The internet can reveal all kinds of unexpected facts about your family. While idly browsing the Friends Reunited website a few weeks ago, for example, I found out that my dad, a retired teacher, had once silenced a rowdy class with a terrifyingly accurate Darth Vader impression. But slightly less esoteric information about previous generations is also becoming widely available online via a network of genealogical websites. During an inquisitive half-hour I was able to discover that my grandmother’s uncle, Isaac Swaits, was born the son of a publican in Wray, Lancashire, had an older sister called Mary, and served as a private in the Army Service Corps during the First World War. With such facts floating in cyberspace and just waiting to be discovered, it’s easy to see why many people, including my own family, have been bitten by the genealogy bug.

This month’s issue of Computing Which! devotes two features to using your PC in the quest to trace your ancestors: the first on how to track down the information online, the second on how to store all that information in a coherent format. In the latter category, the software that came out top in their research was Ancestry.co.uk’s Family Tree Maker 2006, with Calico Pie’s Family Historian coming a close second and BSD Concept’s Heredis Mac the best option for Macintosh users. Essentially, they are all database programs that have been carefully tailored for storing family trees; the differences between them lie in the type of data you can store, how you can manipulate and edit it, and how it can be presented on paper or online. Genealogy has been my parents’ all-consuming hobby for the last few years, and in a rare show of interest in their pastime I nervously asked to see the fruits of their labours. I was immediately presented with several folders full of sheets of A4, painstakingly printed out from their Family Historian software. “When you’ve gone back 15 generations,” explains my dad, “and when some of your ancestors have had as many as 18 children, a standard family tree can run to 20 pages or more.” But most programs offer other ways of displaying the information. They can take the form of space-saving, horizontal family trees, narrative reports (customised summaries of each individual on the tree) or a complete family book report with and index, title page and contents. “For example, this page,” continues my dad, “lists everyone on the tree, and shows their exact relationship to you.” As conversations about family history seem to largely consist of the words “great, great, great, great – no, hang on,” this sheet gives an ideal opportunity to memorize how many “greats” each generation of grandfathers should come equipped with. Handy.

As with any database, problems start to occur when idiosyncratic data rears its head. While Computing Which! found that Heredis Mac coped admirably with a couple of marrying cousins, my dad had trouble getting Family Historian to deal with a widow who remarried and changed her name for the second time. However, entering the details of my divorce and my physical description into their database went smoothly, although I wasn’t convinced that this information was particularly important. “Ah, you might think that now,” says my mum, “but I’m sure it’ll be fascinating for future generations.” Another common problem with genealogy software seems to be documentation; the demographic is skewed towards older users who are not always as computer literate as the software companies might suppose. “Family Historian is a powerful program,” says my dad, “but it doesn’t come with a manual, you have to download it. And even then, the instructions aren’t couched in terms where the average person can just go to the keyboard and start working.” My mum agrees. “It took six months for us to work out how to put census data in,” she adds.

Recording information may have its problems, but it isn’t the tapping surnames into a database that gets people hooked on genealogy; it’s tracking people down, discovering that a great-great grandfather made a living as an “artist in wood”, or that a great aunt eloped to Gretna Green with a sailor. Gaining access to census information, or registers of births, deaths and marriages (the Civil Registration index) used to involved a visit to the Family Record Centre in Islington or the National Archive in Kew; should you enjoy a day spent sat in a civic building in London, you can still access the information in these places free of charge. But the information is gradually being indexed and put on the internet – either by organisations keen to provide a service, or more often by companies eager to make money from those caught up in the booming interest in genealogy (see boxout). But despite having to pay for information via these online sources, the searchable indexes mean that you’ll spend far fewer man-hours poring over a microfiche, searching in vain for elusive second cousins. Some information is available online free of charge, but the only comprehensive source is at familysearch.org; this site is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – or the Mormon Church – which requires its members to research their family trees in order to perform baptisms on relatives who have passed away. This has led not only to the establishment of LDS Family History Centres throughout the world, but also the de facto computer format for storing genealogical data – GEDCOM – and, latterly, their placing of British parish records online, along with British census data from 1881.

With the help of Computing Which!’s guide to digging up my roots online and the handy subscriptions my parents had taken out to some of the websites, it was a breeze to log on and start digging around for information. It also became quickly apparent that there are a rich variety of brick walls that hobbyists come up against. My dad had advised me to search for “Swaits” – my grandmother’s maiden name – because it was relatively uncommon, but what he hadn’t told me was that the rather ornate Victorian handwriting in the registers leads to many mistranscriptions online; Swaits has, variously, appeared as Swaites, Swails, and even Twaits. But patience and a little advice were rewarded with some details of my grandmother’s Uncle Isaac; the Lancashire address he lived at the age of one, and, later, details of his World War 1 campaign medals. “It’s the small details that make it interesting,” says my dad. “The ages at which people got married, their occupations – even the names of witnesses at weddings, they all give you a glimpse into your own history.”

Genes Reunited, an offshoot of Friends Reunited, has been particularly instrumental in building up historical pictures of many families and the links between them. After registering and placing your family tree online, the site automatically looks for “hot matches” between your tree and those of other members. “I recently got back in touch with your grandpa’s sister’s children through the site,” says my mum, “and now we’re writing to each other regularly.” What about? “Oh, you know, this and that.” But can you trust this information that’s provided by people who, like yourselves, are just amateur historians? “The basic philosophy going right through this,” says my dad, “is to take any information as a piece of advice. It’s likely to be reasonably accurate, but if you want to be certain, you should really go back to the original source.” OK, so what’s this rumour I read on Friends Reunited that back in the 1970s, you could do a convincing impression of Darth Vader? “Rubbish,” replies my dad. “That’s just folklore.”