Almost every American Anglophile eventually asks the same question: is any of this actually mine? A two-part masterclass in tracing British and Irish family history, with a professional genealogist who does it for a living.
These episodes were made in partnership with Findmypast. The advice is Jen Baldwin’s and the questions are ours.
Family history looks impossible from the outside. It is a wall of unfamiliar record types, half-remembered names, and a strong suspicion that somebody has already got it wrong on a public family tree somewhere.
So we asked Jen Baldwin — Research Specialist at Findmypast, a professional genealogist since 2010, and a specialist in British social history and the British diaspora — to take it from the very beginning. Her own tree runs back to London in 1635, so she knows the terrain personally as well as professionally.
Genealogy 101 is for the complete beginner: why family history becomes addictive, how to interview living relatives before those memories are gone, what to look for in your own house, and the cornerstone British records — civil registration from 1837 and the census from 1841 onwards.
Genealogy 201 goes deeper. The 1921 census and the 1939 register. Why the newspaper archive is where ancestors stop being names and become people. What the Industrial Revolution did to every family tree in Britain. The truth about name changes and spelling variations — which, as Jen puts it, almost never had anything to do with Ellis Island. And how to work with a surname as common as Thomas or Smith without drowning.
Both episodes are sponsored by Findmypast. We’d have made them anyway.
Both parts, in order. Start with 101 even if you think you know the basics.
Jul 13, 2026 • 48:50
In this sponsored episode of the Anglotopia Podcast — brought to you by Findmypast, one of the world’s leading family history websites — Jonathan Thomas sits down with Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast and a professional genealogist since 2010, for a warm, practical, and genuinely inspiring introduction to British…
Jul 13, 2026 • 1:02:28
In this second sponsored episode with Findmypast — the follow-up to our Genealogy 101 introduction — Jonathan Thomas and Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast, go deeper into the records, techniques, and stories that turn a nervous beginner into a confident family historian. The episode covers the extraordinary richness of…
In the order we recorded them, oldest first.
In this sponsored episode of the Anglotopia Podcast — brought to you by Findmypast, one of the world's leading family history websites — Jonathan Thomas sits…
Listen to this episode →
In this second sponsored episode with Findmypast — the follow-up to our Genealogy 101 introduction — Jonathan Thomas and Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast, go…
Listen to this episode →We turn our favourite conversations into full feature articles — the same material, written up properly, for people who’d sooner read than listen.
Companion articles for this series are being written — check back soon.
Beginner guides, census news and ancestry writing from Anglotopia.net.
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Read on Anglotopia →Six places these two episodes keep sending you back to.
The cheapest and most perishable archive you will ever have. Interview them first, before the memories go.
Births, marriages and deaths registered in England and Wales from 1837 — the spine of most British research.
Taken every ten years from 1841. A household, an address, an occupation, and everyone under that roof on one night.
Baptisms, marriages and burials going back centuries before civil registration existed.
Where ancestors stop being names on a form and turn into people with court cases, obituaries and prize marrows.
Service papers, medal rolls and war diaries — often the most detailed paperwork an ordinary family ever generated.
New episodes every Friday. Tell us what you find in your own tree.
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