In a recent FamilySearch blog. Sunny Morton shares three kinds of English historical documents to use to start building your English family tree. The first records mentioned are Censuses, which can show an entire family as far back as the 1840s. She shares how these records may help you reconstruct entire family groups.

“Once you have found relatives in English census records, you will generally have enough information to search for records documenting their births, marriages, and deaths.” Civil registration records are typically available after July 1, 1837. Learn how to search free online indexes and then purchase them, if desired, for a small fee from her blog.

The next place to look for historical records would be English parish records. These records began as early as 1538, but many of the earlier records are incomplete or nonexistent. Sunny states, “Hundreds of millions of church registers are available to search on genealogy websites, including for free on FamilySearch.org and FreeREG. Multiple websites may need to be searched to find your ancestor’s specific parish and records.

As you learn more about your ancestors through these three types of documents, you may also find information about them in additional records, such as: electoral registers, obituaries, cemetery registers, or digitized newspapers. –Debbie Brady (source:
https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/english-historical-documents/ )