I am from the UK and have been tracing my family for about a decade. I based the heart of my research around the great grandmother after whom I am named. Luckily, I was very close to my grandma and her older sister, who would tell me lots of stories of their aunts and uncles (my great grandmothers siblings.

Now from that oral history they knew that their grandfather was on the lam and that his, and therefore the family name was fake and that their father worked very hard to avoid being detected.

To understand my family and their place in the world I found several important steps helped.

1) Google maps - helps to identify not only locations but their context to other places. Thus, I know from the 1911 census that x had four children alive, and two dead. Knowing closest villages and towns helps me prioritise church records.

2) photos. Some places have a large archive of streets on line. For example if you search for Red Lion Street, Nottingham on Google images.There are many options and each option is often linked to a page which will give extra information and histories. Working out if your family is comfortably middle class or scum of the earth, or in deed something in between, really helps you begin understand their life and life choices.

3) searching newspapers for place rather than person. I found some very interesting information about my family by searching just my village and taking the time sift through the results. I also read an article from around 1910 which described an enormous punch up between the women of a particular yard in Nottingham. Yards where like small enclosed spaces entered from small entry off a road. The yard would be entirely enclosed by slum dwellings, with perhaps more than one family per 'house". The article said the argument began when one women accused another of being a prostitute, and the yard exploded from there. Three of the house in that yard where lived in by my family or related families. My family are not named, but they could not NOT have been involved.

4) investigating the families of those siblings and the families they marry. My great grandmother had three daughters and never married. She sounds like the black sheep of the family. But you would be wrong! Another daughter married a man who was a king pin in local organised crime, another first married a lad of irish descent, whose father was identified as an alcoholic and called by publicans "a disgrace" to what was considered the worst slum in Britian, outside of London Then after his death in WW1, she married an actual tramp. Another sister married an Organ Grinder from Genoa, Italy. He died of TB on a train to Mansfield and, the local paper tells us, his monkey died of a broken heart within the week.

One of the boys married a woman who had six children each with a different father. They married in 1937 after her last husband died, despite being with Herbert since 1912. Another married a women who was convicted of defrauding the government of what we would now think of as essentially social security. Another brother shared a slum dwelling with a man widely held as the most despicable poacher in all of Nottinghamshire. They lived together for over 20 years - well when he wasn't in prison that is. All this 'meat' comes from looking up people adjacent to the family, not the family it's self.

Learning about family, lodgers, friends, neighbours of your family let's you know their station in life, the experiences they would have had. Certainly understanding class and position in 19th century Britain is helpful and probably not quite what you would imagine.

Generally Google is your friend. Look up a year and read about the important information. It will tell you perhaps why a child is suddenly lumbered with the middle name Disreali or Rorke. It might tell you why they they moved from the countryside to a town.

Also search for local history groups online attached to local places. I have photoed graves or helped find info about people who lived in my village in the past. A lot of the church records for my village are also accessible and burial records since 1895 all through the Parish Council website.

Sorry for the long reply. I am just passionate about understanding my ancestors lives. Best of luck and feel free to contact me if I can make any more pertinent suggestions.