General Chat

im just being nosey i was wondering how long have you been doing your family history, also why did you start tracing your family?

Ive been tracing my history about 7 or 8 years now and started doing it cos a friend mentioned she was doing her tree the n i started being curious tho it has cost me a forttune in certificates lol.

I started about four years ago, after my nan died and we inherited all her old photos. Her sister came round and told us who they all were, and we all got really confused, so my mum suggested doing a family tree to sort them all out!

Matt

It has always interested me how people used to live in the 1700`s, early 1800`s, without all the modern day things, including electricity etc. I have been doing my tree for about 10 years, since just before most things were on the internet. I am now past the stage that comes after 1837 and travel around to various record offices when time and money allows, (it also doubles as a 2 day break). A lot of my branches are now at least as early as 1800, with one or two in the middle 1500`s. Sometimes I wish I didnt know as much as I do now, I enjoyed it so much when you could just look up certificates and find baptisms etc., for people I really knew. It is so much harder now and the writing is so hard to read.

I would love to have a time machine and travel back for a couple of days, so long as I could come back again. My first destination would be Sedbergh, Yorkshire about 1800, so I could ask my ancestor where he was born, lol.
:-D

I started searching over 25 years ago after an older family member who had a lot of family knowledge died very suddenly. We realised that our family history knowledge could just disappear. Initially the idea was just to write down what we knew, but then the bug struck, and the thirst for more developed.

Only three and a half years doing my tree.

I started as i wanted to know more about the family also i love history and i also wanted to find a living relative. my uncle John who i had never met but sadly i found he had passed away so i never met John.

but its been amazing the things found in are tree's i have twin boys but no one could remember twins in are line or my wifes. But when i got into the 1800's and 1700's there were alot of twins in the family.

I also wanted to looking into my Welsh roots which i have always been very proud of.

Also the friends i have made around the world and indeed i met a couple who i got to know they came over from Austraila and we met up which lovley and his wife was Stirk which is what my great gran was.

Rob

I started when the 1901 census came out and i had just got Internet. My SIL and i thought we try to look for FIL who was in a children home in Birmingham from an early age. He was born in 1901 although after the census was taken but we got his birth cert and started from there, After getting as far as we could then I decided to look at my family tree,

Only this year with the 1911 coming on board have I at last got Dads info on which home he was and and some dates so its taken 10 years to find him. Didn't help that i found his parents weren't married and on the face of it his father was a bigamist with yet another mistress ie dads mum.

Have got back to the early 1700,s on one side of my family but stuck circa 1889 on my paternal dads side because they were German and info is hard to find .

Being a first generation kiwi, I always hated not having 'family' around. When school broke up for summer, most kids went to their grandparents etc for Christmas. We didn't have that.

My Mum took my younger sister and I to the UK in 1963 so 'they' met us. We have photographic proof - shame I was too young to remember the trip. My maternal grandfather came to NZ once in the 70's for a week to deliver the jewellery and bits my Mum inherited on her stepmums death.

I had one paternal Uncle who lived in NZ for a time during my early years. He moved to Aus and married but had no children. He is a big part of my life still.

Both my parents lost their Mums at an early age and had 'stepmothers'. Not very successful at mothering by all accounts.....

I found it hard to understand how neither Mum or especially Dad had much contact with their extended families. So the search began, with much help from kindly GR members and dare I say it, hiring a Genealogist, I have some knowledge - but not enough.

My own children have grown up with uncles, aunts and three grandparents - all still alive. They have been so lucky, now we have great nieces and nephews in the fold :-)

I guess it was harder to keep in touch with family members who moved away for work or a new life.

Thank goodness for modern communciations

My tree has lots of bare branches - all welcome ;-)

Just over a year, still not quite sure what I am doing, but getting there....with help.

George

I can remember eagerly awaiting the release of the 1881 census.

My tree was magnificent. It had 76 names on it. You can put more then those on in an evening now/

There were surnames that got in my way when I was searching our local registers. I now know them to be families of daughters who had married outside the village.

About 14 yrs. always interested, I first went to Somerset House 49 yrs ago with my parents, remember them looking at big red books. I now know they were trying to solve the problems I still have with trying to find the history of my great grandfather, still no joy.

Carol :-S

Since 2009. Not too difficult one. Nearly all relations in the North East. Only one I'm struggling with and that's County Armagh.

Had to stiop myself just adding names. Now want to pad the people out a bit if I can. Unfortunately a bit of a bland tree as very little money and therefore very few photos.

Something that came out of it that despite the difficulties for unmarried mothers in the past, any illegitimate children all remained within the family
cared for by granparents and aunts and uncles.

Vera

I've always been interested in history, but when my uncle died in 2006 I said in passing to my cousin that I would like to do a family tree, it took me another year to get on the internet, so nearly 5 years.

Its funny though it was irish side that was first interested in but I have found myself researching the English side and O boy whay a lair my English grandad was.

Have been researching my roots for about 6/7 years now.

I am fortunate that all my ancestors from my parents are Scottish, and they mainly all come from Fife, so reasonably straight forward.

Scotland has good BDM records, gives lots of information which is a blessing.
Scotlandspeople is where I do most of my research as well as trips to Fife.


Foggy

Some people say to me that they are not the slightest bit interested in researching their family history - what matters to them is the present and the future. I say to them that your past ancestors are what made you what you are to-day. I find it totally fascinating (and sometimestimes rather disturbing!), whilst researching my closer ancestors, to discover that I have inherited traits, both physically and mentally, of which I am not so proud lol! (You know who you are, she shouts!) On the other hand, there are some I feel an affinity with and know why I am who I am - good or, ahem, not so good :-) :-0

Edit to say - I've been researching my family history for 3 years.

Sorry Foggy, didn't see you there. Good to see you on here again :-D

I started in December 2007.

Mum and I were watching an episode of WDYTYA and my Mum said "I would love to do that".

Well, that got me going and I have been obsessed ever since - even solved some family mysteries and obtained a photo of my grandmother when she was 20 years old from a relation I met on GR. Mum only had photos of her mother when she was older so was over the moon to see that photo!

My only regret is that I didn't do it earlier (wasn't interested when I was younger) because, apart from Mum, there is no one left to ask!!!

I started having an interest in family history in 1985 when my mother received a letter for an American cousin who said she was trying to sort out her family tree. The interest lay dormant for several years but really gathered momentum when I retired 5 years ago. Initially I wanted to account for the family of my maternal grandmother who had died in the 1920's. There were 14 children in her family which I thought very unusual.......until I started....and found dozens of families with these large numbers of children. I have many brickwalls, but the buzz of finding some unexpected clue to unearthing another relative is so rewarding.-jl

20 odd years ago, just after moving to Winchester, I saw a small photo frame at my grans, and in it, a carbon copy of some sort of article - possibly newspaper..
The only bit of the 'headline' I could see was 'Heaviest man in Engl'
I asked gran if I could see it - it was the obituary of one Henry Floyd of Romsey - apparently the heaviest man in England, in1842.

As Floyd wasn't a family name, I asked gran who he was.
'Some relation of your grandfather's' she replied. Grandad died 6 weeks before I was born, so I couldn't ask him!!

So, as I lived where the Hampshire Records Office was (at the time in a church!), worked in a school and had 6 weeks off in the summer, I started to trace Mr. Floyd, backwards!!.
He was a master bricklayer, and my g x 4 grandfather.
He had 2 daughters - hence the name had disappeared.
In 1841, 16 households in Romsey were Floyds - and all were involved in the building trade.

Sort of went on from there.
When my gran died in 1993, aged 99, we found love letters between her and my grandad - they are fascinating. I spent 2 years typing them up, and gained so much knowledge about social history of the time (1924 - 1956).I haven't done much family research for the past 5 years, but have been 'padding out', looking up events of certain years etc., and trying to work out why certain ancestors moved etc.

about 6 foot

It was my maternal grandparents who first made me interested I family history and one great Aunt.
My mother was the 10th and last child of my grandparents by a considerable gap!

Grandma used to show me old photos and I was promised that I would hsve them when they died. However my mother decided to throw many of them away but I did manage to keep certs of weddings etc going back to the early 1800s when they were on parchment. I feel very fortunate to hsve such original records.


My great aunt, never had children and she also left me some original bits and pieces.....

So my interest started and on thevway I have made the occasional error but am fascinated how similar the men have bern particularly in the forces,including the present.

I cried when I learnt that some emigrated to Australia and children died for lack of food etc...
I discovered that people are not always what they seem, that being illegitimate is not a new phenomena. Etc etc

Social history has always interested me, and to know that being in the Army or navy goes back as far as the 1600s, not called the navy or Army then, more about protecting the local areas, but always ready to obey orders when wars did break out.

I do find it difficult to find which ships etc people emigrated on ...so sny tips would be helpful,

Bridget in Spain