General Chat

Janet I was hooked after I looked at my first ever census...lol

Sue ...I move sideways as well...from the day I decided I was going to trace my dads family I planned ( I have to have a written plan for everything..like budget and so on ) that I would only buy and search on what I call your main line grandparents and their parents and so on...but I am so nosey I need to fine out why she died so young and why isnt he in the next census and so on but the then the more I do it the more I can piece things together the bigger the picture gets...boy what a buzz...lol in my tree and in 2 different gens I have a young females die young the widower marry her sister...

Amazing what skeletons we find when researching.

I discovered my Dad had been married twice before he married my Mum. She knew abt his second marriage but not the first. Anyway, from the first marriage, I discovered my 2 half-brothers (adopted by their mum's new husband/name changed) and the second marriage, a half-sister.

Now, I am fairly good at tracking down "living" people and have some handy tools to hand etc etc. I found my half-brothers after 4 months and am in contact and it's great.

As for my half-sister, no luck with finding her in the UK and I believe she is in Canada. So....am still tracing the dead, but the living too...

I find people ask how far back I've got more than how many there are in the tree - as Ann says, maybe they're not sure what to ask.

But I always try to pull out the interesting stories, like "I'm back to 1732 but did you know Gran's grandad died in Lancaster Lunatic Asylum/Gran's great-grandad was sent to prison twice - once for stealing money and once for stealing chicken/great-great-grandad's brother was listed on the census as having a paralysed arm/Grandma's great-great-great uncle was a Methodist preacher and used to walk everywhere to do it and when he was 24 he lost his arm in a threshing machine accident?"

Sometimes filtering it so the interesting stories are passed around makes it more interesing to non-enthusiasts. (Personally, I find it quite exciting that in 1776 my 6xgreat grandad Hurst, even with a wife and about 6 children to feed, had managed to save up enough money that he had £48 to buy some land with.)

I agree Hayley

I do things in spurts. Sometimes I spend hours on a hunch and get nowhere and another time I get lucky. I have other hobbies and activities so sometimes family history gets pushed aside.

I have a laptop so tend to be pottering about online while the TV is on. I often concentrate on one line then leave it for a few months because it is surprising how much new stuff can be added to the Internet in the meantime.

I am so lucky to have a lot of Somerset ancestors because there are many online transcripts and printed books on ebooks for Somerset. I can also get to the Records Office to check.

I'm now going back over my paper notes started years ago before the Internet and I'm shifting a lot of stuff onto backup discs and into my new tree program Rootsmagic. I moved my GR tree into Rootsmagic but that doesn't have all my connections. It also didn't transfer some of the dates and details perfectly so I will have to systematically go over it all and check it.

I think that it is worthwhile going sideways in a tree from time to time. Sometimes I have broken through a brickwall by finding the Will of a relation of one of my ancestors. Sometimes it can help to collect members of an extended family.
My 2x great grandfather supposedly married 3 times. I don't think he actually married the 3rd one and I hunted in vain to find a marriage to a third wife but when I spotted them together on the 1901 I recognised who his new "wife" was.

She was familiar to me because she was a widow who'd previously been married to my ancestor's cousin. If I hadn't been interested in the bigger picture and finding others of the same name in the area I would probably not have realised that she didn't need to marry my ancestor to have his surname!

All good fun unravelling.

Sue
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I started out doing this because I'm nosey! I had two tasks in mind. I'd found a memorial card for one of my Dad's relations and as Dad wasn't around to ask who Harriet Horsup was I thought I should try to find out. My other aim was to find out when my Dad's family came over from France.

By the time I'd found out that Harriet was my Dads maternal grandmother and my Dads paternal grandparents came over in the 1880s I was hooked.

I have a tiny tree with something like 130 people on though I could probably triple that if I added all the relations I know about but I want to find out about my acestors lives, what made them tick etc.

Before starting out I assumed all my lot were dirt poor but I've been quite suprised to find that some of them would have been classed as nearly middle class! Not quite the hand to mouth existence I'd anticipated.

And of course I've found the skeleton in the cupboard. GGGgrandad Horsup was deemed to be a career criminal at the age of 17 and sentenced to 7 years transportation. Thankfully they'd stopped sending convicts for sentences less than 10 years by this time and by a pure fluke he was one of the first prisoners to be granted parole serving just four years.

I think that sometimes people ask the 'how far back have you got' question because they haven't a clue about family history so don't know how to talk about it. sometimes though it may be with genuine interest because they can imagine the excitement of finding a relative who lived two or three hundred years ago. If you like, they can imagine why you would do it if you can find a link back to the 15th/16th century but can't see any interest in finding a Great grandparent only 100 years back or so.

Ann
glos

Hello Sue

I dont think people who have a larger FT are just name collectors..how do I know that how long people have been at it..10 15 30 years or even longer, it s when people say in my first week I added 6,550 people ot my tree I am wary off..also the time you get and often with me its your mood..there have been times when I have sat here till 5am and not realised it and then gone to work for 8hrs without sleep, thats when I am a dog with a bone, I have gone about 3 mths when I havent even look at my FT, of course the 1911 has kicked started my search again, I dont have the time to spend on it now adays and sometimes I am just tired and cant be bothered or think stright also the last couple of mths the trouble with my eye hasn't help either..

I enjoy the puzzles and the mysteries. Trying to trace a new line is very exciting and I get a new burst of enthusiasm if I find another branch to track.

As well as other tree formats I have a large fan chart with my direct ancestors on it back to 5x greats and my ambition has been to fill in gaps where I can, though some names will never be known and I have some fairly recent dead ends.

I love visiting places where ancestors once lived and finding out about their lives, occupations and what was going on in the world around them.

I have done a huge amount of background research into many of my branches and our spare bedroom is full of files. I am also regularly asked to give talks to my local family history society and I was asked to be a reserve speaker (in case the invited one was ill) at the last AGM of the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society.

So I am not a name gatherer! LOL

Having said that.......I do have a huge tree (or could have if I put them all on here) and I do go a very very long way back. Sometimes when a similar thread to this appears there are people who have a tiny tree and are perfectly content with that and who, in some cases, imply that anyone with a large tree must be adding the entries with little care and no regard to the truth. Not all owners of enormous trees collect ancestors like stamps!

I have a large enough tree so that if I get stuck I can go off and browse around on a completely different section. Some ancestors I feel closer to both in time, and maybe because their lives interest me, but we're all going to have people in our trees who will only ever be names. The information just doesn't exist for us to find out about them as people. One of the advantages of having a tree that links into people who feature in history books is that documents have survived.

Yes those two questions are the first ones people tend to ask me too. I'm not surprised really because people are intrigued about how anyone can find ancestors from hundreds of years ago. When meeting someone new I tend to be wary of revealing how big my tree is because (unless they too do genealogy as well as family history) people tend to jump to wrong conclusions.

As for the skeletons......well they are the bit that adds some spice to the hunt. I do love a good scandal so long as it is far enough back for me not to feel personally involved. One of my family names has more than exceeded my wildest expectations for this and they feature in one of the talks I give called "A Flock of Black Sheep".

When I started my family tree it wasn't with any aim other than to try to find a generation or two beyond the names I already had. We all know that we have millions of ancestors and that most of them we will never discover. My aim now is to fill in as much as I can and go as far back on each line as I can to let the lost ancestors be remembered. I enjoy finding links between branches and noticing how people have moved around over the centuries.

Good luck everyone and, however you choose to do it, just enjoy yourselves. It is only a hobby after all.

Best wishes
Sue

The flesh on the bones is more important to me than the size of my tree or how far back it goes.

I am lucky enough to live locally to all my ancestors.................plus my husbands................so only have to walk or drive a short way to be in the places they once lived and worked.


At the moment I am concentrating on my paternal line and while other distant relatives are finding names, I am trying to find any information I can about how they would have lived and checking the census images match any new information from the records offices.

*points to huge pile of library books on the table*

I'd love to put flesh on the bones, I am though only just starting out, so I am happy to acknowledge a lot of my tree currently is not yet verfied by sources, but at 26 I hope I have enough years left to make it a proper family history.

Anyone I have contact with I do advise they double check things, although I have become very wary about who accesses my tree due to at the start letting a few 'name collectors' raid it.

I do wish you though could change the colour of a relative in your tree or at least have an extra line under the birth and death dates were you could put verfied/to double check.

The question I `ve been asked "ARE YOU FINISHED IT YET ?" We are never finished are we ? It annoys me when rellies who do no research come up with stupid suggestions
Ros xx

Hi Hayley,
I read the opening bit of your thread and then had to go and look at my tree as I had no idea how names were on there. It says 360. I've never been asked that particular question and reaching a high number or getting back to the earliest year possible isn't my ambition.
I started researching after I found the original of my great grandparents marriage certificate and it piqued my interest. I wanted to know more about the lives of my ancestors. In the four years since then, I've gradually built up a smallish (but accurate) tree that I'm pretty happy with.

When I tell people I'm researching my family tree, they do one of two things: either their eyes glaze over and they back off quickly or they start telling me that it's something they've always fancied doing so how do they start? Or they ask if I'll do it. (Comes from watching WDYTYA and thinking you can get back to 1400 in one afternoon).
My immediate family weren't interested until I started my research; now I've got them all keen as mustard. My Dad's three brothers are always ringing up asking how I'm getting on.

Ohh hello Mrs Numbers are you better now ? I forgot about the money question I always reply to that in a rather snotty manner, “ its frowned upon in the circles that I frequent regards my hobby to search for old money in fact its viewed as almost vulgar” that has them worried and very surprised in most cases. pmsl

'Has any money been left to us?' is the question my family asked ( all of them ). Others just get a glazed look until I say I will do their tree for them. Then they are interested......mostly men.

My immediate family aren't a bit interested.

The skeletons question is invariably asked, as is the 'how far back' question.

I still plod on to ensure the accuracy of my research which is very important to me.

Susan
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To be honest, I'm not impressed at all with people who claim to have gone back further than recorded history. We all know that very little of history was actually recorded before Roman times in Europe, and most of what we know is not from records, but from archaeology. The only likely way of finding stuff from very early times is through finding a later link to royalty. When people start on that one I back off, because more often than not its just a fanciful idea that is removed from the reality of a line of ag labs back to 1700.

That's not to say that some aren't linked to royalty in any way. Of course there are. But most of those talk about how they are descended from a more recent royal, rather than bragging that they go back to Adam. Anyone knows that royal tree is not proven, and was written to show that the kings of the day are chosen by more divine means than human desire and will.

I've said many a time, if you look at many family trees in USA, they all came over on that first voyage of the Mayflower. If that was to be added up, there would have been near enough half a million people on a ship that had the capacity for only 60 odd passengers at a squeeze.

Going back beyond census and BMDs is more difficult, relying on wills and parish records and maybe some other records like court proceedings, evictions, and other odd bits of record that may be found by chance, is like piecing together a complicated jigsaw puzzle, but once you have managed to fit the pieces together, what a thrill! Its hard finding all those bits of information, especially if you don't even know if any exist, but I think its worth even spending money on what sometimes turns out to be not on the line you are researching...or one tiny snippet of information that could blow the rest of that line of research into the water.

My sister started off Karen as interested as I was...but lost interest once we had found our grandparents...

Hello Amanda....thank you..ohh yes I have discovered a few family myths are BS...lol


SueM...please tell your daughter that her and I are nearer age and its jolly interesting...not just for retired people, I think when people think of family historians they tend to stereotype, in retired bald old men in anoraks and knitted jumpers, or even retired ladies with a blue rinse and pearls..lol but that isn’t the case .

Or thou I do refer to my hobby as anoracking and you can just see peoples face’s when I say I am off to a meet this weekend yes you get the yawn…if only they knew.lol

Good subject Hayley .

The how far back question does always tend to come up and like others on here it isn't really my aim to get back to the year dot .

I'm more interested to trying to put names to the faces that lurk in the two Victorian photo albums I inherited when my Nan died . There was also a rough " tree " that my Grandfather had scribbled down in about 1914 , only names , no dates . I have found them all ( and more ).

On my Dads side there is one name that grips me and I'd like to one day discover the origins ( Nanna always said her family originated from France ) but I can't find the "missing link " there .

I think your right that the two questions get asked by people that don't understand the ins and outs of the hobby . I suppose they don't know what else to ask ?

Amanda

~~~~~~~~~ Hayley Mwah!!

The way I look at it is when I hit a wall with the history bit, I add a few names. With most of the family being from Durham it is handy, because there are huge rafts of information available on the net.

And, Durham Records Office is a gold mine - the staff are so helpful.

I use Family Tree Maker and find it incredibly useful. I have two elements to my tree - validated and non-validated. As I confirm data it becomes validated, however that can only happen with three independent sources minimum.
And remember, certificates should confirm what you believe to be true - you can very easily go the wrong way with a certificate!

What on earth is the point in importing other peoples' names into your tree unless you have 'proved' them?

I do add people from other trees on Ancestry if I couldn't find them myself but from there I always try to disprove the link. If there is any question as to the veracity they 'die off' again.

I spoke with daughter yesterday about the tree (she's 28) I could hear yawning from her end and she said "well it's an old persons thing isn't it?".

Fortunately there are lots of youngsters researching which is great. By the time I started I had no family left to question.

Sue x