Researching the family tree
Discussion
Yes, Had a go at this. There are 2 good sites that you can start off on on th net
Ancestry.co.uk (assume you are in the UK) and Findmypast.com. I use both. They each have different search engines and allow you to run searches in different ways. Neither are free.
I would start with census data. Censuses happen every 10 years but there is no publicly available data for censuses after 1911 (only available on findmypast).
Start with some one you know about in your family, who was alive before 1911 and run a search. If you know approximately their D.O.B. and where they lived it helps. You can then get at either a list of the census data or, even better, see the actual census page. This will give you their address, their trade, who children etc. Once you have this you can follow them and their family through the census data going back to about 1850. Its very cool!
You can also search birth certificates and Birth certificates and these are V useful.
I managed to dispel some interesting family rumours, but came up with a fair few more!
Good luck
Ancestry.co.uk (assume you are in the UK) and Findmypast.com. I use both. They each have different search engines and allow you to run searches in different ways. Neither are free.
I would start with census data. Censuses happen every 10 years but there is no publicly available data for censuses after 1911 (only available on findmypast).
Start with some one you know about in your family, who was alive before 1911 and run a search. If you know approximately their D.O.B. and where they lived it helps. You can then get at either a list of the census data or, even better, see the actual census page. This will give you their address, their trade, who children etc. Once you have this you can follow them and their family through the census data going back to about 1850. Its very cool!
You can also search birth certificates and Birth certificates and these are V useful.
I managed to dispel some interesting family rumours, but came up with a fair few more!
Good luck
Few free websites worth taking a look at:
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ - Births Marriages & Deaths
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp - Got the 1881 census for nowt, and also some other stuff
http://www.gencircles.com/ and http://genforum.genealogy.com/ - worth searching in case someone else is already researching your family. There are plenty of other forums like http://www.rootschat.com/
And like the man says, http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ - they usually do a "free 14 day trial" offer
There's a whole shed load of other stuff on the net as well, sometimes even just Google is your friend.
Have fun!
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ - Births Marriages & Deaths
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp - Got the 1881 census for nowt, and also some other stuff
http://www.gencircles.com/ and http://genforum.genealogy.com/ - worth searching in case someone else is already researching your family. There are plenty of other forums like http://www.rootschat.com/
And like the man says, http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ - they usually do a "free 14 day trial" offer
There's a whole shed load of other stuff on the net as well, sometimes even just Google is your friend.
Have fun!
I would start by talking to as many old people in the family as you can.
Ask them who was married to who, do they have photos etc etc. You'd be amazed what things you learn just by letting them talk. Getting into the records after that makes more sense, but some of the geographic information can help, e.g great grandad came from Notingham, where the rest of the family are from Slough etc etc.
Too many people start family trees when they retire, by then, so many menmories have been sadly lost.
Finding out about some of my family allowed my Dad to put names to some Victorian photos that he had inherited, and I didn't know existed. Seeing that was one of the best things I have ever done.
Tracing the ancestors is often about logic and patience. I went straight back through my Dads line, and got one strand back to about 1600, plan to fill in the gaps and other arms as time allows.
Best of luck.
Ask them who was married to who, do they have photos etc etc. You'd be amazed what things you learn just by letting them talk. Getting into the records after that makes more sense, but some of the geographic information can help, e.g great grandad came from Notingham, where the rest of the family are from Slough etc etc.
Too many people start family trees when they retire, by then, so many menmories have been sadly lost.
Finding out about some of my family allowed my Dad to put names to some Victorian photos that he had inherited, and I didn't know existed. Seeing that was one of the best things I have ever done.
Tracing the ancestors is often about logic and patience. I went straight back through my Dads line, and got one strand back to about 1600, plan to fill in the gaps and other arms as time allows.
Best of luck.
Thread resurrection time.
Thanks to a tip from PH (this link http://www.searchelectoralroll.co.uk/Electoral_Rol... )
Mrs Caziques has finally found some relatives, in this case an aunt (strictly a half aunt) and more cousins (and a step aunt).
Soon after her father was born in 1933, he was put into a boys home (but his parents had been married for five years at this point)- when he got his birth certificate at 16 in 1949 he went round to the address shown.
His grandmother was still living there, she sent him to another address where his mother was living with three children. She denied being his mother (she was) - and he never met any of them again (he died in 1992).
Last weekend we found two of the three children he met that day, a half sister and a step sister - both living just outside Brighton. They remember the visit all those years ago.
She has her ticket booked back to the UK (from NZ), and should be visiting them in Brighton on Sunday morning.
The other information we found over the last couple of weeks is astonishing - including a character who had two children to two different women (one being Mrs Caziques great aunt) in the same year (1929) - he divorced one to marry the other - had another child, the new wife died....and he remarried the first wife.
Meanwhile, Mrs Caziques' grandmother has told lies on birth and marriage certificates (for example giving a false name for her father on a second marriage certificate).
Now, of course, after visiting Brighton, she will have to go and see her mother in Scotland, to explain a sixty year old family mystery.
Thanks to a tip from PH (this link http://www.searchelectoralroll.co.uk/Electoral_Rol... )
Mrs Caziques has finally found some relatives, in this case an aunt (strictly a half aunt) and more cousins (and a step aunt).
Soon after her father was born in 1933, he was put into a boys home (but his parents had been married for five years at this point)- when he got his birth certificate at 16 in 1949 he went round to the address shown.
His grandmother was still living there, she sent him to another address where his mother was living with three children. She denied being his mother (she was) - and he never met any of them again (he died in 1992).
Last weekend we found two of the three children he met that day, a half sister and a step sister - both living just outside Brighton. They remember the visit all those years ago.
She has her ticket booked back to the UK (from NZ), and should be visiting them in Brighton on Sunday morning.
The other information we found over the last couple of weeks is astonishing - including a character who had two children to two different women (one being Mrs Caziques great aunt) in the same year (1929) - he divorced one to marry the other - had another child, the new wife died....and he remarried the first wife.
Meanwhile, Mrs Caziques' grandmother has told lies on birth and marriage certificates (for example giving a false name for her father on a second marriage certificate).
Now, of course, after visiting Brighton, she will have to go and see her mother in Scotland, to explain a sixty year old family mystery.
Well done! It is a fascinating hobby. I have visited relatives that I found from both mine and my wife's families now in several countries now. Collected about 500 documents and thousands of photos. I wish that I had started as a young man but I do have several taped interviews with now deceased family members.
Been helping my Mum with this for nearly a decade now... we're back as far as records go (around 1250 or so) and are now filling in some of the wider parts of the tree... in fact we're off to Devon and Cornwall record offices next weekend to see if some information we received at the "Who do you think you are" show in Birmingham a few weeks ago pans out.
It's a fascinating hobby, just don't necessarily expect it to be easy.... some of the lengths that we have gone to are fairly extreme.
Interesting that my 25x Great Grandfather was Henry 8th though!!
It's a fascinating hobby, just don't necessarily expect it to be easy.... some of the lengths that we have gone to are fairly extreme.
Interesting that my 25x Great Grandfather was Henry 8th though!!
Been doing this with my mum for the past year, generally using only Ancestry, so most branches of the tree only going as far back at the late 1700's (based on information from the 1841 census). No real scandals, except a couple of women taking ~5 years off their age when it came to filling in their marriage certificates 
A few unusual names in our ancestors - "Mustchin", "Haybittle" and "Haffenden", which often get misspelled on different documents, so that makes it interesting. With the latter we discovered we are related to a chap who has done extensive research on that family going back to the 1200's, complete with Coat of Arms etc, so somewhere in the past i came from good stock. Dunno when it all went wrong!
Two weeks ago i took my mum on her birthday to a pub in Godstone, Surrey (the Fox & Hounds) where we discovered via a will my great great great Grandfather lived and was the landlord until his death in 1880. I have a very sparse (living) family, and although it sounds cheesy, there was something special about thinking an ancestor had walked the same floor.
A few unusual names in our ancestors - "Mustchin", "Haybittle" and "Haffenden", which often get misspelled on different documents, so that makes it interesting. With the latter we discovered we are related to a chap who has done extensive research on that family going back to the 1200's, complete with Coat of Arms etc, so somewhere in the past i came from good stock. Dunno when it all went wrong!
Two weeks ago i took my mum on her birthday to a pub in Godstone, Surrey (the Fox & Hounds) where we discovered via a will my great great great Grandfather lived and was the landlord until his death in 1880. I have a very sparse (living) family, and although it sounds cheesy, there was something special about thinking an ancestor had walked the same floor.
daddy cool said:
Two weeks ago i took my mum on her birthday to a pub in Godstone, Surrey (the Fox & Hounds) where we discovered via a will my great great great Grandfather lived and was the landlord until his death in 1880. I have a very sparse (living) family, and although it sounds cheesy, there was something special about thinking an ancestor had walked the same floor.
Did this last summer as well, around the same timescale also... was rather odd to think that all the people who I'd been researching had trodden the same path to the same door as I took.As noted above also, names and spellings can be very fluid the further back you go, we try to verify everything before confirming its place in the tree, it means that we have a few "likelies" that we'll never be able to confirm but better that than an inaccurate tree.
We're helped by the fact the surname is pretty rare and with a couple of exceptions we stayed in the same 2 parts of the UK.
Have been doing mine, seems I have caused an bit of an argument in the family, I have traced some records showing my paternal great grandmother in one direction but the family are insistent i am wrong. Don't have time to type it out but I have considered writing to one of those "Who do you think you are?" type programs to see if we can get a way of finding out who is correct!
My family have looked into it on both sides and I've done some more digging. We can trace one line back to the 800's! Only because I'm very very very distantly related to royalty though and that tends to be reasonably well documented. As in one of the daughters of an Earl married a commoner some 500 years ago related. I'm probably only 1 or 2 millionth in line for the throne.
For most though going back before ~1800 is tricky. We can trace the surname for both my parents back to 1785/1791 but hit a wall there. I know all of my great-great-great-great-grandparents bar two but then just less than half of the great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
Still fascinating but very tricky, the number of families who re-used the same names through multiple generations is staggering and makes life very tricky without birth/death dates.
What is nice though is the number of people who have put up their own Genealogy online. If you're lucky you can tie in to someone elses tree.
For most though going back before ~1800 is tricky. We can trace the surname for both my parents back to 1785/1791 but hit a wall there. I know all of my great-great-great-great-grandparents bar two but then just less than half of the great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
Still fascinating but very tricky, the number of families who re-used the same names through multiple generations is staggering and makes life very tricky without birth/death dates.
What is nice though is the number of people who have put up their own Genealogy online. If you're lucky you can tie in to someone elses tree.
I got back to 1550 to a village called Birlingham in Worcestershire.
Victorian research was the easiest because of the 10 year census, although I found some horror stories with 10 in a house and a great grandfather who signed his sons birth certicate with an X.
I found FindmyPast to be useful
Victorian research was the easiest because of the 10 year census, although I found some horror stories with 10 in a house and a great grandfather who signed his sons birth certicate with an X.
I found FindmyPast to be useful
Edited by Robbo 27 on Friday 20th May 12:06
Edited by Robbo 27 on Friday 20th May 12:16
phil1979 said:
As an aside, what's the furthest back anyone has ever traced their tree? Anyone made it to the Ugg the Caveman yet??
We've managed to get our family tree with this much detail (two root nodes are my children):
The furthest back we have is this:
http://www.normanf.plus.com/CRESWICK/Owlerton_hall... (site created by a very very very distant relative who ironically enough based most of his research on that done by my wife's grandfather)
Which corresponds to my children's (great x 14) grandfather
Edited by alock on Friday 20th May 12:49
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