I drew up trees on paper for my own family - in the 1970s for dad's tree and just after my gran died in 1985, for my mum's tree. I didn't really have any idea of progressing these trees at all or even that you could, so I just included what my immediate family knew.
In about 1989/90 OH and I took a holiday driving around the UK camping each night. One place we went to was Dundee. OH told me this was possibly where there was a connection for his grandfather, John Hamilton (yes, him!), as John's father was supposed to have been the harbourmaster at Dundee. So, we went to the reference library at Dundee and looked at trade directories which didn't help us at all!
In about 1990/1 we went to our local reference library where we found the microfiche for the 1881 census for Dorset and Hampshire. OH set about looking for part of his family with the 'help' of a rudimentary surname index. I spent my time putting the fiche into order! We also took one one and only visit to the Family Records Centre at Myddelton Street, London and I discovered I didn't know much about UK geography!
In 1995 we purchased CDs for the 1881 census and joined a couple of FH societies (New Forest and Huntingdonshire). We wrote letters to the FH societies and got amazing responses including lists of transcripts from PRs etc
In 1996 we first connected to the internet which led to discovering Family Search and Ancestry and then 1837online and FreeBMD in the following years. The internet wasn't something I wanted to know about at first, but OH sent some emails to Record Offices and tried looking things up on those sites. I soon learned I was better at online searches than him and so I was 'forced' online!
We started buying certificates in earnest in 1997. Also around this date we started adding our family members to a computer program, Brother's Keeper (which we still use!).
Our journey would probably have been quicker if we had bought a book about the subject, but I'm very happy about our slow progress really, and wouldn't want to be 'learning' now as it all seems like 'too much too soon'!
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I warned him it wasn’t an easy task that would be completed quickly.
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LOL Marg! A big understatement there!!