Family tree

[jmorgan]

Not forgetting the Mormons have been collecting quite a lot of information (Family search). Some libraries have digitised records.

And a snipet from someone who is doing this in my family, wills are sometimes a good source if they are captured. That can throw up unexpected links or confirm some.

[paul.deitch]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I think that one of the things you have to accept once you start researching is that you are going to contact/meet lots of relatives with very different circumstances. I have tried to enjoy all of them although most of them I would not want to live with! Mine range through; despicable, fraudulent criminal, cute, loving, crazy, to mega rich!

[Riley Blue]

Together with a cousin, I've been delving into our family's past and have discovered some fascinating information though not all of it pleasant reading - that's something you need to be aware of, not all family history is 'good'.

A question for those who are more experienced; what's a good software package to use to keep your family tree on your own computer rather than on-line? I subscribe to 'Find my Past' and so on but would also like to have something on my laptop or PC.

[Robbo 27]

Riley Blue said:

Together with a cousin, I've been delving into our family's past and have discovered some fascinating information though not all of it pleasant reading - that's something you need to be aware of, not all family history is 'good'.

A question for those who are more experienced; what's a good software package to use to keep your family tree on your own computer rather than on-line? I subscribe to 'Find my Past' and so on but would also like to have something on my laptop or PC.

I have used a site called Rootsmagic but ended up using my own xl sheet which allowed my to bring in certificates and pics.

[daddy cool]

Been meaning to renew my Ancestry membership, but was put off as the price seemed to have gone up (now £99.99 for 6 months for the worldwide access)

Did a bit of digging, and if you follow this link, its £89.99 for 12 months
http://ancestry.co.uk/cs/offers/subscribe?dna=cros...

It says its only for new subscribers, but it didnt stop me renewing (even though i was logged in under my existing - but expired - account).

Also went through Quidco, which claims to give 25% cashback, but if i get that it'll just be a bonus.

[Riley Blue]

Robbo 27 said:

Riley Blue said:

Together with a cousin, I've been delving into our family's past and have discovered some fascinating information though not all of it pleasant reading - that's something you need to be aware of, not all family history is 'good'.

A question for those who are more experienced; what's a good software package to use to keep your family tree on your own computer rather than on-line? I subscribe to 'Find my Past' and so on but would also like to have something on my laptop or PC.

I have used a site called Rootsmagic but ended up using my own xl sheet which allowed my to bring in certificates and pics.

I'm still checking them all out, all seem to have pluses and minuses. There's a a Family History Show at York in June so I'll see what's on offer there.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

GloverMart said:

Mum tried putting me up too but thankfully, my Gran said she'd help looking after me, and she did.

Why thankfully?

You could have been adopted by someone who then went to live in Germany. You could have been a Bayern Munich/Germany fan instead of Yeovil/England. Just think of how much happier you life would have been.

[Suzaru]

I use Webtrees for my family tree.

It's open source (= free) and works well but you need to host it on a web server either locally (e.g. using XAMPP) or in the cloud. The latter allows others to view and contribute with you as moderator.

[GloverMart]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

GloverMart said:

Mum tried putting me up too but thankfully, my Gran said she'd help looking after me, and she did.

Why thankfully?

You could have been adopted by someone who then went to live in Germany. You could have been a Bayern Munich/Germany fan instead of Yeovil/England. Just think of how much happier you life would have been.

That's a good point, hadn't thought of that...

Alhough it is often derided, Facebook came in handy this weekend to slightly dramatic effect. I'd posted a few thoughts of mine on a group set up to celebrate a local beauty spot near where I grew up. I spent half my childhood there and shared a few musings when some random woman said "I lived next door to a Mrs ********** (my surname) - any relation?".

Turns out she remembers my long departed Mum, my even longer departed Gran and confirmed that I do indeed have an older sibling that was adopted. Reckons my Mum had my older brother/sister well before she was 20, so I'm guessing they are around 55 years old now.

Edited by GloverMart on Monday 16th April 22:22

[caziques]

It took Mrs Caziques 25 years to figure out why her father was put into a boys home at six months old.

He only met any other family members once, in 1949. He died in 1992.

A couple of years ago we finally found the Alan, Edna and Susan he met all those years ago.

Alan, a full brother, emigrated to Australia and died about 12 years ago.

Edna, stepsister, and Susan, half sister, live close to each other on the south coast.

Just last week, whilst I was back in the UK, I went to visit a half uncle of her's, unfortunately he died a couple of years ago - however there are photos of her true grandfather.

The grandfather named on her father's original birth certificate is wrong, (the person named was the person grandmother was married to, he was not the father!).

Meanwhile grandmother went on to lie on another birth certificate (Alan), which caused big problems when he went to get a passport, and not forgetting a bigamous marriage (for both parties) by grandmother.

She has started to write a book about it as there are many more fascinating snippets (such as a relative who ran off with another woman and married her, then when she died he remarried his first wife).

Family trees are a fascinating subject.

[GloverMart]

GloverMart said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

GloverMart said:

Mum tried putting me up too but thankfully, my Gran said she'd help looking after me, and she did.

Why thankfully?

You could have been adopted by someone who then went to live in Germany. You could have been a Bayern Munich/Germany fan instead of Yeovil/England. Just think of how much happier you life would have been.

That's a good point, hadn't thought of that...

Alhough it is often derided, Facebook came in handy this weekend to slightly dramatic effect. I'd posted a few thoughts of mine on a group set up to celebrate a local beauty spot near where I grew up. I spent half my childhood there and shared a few musings when some random woman said "I lived next door to a Mrs ********** (my surname) - any relation?".

Turns out she remembers my long departed Mum, my even longer departed Gran and confirmed that I do indeed have an older sibling that was adopted. Reckons my Mum had my older brother/sister well before she was 20, so I'm guessing they are around 55 years old now.

Bad form quoting myself, but hey ho.

Joined Ancestry on a free trial tonight and also had a hunt round some other sites too. Found one where if you type my surname in for the 1960's in the area I came from, only two records come up and one of them is me. Purely circumstantial of course, but the other could be my brother. Googling that name comes up with very little indeed, suggesting he could possibly be adopted. So have spent £9.25 on getting a copy of his birth certificate... if my mother's name is on there, we have our man.

[GloverMart]

GloverMart said:

GloverMart said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

GloverMart said:

Mum tried putting me up too but thankfully, my Gran said she'd help looking after me, and she did.

Why thankfully?

You could have been adopted by someone who then went to live in Germany. You could have been a Bayern Munich/Germany fan instead of Yeovil/England. Just think of how much happier you life would have been.

That's a good point, hadn't thought of that...

Alhough it is often derided, Facebook came in handy this weekend to slightly dramatic effect. I'd posted a few thoughts of mine on a group set up to celebrate a local beauty spot near where I grew up. I spent half my childhood there and shared a few musings when some random woman said "I lived next door to a Mrs ********** (my surname) - any relation?".

Turns out she remembers my long departed Mum, my even longer departed Gran and confirmed that I do indeed have an older sibling that was adopted. Reckons my Mum had my older brother/sister well before she was 20, so I'm guessing they are around 55 years old now.

Bad form quoting myself, but hey ho.

Joined Ancestry on a free trial tonight and also had a hunt round some other sites too. Found one where if you type my surname in for the 1960's in the area I came from, only two records come up and one of them is me. Purely circumstantial of course, but the other could be my brother. Googling that name comes up with very little indeed, suggesting he could possibly be adopted. So have spent £9.25 on getting a copy of his birth certificate... if my mother's name is on there, we have our man.

Received the birth certificate this morning in the post, and it does indeed have my Mum's name on as mother. Frustratingly, as with my birth certificate, father's name is left blank. So it appears I have a half brother.

Have now contacted the local council in Somerset who will get their intermediary service to contact me shortly. That's just in case he might not want to know me..... can't think why he wouldn't!!

Edited by GloverMart on Wednesday 25th April 15:05

[GloverMart]

Just to add a little bit more info.

I've gone back to the random lady (Ivy) that gave me the info about the baby. She thought my Mum was "way younger than 20" when she had my half brother & now I've found his birth, she would have been 20 when she had him. I checked with Ivy and she confirmed that she (Ivy) left my village in 1965 and Mum had had the baby around the age of seventeen, which would have been 1961. Given that my half brother was born in '65, this means I now have two siblings.

I have no name for this one yet but will keep digging.

[silverfoxcc]

I am doing mine and find it very interesting
However if you use Genes Reunited be careful of the following in forums

1) there is a facilty where you can let someone else view your family tree DONT any any circumstances. There some people on there that just trawl away sucking up information form anywhere. Eventually there have a tree with 25K names on it. And i would guess that 24900 have no blood relation with them at all

You will end up being the husband of a woman whose sister married someone whose brother married someone ad naseum


2) there are help forums be careful of those offering help give them just enough info for them to deal with. Example

My male line stops dead in 1792 with my ggg grandfather

I have a feeling ( and it is only that ) that another J Fox may be his son through a previous marriage.
As records are sparce around 1800 it is only presumption,but enough coincidences to put it 80/20 possible

So bearing in mind that as i have got back that far on my own there are plenty of leaves on the tree so to speak. I just wanted to know if

J Fox b1792 was J Fox b1817 father. nothing more nothing less

So i put this info up .unfortunately along with gg and g grandads details as well, hoping that would help

I got a lot of replies, Every one telling me that they had found this and that

and whose offspring were gg granddad etc, but it seems no one actually read the question and just started working forwards instead of backwards!

I am the type of person who acknowledges every post, just to say thanks,It helps as the other person has put some time in on my behalf.
So this was my normal reply with the rider, that i had already got all that, and it seems that you got stuck in the same place and time as me

The amount of abuse i got back accusing me of wasting their time if i already knew that was unbelievable even ignoring my remark about getting stuck at th same point ,polite, but telling them 'You have given me nothing i already knew'!!

Nowadays i tend not to make enquiries and if anyone asks to see the tree i tell them No, but will give answer any questions you may have.

Apart from that you do find out things you never expected Granddad being banged up in Strangeways for 6mths in WW! for stealing a case of officers wine, the letter he sent to the London Carriage Office ( he was a London Cabbie) was a masterpiece! He never got his badge revoked.
And the strangest thing is that he was in the RN at beginning of WW1 and VOLUNTARILY transferred to the front line in France. Now apart from Jutland i would have thought sitting on board a ship for 4 years was infinitely better than living in that Hell. Still he survived Luckily My Dad was born while he was on leave so if he had caught one i would still be here!

Enjoy it ,it is fun and double check everything, i thought i had contacted a blood relation once but it was another J Fox, with nearly all the same credentials

[paul.deitch]

silverfoxcc said:

I am doing mine and find it very interesting
However if you use Genes Reunited be careful of the following in forums

1) there is a facilty where you can let someone else view your family tree DONT any any circumstances. There some people on there that just trawl away sucking up information form anywhere. Eventually there have a tree with 25K names on it. And i would guess that 24900 have no blood relation with them at all

You will end up being the husband of a woman whose sister married someone whose brother married someone ad naseum

Yes I had this situation but after emailing for more info and to correct tree errors I came to the conclusion that the "researcher" was probably mentally disabled. At first I was irritated by the monthly deluge of 50 or 60 "new relatives" but then decided if he's happy with his hobby then the world is a better place. The last time I looked he had found 37,000 relatives!

[so called]

Shakermaker said:

Someone on my mum's side of the family has done a lot of this, tracing their mum's side of the family back up.

You find some interesting people along the way. Go back a few generations in my family and we have a relationship to Abraham Lincoln. And go across a few on today and we are related to Tom Hanks.

Similarly for us, a cousin on my mums side has been tracing for years.
Didn't have to go back far before a certain John Reginald Christie appeared.
And then a little further and someone married into the Sutcliffe's of Halifax.......
Abraham Lincoln, you luck so and so.

[Halmyre]

so called said:

Shakermaker said:

Someone on my mum's side of the family has done a lot of this, tracing their mum's side of the family back up.

You find some interesting people along the way. Go back a few generations in my family and we have a relationship to Abraham Lincoln. And go across a few on today and we are related to Tom Hanks.

Similarly for us, a cousin on my mums side has been tracing for years.
Didn't have to go back far before a certain John Reginald Christie appeared.
And then a little further and someone married into the Sutcliffe's of Halifax.......
Abraham Lincoln, you luck so and so.

I've gone back several generations and found that I'm probably a distant cousin of Sir Alexander Fleming, and there's a distant aunt who lost her life on the Lusitania, but apart from that, bugger all. No criminals, no scandals. All born and died in south-west Scotland apart from one distant great-something grandmother who was part of the Scottish diaspora and died in obscurity in the US mid-west somewhere. My wife's tree is even more bereft of fame, save for a distant uncle killed at Loos in 1915 and a couple of illegitimate ancestors which brings those lines to a crashing halt when trying to follow them back.

[GloverMart]

Just an update to my story (mentioned above). Have a meeting this afternoon with an adoption intermediary regarding setting the wheels in motion to try to find my brother. The whole process might take a while and has no guarantee that he'll want to meet but at least I'll have tried.

[Abbott]

Daughter has just traced a line back to Pope Callistus II 1065

If you have any family member the are linked to Scottish Clans their records are pretty good and go back a long way

Edited by Abbott on Thursday 21st January 12:42

[GloverMart]

GloverMart said:

Received the birth certificate this morning in the post, and it does indeed have my Mum's name on as mother. Frustratingly, as with my birth certificate, father's name is left blank. So it appears I have a half brother.

Have now contacted the local council in Somerset who will get their intermediary service to contact me shortly. That's just in case he might not want to know me..... can't think why he wouldn't!!

Edited by GloverMart on Wednesday 25th April 15:05

So, now we have an end to the story (and this has reappeared in my "My Stuff" this evening), may as well update the thread.

Armed with a birth certificate with my brother's birth name on, I ended up meeting with an adoption charity in their local office in Bristol. Lovely case worker, explained all the ins and outs of the procedure and so I handed over my £130 to them to begin the search for him. Didn't hear back for a while so ended up chasing them a few months later; out of the blue, a letter arrived saying they were going into administration in three days time!!

Bit of a shocker and despaired a little before, a few months further on, my case worker emailed me out of the blue saying she had been taken on by a new agency & although she had no responsibilty to do so, she'd like to take my case on which was brilliant. Warned me that at some point, I'd have to pay a searcher to look for him once it had been established there was no block on his file.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I paid £200 to the searcher and off we went again. My case worker contracted COVID in March and didn't work for three months. She got back in touch last July to say she was just waiting to get a certificate back and that she would write when she received it.

I got her letter about a fortnight later. The certificate she was waiting for was my brother's death certificate. The previous two years of searching and digging had been to no avail as my brother died six months before I started looking for him; he had COPD and cancer and passed aged 52, the same age I am now.

The case worker then wrote to my brother's adoptive Dad to see if he would be happy for me to contact him to ask questions. Turns out he was delighted to and since then, we have spoken on the phone and exchanged Christmas cards. Once COVID is more under control, we will meet up and say hello. He actually adopted three children when he was younger, one of them lives about five miles from me now. No relation at all of course, but would be nice to find out more about him.

So a bittersweet ending really. My case worker is still struggling with long COVID and has now given up work completely. I owe her a lot & one day, hopefully we can meet up again.