Genealogy

[Enfys]

As suggested by Daisy, I am starting this thread for anyone interested in researching their family tree. Maybe some of you have already begun, or have been thinking about it so I will try and put a few tips here which may help.

If you are starting out the first thing is to get together all you know about your family. Any names, dates, places and any interesting information regarding occupation etc will be most helpful. For instance, when I started I had my grandparents marriage certificate and that gave me their father’s names and occupation and where they lived. Maybe you have stories in the family which intrigue you and you want to find out more, every snippet is useful.

There are websites you can use, some are free and some you pay for or you can have a look at the Family History Society for the area you are interested in.

The main free source of information which I used extensively is the Church of Latter day Saints web site, called Family Search. You just create an account, then you can search all their records without any obligation or contact from them. A good place to start.

Another site I use a lot is Free BMD (births marriages and deaths). This enables you to search a name and hopefully come up with a birth, marriage or death and you can then order the relative certificate. You can now order certificates online and your get a PDF rather than wait for a paper copy, it works out a bit cheaper. Can’t remember exactly how much much but around £6 instead of £9. FreeCen is a free census look up but I don’t think they have every census.

Then we have the pain for sites, Ancestry and Find My Past. They have all censuses, BMDs, immigration records, and lots lots more. Every now and again they do a free weekend, always worth looking out for. Some libraries have access to both these resources so worth checking that out.

There are many other sites and sources of information in the internet but these two places are good to start off with. So if you fancy beginning this journey go for it, I have found out some fascinating facts about my family members, been in contact with some interesting people connected to my family.

I’ll always be willing to help so why not give it a go, another way to while away a few hours during our isolation.

[Oma]

I have gone back a long way . My fathers Mother's family all lived in the same area for a couple hundred years so really easy to find lots about them My Grandfather's family more difficult they covered Scotland mostly but traveled the country .
My Mother's side again all stayed in the north east.

I have two very interesting wills one is from 1485 the other 16 hundreds .
The 1485 one is funny . He left his DiL two spoons of the finest quality and a cow to the poor of the village so they could have milk everyday 😁

After Daisy spoke about it today I got my file out and sorted it . A job I have been meaning to do for some time but never gotten around too .

Your right Enfys it can become addictive .
In my search I found out that on my fraternal grandmother' s side her mother was one of 8 and none of the girls were taller than 4ft 3in . No the wonder I and my DD are so tiny . I have a photograph of my Great grandmother and she is tiny and looks like Queen Victoria in her old age . I also found out on her Death certificate she had Hemophilia something that was never ever mentioned in the family

Also found some interesting names like Marmaduke and Garson

[WeeGranny]

Oma, you and might be distantly related because your maiden name is the same as my maternal grandmother's family! That'd be a small world wouldn't it!

[Daisy]

Enfys - that is all brilliant, useful information - many thanks.

One thing that surprised me was that my father's parents moved quite a lot - mainly from one side of the city to the other, but several times. As a child/teenager (not sure which) my granny lived in Rhyl in North Wales. I don't know why or who with, but I know the name of the street, but can't find her on the census records, there's even some confusion about her name! It's intriguing isn't it, and that's only two generations away!

Oma - how fantastic to have a will from 1485! As you say, fascinating facts, like the tiny girls, and the health details.

I've found one unusual name - a great-aunt called Sabra.

[Plantaholic]

Very interesting ladies, I have never felt inclined to do the research into my family. Do you subscribe to an ancestry site?

[Enfys]

I do Plant, jointly with a friend, keeps the cost down.

Daisy, the thing about names can be confusing. I’ve found lots of people using different names to their birth names. My grandma was always known as Dolly, so I always thought her name was Dorothy....but no, she was Alice Annie! It makes it difficult to trace them sometimes. Also, on the census records they can be difficult to read or mistranscribed.

When the 1911 census was being transcribed they used foreign students to do lots of the transcribing. Unfortunately, much of it had to be redone....there were an awful lot of people with the name “Ditto” 😀

[Oma]

I found the same . A uncle called Archie his real name was Royston but had always been known as Archie . Wasn't even his middle name
WG some of the Pollock's came from Kirkcudbright as well as Glasgow and Edinburgh so you never know

[Nanto2girls]

This all sounds very interesting ladies.

[Daisy]

Enfys - names certainly are confusing! I found one name which didn't fit and then realised the name would have been given to the enumerator verbally and if I said it with an accent I could see how the mistake had happened! I was also shocked to find that my maternal grandfather died when he was just 29.

I wonder why your Grandma Alice Annie was called Dolly - and Oma's Uncle Royston was called Archie! I had an Uncle John who was always called Jack, but I think that was fairly common.

Wouldn't it be funny if Oma and WeeGranny were long lost cousins.

[Enfys]

Daisy, grandma had two sisters...Harriet always known As Daud and Minnie known as Charlie! Heaven knows why? Gr.grandfathers given names were James George William, I never did find him under James as he always used William, Bill to the family. It doesn’t make research easy.

[Oma]

Some names are misspelled too, Even my own Fathers middle name is misspelled on my wedding certificate.

Sometimes you have to play detective but it makes it all the more interesting .

As I said before my Fathers Mother's family all came from one area , Driffield North Yorkshire so I could go back at least 4 generations or more . Absolutely mountains of info on them .

Some you find difficult , also you have to be careful and treble check you have the right branch of a family. So easy to find several couples with the same names married around the same time.
Children are another oddity ,you can often find children dying and the next child born is given the same name as the dead child making dates confusing .
My great grandmother had twins that died in infancy had another set of twins and gave them the same names .

[Daisy]

Oma, I've found it's almost impossible to tell if you've got the right branch of a family. I don't know much about the ins and outs and ways of checking, but several times I've gone with whatever seems the most likely. My biggest mistake was assuming my uncle who died in WWI was in the Staffordshire Regiment (where he lived), and found the right name, the right age (I didn't know exactly) and where he was buried. Only to find out later that they often shifted soldiers from one regiment to another and he'd been transferred to the Yorkshire Regiment, and had no grave.

I'd love to have photos for my family tree, but the earliest is around the time my parents got married in 1936. No pictures at all of my mother's family.

[Oma]

Daisy I'm lucky I have several of my Great grandparents and uncles & Aunts on my Fathers side . None on my Mother's side for some reason .

[Daisy]

I suppose some families just didn't have a camera or value the photos they did have. The didn't realise how much we'd treasure them two or three generations on.

[Gemini]

I have never pursued this, but two of my friends have done some for me on their accounts.
They printed stuff off, so I should re read some of it.