Family History research.

[Rivercider]

A few years ago I made a half-hearted attempt to research my family tree, using a combination of various free search sites and free offers. At the time despite going back five generations everyone I found had been born in East or Mid Devon, with one over the border in Wellington Somerset.

With the prospect of more free time in the future I am now thinking of making a more serious attempt at research.

I could not find  previous thread dedicated specifically to family history research though I note it has been a subject discussed on the Early Risers thread from time to time.

Does anyone with experience have any suggestion as to which site to sign up to?

I am thinking of ease of use to upload and search. I would also like to be able to able to search WWI records and railway staff records, particularly LSWR, and probably GWR, as well as newspaper articles.

 

Any suggestions gratefully received.

 

cheers 

[jonny777]

I would be a bit careful who you commit to at present, as the 1921 census is due to be released in just over 12 months time (100 year rule, and all that).

 

Findmypast have won the contract for exclusive rights to transcribe, digitise and release the millions of pages to the web. I'm not sure how long that lasts until others can muscle in. 

 

Personally, I subscribe to Ancestry because they have a vast database of records to those who pay, but I will take out a subscription with Findmypast later next year just for 1921 purposes. It will be the last one I see, because 1931 was destroyed by fire and 1941 was cancelled due to WW2. 

 

 

 

 

[tigerburnie]

My daughter treated me to a subscription for Ancestry, kept me busy during lockdown, just be careful as most of  the data is from other peoples work and a lot is not accurate, some folks dates don't match up, so you need to cross reference, also there's a lot of data some folk mark as private and you cannot access it. I have managed to get back past Saxon times, it really is quite interesting, now getting  copies of documents to back my data up to ensure my work is correct. There will come a time when you need to actually visit locations like churches as many items are not online. You may find some upsetting information, like early deaths, but also interesting people, even in relatively modern times who had interesting lives. I have found Royal connections and luckily it seems my direct descendants managed to dodge the work houses and prisons by the look of it too.

[Bernard Lamb]

Before you sign up for a subscription service I suggest you try Free BMD and also Family Search.

If you make a note of what you find there you can then look out for free offers, usually at holiday periods, on Ancestry or FMP and fill in the details. Check if there is a "one name study" for your family names. I am in contact with several people who run these and even though I might not be related to some of then they can and are usually willing to help with information on the villages where they originated. In one case we found a family connection that had lasted for almost 100 years and nobody alive today knew any thing about it. Look on the web for any published family histories. Take the information with a big pinch of salt as there are some fanciful versions of history out there. Try your local history society or the one local to where you are searching. Check on trade directories, available on line. Check on line with Discovery at the National Archive for any wills or military references. Do the same with you local records office. You will soon get to a point where you need more than what the two main sources can offer. I am currently into estate records from circa 1480 trying to tie down the generation before the earliest church records for one branch of the family. I have managed to obtain German records going back to about 1510. These are written in an old script in an old language and there are place names that have long vanished. They contain abbreviations for job titles and legal terms that hardly any living German can decipher. You will have great fun and you will be making a worthwhile contribution to  history

Bernard

[jonny777]

1 hour ago, tigerburnie said:

My daughter treated me to a subscription for Ancestry, kept me busy during lockdown, just be careful as most of  the data is from other peoples work and a lot is not accurate, some folks dates don't match up, so you need to cross reference, also there's a lot of data some folk mark as private and you cannot access it. I have managed to get back past Saxon times, it really is quite interesting, now getting  copies of documents to back my data up to ensure my work is correct. There will come a time when you need to actually visit locations like churches as many items are not online. You may find some upsetting information, like early deaths, but also interesting people, even in relatively modern times who had interesting lives. I have found Royal connections and luckily it seems my direct descendants managed to dodge the work houses and prisons by the look of it too.

 

 

Wow, you have done well. I have traced back my direct ancestors to the mid-16th century and unconnected (at present) mentions of the surname around 1350, but everything is in Latin and I don't really have the skills to work through legal documents. I have found connections to Margaret Tudor (Henry VIII's sister) but only through a number of marriages and spouses' female lines. 

 

There are inaccuracies on all of the family history websites, and many assumptions made but not proven. I have borrowed microfiche from libraries in order to try and prove/disprove certain connections, but my ancient microfiche viewer blew up and so I haven't bothered much since then. 

 

 

[tigerburnie]

Going back from my 3 times Great Grandmother I can trace back directly to Alfgar 111 Earl of Mercia whose wife Princess Elfgifu (my 30 times Great Grandmother) was the daughter of Ethelred 11 King of England), who is descended from Alfred the Great( my 35 times Great Grandfather). He was married to the Queen Consort Eahlswith(my Grannie) born in 852 whose lineage goes back via King Cerdic of Wessex, born in Saxony in abt 467. If legend is to be believed and there's no real proof either way. my  62 times Great Grandad was Odin of Asgard(also known as Woden) born about 215 in Norway..........yes I know that is a tad doubtful.

[Rivercider]

1 hour ago, jonny777 said:

I would be a bit careful who you commit to at present, as the 1921 census is due to be released in just over 12 months time (100 year rule, and all that).

 

 

 

Thanks for that. 

Mrs Rivercider has just mentioned that it would not break the bank to sign up to more than one site, so if I chose another site then I could also join Findmypast later on.

 

cheers 

[TheQ]

Dad did a lot of research some time ago, the direct male line he got back to around 1500, to go further require visiting Galloway to look at records held there. A shortcut would be a blood test, and providing no one has been naughty en-route, We should be descendants of Scottish Royalty 50% of all those who have had the test with our surname prove they are..

His mothers line disappears off to Ireland where it soon comes to a dead end due to records being destroyed many years ago..

My mothers side is being researched by an uncle, that goes off to Cheshire, and goes back and back with no one doing nothing much exciting for generations. It also goes to the Isle of Wight and many generations of fishermen..

Edited November 24, 2020 by TheQ

[Rivercider]

1 hour ago, tigerburnie said:

My daughter treated me to a subscription for Ancestry, kept me busy during lockdown, just be careful as most of  the data is from other peoples work and a lot is not accurate, some folks dates don't match up, so you need to cross reference, also there's a lot of data some folk mark as private and you cannot access it. I have managed to get back past Saxon times, it really is quite interesting, now getting  copies of documents to back my data up to ensure my work is correct. There will come a time when you need to actually visit locations like churches as many items are not online. You may find some upsetting information, like early deaths, but also interesting people, even in relatively modern times who had interesting lives. I have found Royal connections and luckily it seems my direct descendants managed to dodge the work houses and prisons by the look of it too.

Thanks.

 

Back in about 2012 when I dabbled with some free searches I felt I was making progress, then became aware I was adding 2 + 2 and making 5, so did not take things further.

I am quite lucky in that I knew all four grandparents, and have childhood memories of one set of great grandparents. Fortuitously I also have printed copies of research carried out independently for both family sides of those great grandparents. There is a certain amount of oral family history that has been told to me, and I have a modest collection of old photos, Birth/death certificates, wedding papers, and newspaper cuttings.   

I am aware I am likely to find bad news, I knew my gran, great aunt, and two great uncles were the survivors where four other siblings died as infants or small children. Back then some of my ancestors were lead miners on Dartmoor, a hard existence no doubt. 

 

cheers

[Nearholmer]

Go very carefully around the Ts&Cs with these services.

 

I signed-up to one when my son was undertaking a school project, and it was very easy to use, and very interesting indeed: no royalty; some workhouses; one very interesting case that looked to me very much as if a single woman had conceived on behalf of her married sister who couldn't conceive herself - Victorian IVF!

 

The elder sister had married a prosperous widower, who had children from his previous marriage, then no new children. Younger sister then gave birth out of wedlock while living with the couple, and subsequently moved away on her own, the child being shown in subsequent census as "infant nephew", then in the next one as "son", and going on to inherit (that didn't go into the school project - he is still a bit young for that sort of complexity!).

 

BUT, the supplier was not UK registered, and operated a subscription auto-renewal system that I'm pretty sure is illegal in the UK. I can't recall the details exactly, but I think it involved subscribing by not-very-overt direct debit, which operates in perpetuity. The first auto-renewal caught me on-the-hop, and was irrecoverable, but my bank was able to cancel it from that point onwards.

 

My main interest was my mother's side of the family, because one of my aunts covered-off my father's side many years ago, when it was really hard work in record offices. She did a cracking job, getting back to parish records in C15th, plus highly probable links back even further, but that was only possible because the family remained in one place, the men doing the same job (stone cutting, i.e. quarrying sandstone), for hundreds of years up to mid C19th. If the family had moved between parishes she would probably have lost the thread.

 

You will find that you "run out of road" in the 1820s IIRC, because censuses weren't made before a given date, unless you too want to disappear into dusty archives.

Edited November 24, 2020 by Nearholmer

[didcot]

Both Ancestry and Find My Past do a sort of pay to view service in which if you think you have a good hit on a certain record you can buy credits to view it.

Ancestry has been 90% effective in my searches, but Find My Past came up with records for the Royal Military Chapel that I couldn't find elsewhere.

Ancestry does have railway records and military as well. But been warned a lot of WW1 records were lost in a fire during WW2, so you may only find records of medals but no service history.

You can get WW2 records direct from the armed forces. We did it for my Grandfather and also claimed his medals. I think its in Scotland.

Dont buy Birth, Death or Marriage certs through Ancestry or Find My Past. Its expensive, use the Government website. Local papers are also a good source of information. I managed to get a coroners report from a local paper. The official records arent kept indefinitely.

FreeBMD is a good site and you can cross match marriages for example using the references.

Edited November 24, 2020 by didcot

[Kris]

My mother did a lot of research into parts of the family tree several years back. At the time she used ancestry.com I believe that this was effective in filling in some of the missing gaps. It also helped being in contact with the relevant county records offices. We had recently passed them a lot of family documents to conserve (not something that they would normally have done apparently, however these written records went back to the 1400's so were considered to be of value). From these sources she was able to establish a huge amount about the family. She found out the one ancestor was working for GWR from very early on in its history. 

[brigo]

I subscribe to both Ancestry and FMP. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to build your tree on either I find Ancestry easier, they've been doing it longer and you'll get more hints from other people's trees. On FMP you generally have to message other users to look at their trees, while on Ancestry you don't. For parish and county records you may well find one site better than the other, e.g. in my research for Birmingham and Warwickshire then Ancestry are better because they have come to an arrangement with the local Family History Society. FMP were the first to get the 1939 Register, but that is now available on Ancestry. One downside to Ancestry is you sometimes get quite alot of results from the LDS (Mormons) transcriptions of parish records which not always very helpful.

Some certificates, Births 1837 to 1919 and Deaths 1837 to 1957 are now available at a reduced price of £7.00 as a downloaded Pdf.

I started doing the family history over twenty years ago and wish I had started much earlier when older relations were still around.

 

Brian

[didcot]

Also if you are looking for a burial site try emailing the local Cemeteries. I was looking for the burial site of my Great Great Grandfather. I had an old glass slide photo of the site, but no information. I emailed the Cemeteries around Croydon and Beckenham and found the information within hours. We visited and clean the area to find his wife and daughter were in the same grave. The Cemetery didnt realise the daughter was in the same grave, although the burial was recorded.  They are buried near W G Grace and Thomas Crapper!

[Rivercider]

4 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Before you sign up for a subscription service I suggest you try Free BMD and also Family Search.

If you make a note of what you find there you can then look out for free offers, usually at holiday periods, on Ancestry or FMP and fill in the details. Check if there is a "one name study" for your family names. I am in contact with several people who run these and even though I might not be related to some of then they can and are usually willing to help with information on the villages where they originated. In one case we found a family connection that had lasted for almost 100 years and nobody alive today knew any thing about it. Look on the web for any published family histories.

Thanks Bernard.

Using Free BMD and Family Search is how I made a start back then, with a few free offers thrown in when they came up. I did think of getting a subscription, but work and other issues meant I did not think I would have time to really do it justice at the time. I am now thinking I ought to get on with it!

 

Where would I find the 'one name study'?

 

cheers

[didcot]

7 minutes ago, brigo said:

I started doing the family history over twenty years ago and wish I had started much earlier when older relations were still around.

How true. I found that I had lots of questions when it was way too late. Ive been lucky I have attestation and account books for my 3x and 2x great grandfathers who were in the Grenadier Guards. Both around 200 years old.

[didcot]

 

These things are priceless.

[Rivercider]

8 minutes ago, brigo said:

 

I started doing the family history over twenty years ago and wish I had started much earlier when older relations were still around.

 

Brian

 

Thanks for the tips Brian.

Stupidly I too never bothered with research, or making notes when I could, then after my dad passed away in 2010 I made a half-hearted start.

Since then I collected odd photos and news cuttings as I found them. My mum passed away in September, and starting the search through her flat for financial paperwork has also unearthed the old family photos, so I realise I have missed another chance to talk to a family member about the past. I am thinking I now need to make a start,

 

cheers

[didcot]

You may well find someone on Ancestry who has already been exploring you family and is willing to share.

[brigo]

15 minutes ago, didcot said:

You may well find someone on Ancestry who has already been exploring you family and is willing to share.

But always double check the information if you can. Shortly before I started my tree someone else had done a part of it and made a fundamental error. I contacted him but he never changed it and subsequently about another 10 people have copied his error.

 

Brian

[tigerburnie]

It does help if other relatives have covered some ground, a second cousin who still lives close to our family roots on one side of the family has been able to get hands on with documents I have not found on the internet. I also found an old family Bible, with hand written accounts of each generation that owned it, this has been confirmed with official certificates, so I know I began on firm footings for the tree. It helped enormously when I stumbled on a titled descendant, Sir William Robbins born in 1608, he was relatively easy to confirm from today and it would seem anyone of that standing seem to have been written about, so tracing back from him and his wife (my 9th Great Grandparents who went to America and passed away over there) was a lot more straight forward as the Robbins came from a long list of Knights as well as the Throckmorton's(maternal line), where a Plantagenet pops up up in the 13th century.

[Nick C]

I bought my parents a couple of months subscription to Ancestry last year - they've then built their own offline record aded to from various sources. Certainly double-check everything, as others have said there are many people on Ancestry who will have already done part of your family, so you should be able to cross-reference between them, but we found a couple of connections that were uncorroberated (and so we've left them out for now unless we find more evidence later to back them up).

 

A big problem for us is that many of Dad's ancestors came over from Ireland between the 1830s and 1850s, and it seems that the records from Ireland from that era were destroyed by a fire in Dublin, so you have to go and search the individual parish records to find anything more - except that we have no idea which parishes!

 

What was particularly interesting was to find that some of Mum's family came from the same village in which they live now, 200 years later!

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, Rivercider said:

Thanks Bernard.

Using Free BMD and Family Search is how I made a start back then, with a few free offers thrown in when they came up. I did think of getting a subscription, but work and other issues meant I did not think I would have time to really do it justice at the time. I am now thinking I ought to get on with it!

 

Where would I find the 'one name study'?

 

cheers

If you google "Guild of one name studies" you should find some details. It does depend on somebody with the name you want being registered.

A bit of further information. Different counties have different systems.

Hertfordshire archives has "Hertfordshire names on line" which is free to search.

Cambridgeshire has a series of CDs with full parish registers. Well worth buying if you have more than a few people in one place.

Essex has a very good archive but you have to go there to find things.

Finding where information is kept can be frustrating at times.

There is an archive of mental hospital patients but only from more than 100 years ago. I found a relative by marriage who had been sent to Broadmoor for murder.

My grandfather was killed in WW1 but his wife had a daughter in 1920. I found the birth certificate but have been unable to find if she was adopted or any further information.

I researched a friend's family and found an illegitimate child that they did not know about and did find his history and that he died aged 11.

Bernard

[Barry O]

Once you get back into the 1600s FMP is not up to it.. but you can find  items in Family Search.

 

Biggest problem with all of them is trying to print information out easily..

 

Baz

[Reorte]

Despite a fairly unusual surname my dad's attempts at tracing the line back in his direction fizzled out in the early 1800s, they were all undistinguished agricultural labourers (and one miner). I can get back to medieval times on my gran's side though. If you're in luck and find some aristocracy in there you should be able to get a long way, and considering the timespans involved most of us will probably have some aristocrats in our past somewhere, if you can just get that far.