Northampton and Rutland Wills Index , Wiltshire Wills 1540-1858 (includes thousands of free images), and the Yorkshire Peculiars Probate Index 1383-1883 (covers Yorkshire's 83 smaller courts) (see “Probate Records”).

Few English people knew how to “stay put” after the Middle Ages came to a close. For this reason, genealogists need to learn how to accurately track and document their migrations. London Apprenticeship Abstracts 1442-1850 identify the provincial origins and parentage of hundreds of thousands of young people who came to the metropolis as apprentices.

In these centuries, one out of seven people lived in London for some part of their lives. English researchers use the term “stray” to identify people who left their home to move to a new place, often from one English county to another. Stray indexes can be accessed online for former residents of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Manchester (Lancashire), Shropshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Sussex, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, and Yorkshire.

Indexes have also been created for Irish immigrants to Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Westmorland, and Wiltshire, England (see “Migration Records”).

Whether your ancestors include royalty or peasants, English genealogists are fascinated by the entire social spectrum of the land's previous inhabitants. The Armigerous Ancestors Index is a complete index to families with coats of arms in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. It can help you determine which heraldic visitations to search.

These old pedigrees, drawn up 400 to 500 years ago, are rapidly going online (31 counties are currently available). To learn about the ancestries of kings and queens of England and their descendants, take a look at The Official Website of the British Monarchy , Ancestral File , the Millennium File , and the superbly-documented Graphical Index to the Ancestry of Charles II (see “Heraldry and Nobility”).

Was your ancestor a saddle tree maker? Do you know what a saddle tree maker was? Find the meaning in Old Occupation Names or the Oxford English Dictionary . Was your ancestor a member of the Anglican clergy, a sheriff in Buckinghamshire, a Cornish miner, a medieval Catholic cathedral clergyman, a Methodist preacher, a Jewish businessman in London, a lighthouse keeper, a physician, coastguard, or a fairground worker? Specialized indexes for all of these occupations are now available online (see “Occupations”).

Or maybe your ancestor was a rag collector. Use the valuable website Workhouses to learn about the conditions and available records for specific poor law union workhouses, where ancestors spent long days working out meager livings.

If your ancestor was a stranger and tried to ask neighbors or the local preacher for money when he or she fell on hard times, databases such as Derbyshire Removals, Settlement Certificates, Settlement Examinations, Rogues and Vagabonds might assist. They document officials sending poor or unemployed people back to their place of “legal settlement,” often a birthplace.

If your ancestor was admitted to a hospital, use the Hospital Records Database to determine where records were stored. Medieval peasants are documented in manorial court rolls, the Manorial Documents Register (partially available online) can help find these rare manuscripts. If an ancestor committed a crime in the capital, you might find them in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674-1834 .

Medieval peasants also had to pay taxes. The E 179 Database , named after its record classification at The National Archives, will help you locate medieval tax lists at that facility (see “Records of the Poor,” and “Land and Court Records”).

It is humbling to watch English family history research take off in popularity on the Internet today. LDS families of English descent can particularly benefit from this global interest. By learning how to use these valuable websites, we will jumpstart our English research and find new ancestors.