General Chat

I just wonder if I'd be as addicted as I am if it had been easy to start with as it would have been if I were starting now.......... Gwynne

Interesting Guinevere....I don't think its losing anything, I think a lot of it has to do with television programmes showing people how easy it is to find their relations using census forms.... I was naive enought to think that......armed with old photos, word of mouth, wedding certs, and a couple of old rellies.....I was able to piece together a tree of sorts....and with help from the census forms, was able to go further back... ..but without any knowledge about how to obtain certificates....how to gain knowledge from distant church records and parishes.....half the fun of discovery is lost.... I am afraid Gwynne that I am one of those who have to sit at the computer, and exclaim Yesssssss.....when something comes that remotely looks like a rellie.......I have so many questions that I feel unable to ask all of them.....I would feel stupid going into this without knowing anything.....

No, Gwynne, not when all your ancestors are Irish, going back to the Kings of Ireland...and most of them were fibbers! LOL BC XX

TOO EASY TOO EASY GWYNNE YOUR JOKING PLEASE SAY YOUR JOKING 3 OF US 5 YEARS TO FIND ONE MAN EASY

Not when you get stuck in the 1600's, lol

It's not lost the charm for me Gwynne, I love finding out about my families..........and easy, sometimes, not always. Heather x

This morning I was nattering to a friend that I met at a genealogy workshop many years ago. We caught up on family and friends news since we last chatted and she said she hoped to get back to her family tree sometime and perhaps order some films at the LDS. Like me she has a sub to various sites and she commented that it wasn’t so much fun now because it was “too easy”. Is she right? In an evening it’s possible to trace several families back from 1901 to 1841 with an ancestry sub. Using freebmd it’s now possible to find many references and we can order certs online. Those that aren’t on freebmd are freely available on ancestry. The 1901 census wasn’t available when I started so I bought the 1881 discs and found my relatives one at a time. Then I ordered the films of the 1891 census for each of the parishes in which they were living and in a period of months found them all there. Meanwhile I trawled for hours at the LDS through fiche of the GRO index and spent a lot of money on certificates. A couple of years passed during which I’d ordered the films of the other available censuses, a parish at a time and trawled through them to find my ancestors. I’d also made several visits to record offices (including Kew) and picked up lots of interesting stuff. And I’d ordered films of parish records, school records etc at the LDS. I spent a fortune when the 1901 census finally went on line – six months late. In between times I’ve subscribed to familyhistoryonline, familyrelatives, Englishorigins and bought loads of CDs and fiche from family history societies and Cdbooks. I’ve enjoyed every minute of my research, even though I’ve crashed into many brickwalls. By the time ancestry was putting censuses online I’d already got most of mine. I resisted subscribing for as long as I could but gave in eventually as some of my wandering Welshmen were causing me grief. I still get “Yes!” moments as ancestry puts more online but it somehow isn’t the same as when you get to the end of your third 1871 census film of Ebbw Vale and find your lot 6 households from the end. And that discovery gives you the birthplace of a very elusive ancestor whose birthplace was only given as “Somerset” on later censuses. That was a very loud “Yessssssssssssssssssssss!” moment and chocs all round the following week at the LDS. Which brings me back to where I started – it genealogy losing its charm? Is it all too easy now? Gwynne

*long message alert*