General Chat

I'm the only person in the uk with my full name so I shouldn't be too hard to find. But it would be difficult to find me on census. I was born in St Leonards but was only there for five weeks before we were in Scotland. It would also be kind of hard to find my cousins' family. One of my cousins used to be in Japan on a cruise ship dancing, then she was in the Carribean, and now she's going to become a model, living in France. My other cousin lives in America. Lucia :-)

Another tip which may seem silly but could be important it years to come. Make a note of who took the photo. I have a number of old photos and I would love to know who was on the other side of the camera. I always write who took the photo even if it obvious to our family. Susan

I got into genealogy last year and it would be great to find letters or a diary from an ancestor, something that tells me a little more than birth dates etc. I started to write about parts of my life - home, school, playtime, early work/jobs, changes such as decimel currency, colour TVs, videos, etc. I have included a copy of my birth certificate, school report, a wage slip, some photos and am working on a family tree to include. I try to think of what I would like to find of someome from the past and include such things in a file which I would like to put into a time capsule type of object for someone to 'find' somtime in the future.

Bec your brother is in the SS Scary lol! As for you and Sis all Greek to me lol! Dx

Me Im as common as muck but unique lol! Davex

RW, That's very sound advice about labelling photos. My MiL left us 3 suitcases full of old photos of my FiL's family and her own, but they were mostly unlabelled, so unless we can recognise the people in the pictures when they were young, or by who they're with, we haven't a clue who they all are. We spent some time with my MiL's elder sister, going through all the photos, but even she hadn't a clue who most of the subject were or where the places in them were. It's probably one of those tasks my MiL would have got round to one day, as she was such a methodical person, but she died very suddenly, aged 71, apparently in the peak of health - or so it seemed just the day before. Moral of this story for everyone, I think, is 'Get labelling NOW!' before everyone forgets who is in your photos! CB >*|*<

I have about 30 photographs from the late 1800's from my Gran's house clearance. Even an early glass plate holiday snapshot. However, since my Mum thought the album was going a bit mouldy, she removed all the photos and binned it . The album captions were lost and all I can do is guess who people might be based on period dress. I should be grateful Mum thought I might want the photographs. I reiterate what someone has already said. 'Label your photographs'!!!!! RW

I plan to tell them myself. I'm still going to be alive in 100 years time. Paul. :-))))

Mine will need lots of luck! Sister and mines' Birth Certificate is in Greek! Luckily Brother's is American and he even has a SS Number! becx

When my husbands gran died no one wanted her photo albums they were going to the tip so i took them home,,,now all the family are after them as she spent over thirty years in India with her army husband from 1920,they are fantastic photos of the old way of life out there,,now the problem is who most of these people.are but getting there slowley

Susan, its precisely that sort of detail that brings these people alive. I have no photos at all of gt grandparents on one side of my tree, no family bible, no little stories, nothing. All I know is what I've got from certs & censuses. Would have loved Gt Uncle's notes, he must have had loads of stuff. Shame to think its all gone. He would have known my gt. gt. grandmother (he was about 12 when she died) Looking at her various addresses on the censuses, and her parents and siblings, I bet she had some tales to tell. I've never been organised enough to keep a scrapbook, perhaps if I'd had kids I would have, for them. I must confess when my dad died I chucked out a load of photos from his navy days in the 1940s and 1950s simply because I didn't know anyone on them, and he'd not labelled anything. They were his memories, not mine. Now I wonder if some of those photos might have been of people whose rellies didn't have photos at all. But with no idea who, or where, it would be very difficult to track them down. So another tip from me - LABEL YOUR PHOTOS!

My descendants will know quite a lot about me and my family. I scrapbook and have albums with photos and journalling. All dated, every person named with their parents and grandparents noted on the back of each page. So, as long as nobody throws it all out, my family will be able to look at us and read about our lives. Maybe I will have taken all the fun out of the research!! Susan

Well I really can't imagine why anyone would want to trace ME, but I made it a bit easier by double-barrelling my maiden name when I married a Mr Smith. We've no kids though. What I am finding very sad is that one of my Gt Uncles did a lot of work on our tree over 20 years ago (before computers). He had had a major falling-out with his son before he died & no-one knows what has happened to all his research. Its my greatest fear that there are loads of people in similar situations all over the place, and what becomes of your Family History research notes could end up depending on the whims of a rellie with no interest in it, so it gets chucked out. SO MENTION IT IN YOUR WILL.

i would love to do one of those capsules, with all of my granparents, parents, mine, childrens, grandchildrens and great grandchildrens 'things' so when someone gets it they have so much stuff to work out there relatives xx

My New Years prediction but I'm not sure which new year. I think that well before 100 years time our descendants will be able to link ancestors with everyone in Britain if not in the world good hunting Dave

God help them when they come to trace me ha ha I move house that many times in my life they will be wondering why I moved so much LOL My partner and I have never married and no kids, so they will be looking for a marriage that never happened. Keep them guessing I say it will keep them amused for years. Ive still got my school reports and birth certificate so they will have to go by them, but they will have the files and my information to go by. Regards Yvonne

My married name has someone else with the same living only a couple of miles away - and it's not that common a combination - causes alot of confusion in the docs etc! And it doesn't look like my maiden name will carry on as my brother had a short-lived marriage and is getting on a bit now to start again! When my Mum and Dad died, I decided to write about their lives and the lives of my Grandparents as far as I knew (which unfortunately wasn't alot) so there was a record of them and they wouldn't be forgotten.Ordinary people's lives are so important. This then turned into an autobiography so our kids will know a bit about my younger self. I do so wish I had something which my grandparents had written about themselves - think there should be a campaign to start people writing about their lives to pass on. And we shouldn't rely on electronic means of recording this either - paper records will survive better! Allie x

For the last 3 census I have lived within a quarter of a mile of where I am now, - but will they think to look round the corner at the next street, when they can't find me at my 1981 address and around another corner for 2001 information. Even if they do find me they'll not guess that some of the intervening years were spent overseas.

That's one reason why I keep paper records of all my FH data as well as those on the PC. All of that will be preserved by my son and, I hope, handed down through subsequent generations. My maiden surname has already died out in our branch of the family, as my brother had one daughter, whose name changed on marriage, and my son bears his father's name, not mine. There will probably come a time when means of recording data will be very different from how it's done now (as with recording music, for example, going from reel-to-reel tape recorders-audio cassettes-burnable CDs-iPods, etc), so there will be constant rehashing of all the available data. I think it's very important to save the handwritten records now, as old books and papers can't survive forever, but I do think it's important that data is transcribed correctly. I think organisations such as Ancestry ought to correct the myriad obvious errors on the data they sell to their subscribers. It doesn't take a genius (just a person who can read a map properly and type correctly) to put right the glaring mistranscriptions of place names, for instance. Obviously, it would be more difficult to transcribe personal names accurately, but some of the errors I've discovered lead me to think that very little thought goes into transcribing and it's all done far too sloppily in the interests of speed. CB >*|*<

Im going to give mine the runaround - why not? they all have me! Moved away from where i was born, married and changed my name -now live with someone and havent changed my name! Im not on the electrol Roll either, nor the phone book Tee hee! Jess x