Where do we start with family history? With names, and birthdays - those basic clues about our family members. Yet this issue our expert researchers reveal how these core details can shed more light on the research of even supersleuth family history enthusiasts.

Discover how you can sharpen up your search skills. It’s not the records you’re looking at that make the difference, but the way that you look at them.

• Determining the origin of surnames

Why, how and when did surnames come into use? Wayne Shepheard investigates a 700-year history of family names. Make sure that you’ve gleaned every last clue about the origin of your names in centuries past

• The Birth Day Clue

Discover how your ancestors' birth dates can hold the key to the past, in this issue's Family Tree Academy search skills piece with David Annal

• Family history is history with the whole family

Dr Robin McConnell urges us to make our family history a multi-generational joy

• How to use kirk session records

Explore the lives of your Scottish forebears in glorious (& inglorious) detail with Richard Morgan

• A Heck of a Trek

Theresa Green charts how she worked on a genealogy brickwall project that spanned decades!

• Tailors, Dressmakers & seamstresses

Adèle Emm looks at their lives and working conditions in Victorian times

Plus...

Dear Paul
Can you solve the puzzle? Paul Chiddicks invites you to join him in a spot of code-breaking!

What?! My Mother was a sergeant Major
Reader Mike Thorpe traces his mother's years in the military

Spotlight on Gloucestershire FHS
Established in 1979 and still going strong. See how this family history society can help you

DNA Workshop
Karen Evans looks at a long-standing mystery that has only deepened by the addition of a DNA test to the scene

Twiglets
With squeals of delight... and wails of despair Gill Shaw continues with her Riboldi research quest

Thoughts on...
After all this time... Diane Lindsay finally finds the elusive birth date of her own mother in the 1921 Census

And news, reviews, readers’ questions & letters about the 1921 Census