AMA
TheGenealogist · 24/06/2021 07:51
@groovergirl
The Irish records site is amazing. Yes lots of records have been lost over time but what they have is all free to view.
Find My Past (you can sign up for a 2 week free trial) is also good for Irtish records, they have things like the Petty Sessions records which aren't just crime but all sorts of low-level complaints - things like John Smith using bad language in front of James Brown and being admonished. Can help pinpoint where a relative was living.
TheGenealogist · 24/06/2021 07:53
@EachandEveryone
People change their names all the time for whatever reason - most common when they arrive in a new city or country or something. For you to be 18% Jewish that would indicate that your grandmother's parents were BOTH from that community too, not that you just have one very distant Jewish ancestor.
Is there any possibility that she was adopted into your family or something?
TheGenealogist · 24/06/2021 07:57
@TheSockMonster
My Mum (her daughter) tried to trace her missing family but couldn’t find any record of either of the missing parents, bar their names on the children’s birth certificates.
The children (we think 5 in total) were very well catered for financially, more so than you would expect from their parents’ business, but there does not appear to be any record of this money, or the business itself (a shop) either.
Where would you start with something like this?
1911 census, 1939 register for the parents and the other siblings - the 1939 register for England and Wales in particular is great as it has exact birthdate.
You could also look into wills and probate to see whether there's anything there. Local newspaper reports too maybe? Or ship passenger lists if you suspect they went overseas.
If people leave their lives and change their names then they can be very hard to trace.
FortunaMajor · 24/06/2021 07:58
Thank you very much OP. Some great ideas there.
For those looking for helpful links, I've found Family Search incredibly useful.
www.familysearch.org/en/
TheGenealogist · 24/06/2021 08:04
Family Search is great - and entirely free. For English/Welsh trees, FreeBMD and FreeCen are great too, although not completely finished.
Ancestry and Find My Past are the two big paid for sites, personally I prefer Ancestry but there are some records available on Find My Past which Ancestry doesn't have. Find My Past does lots of free trials though. I also have a subscription to Forces War Records and British Newspaper Archive.
The genealogy community is very friendly, usually if you post on a Facebook group or the genealogy board on here someone will do a quick look up for you if you haven't got a subscription to a particular daabase.
PawsQueen · 24/06/2021 08:07
I am stuck on my grandparent on ancestry on one side and can't get any further, want to log in for me? 
I find it fascinating. My mums side is very olive dark skin, brown eyes, black hair. Always presumed "white British". Ancestry found me her great grandad who was black, born in Barbados and came to Dundee and married there. It only clicked when I looked at the surname (he's obviously chosen it himself and I can't go any further back than him) that he was a slave
TheGenealogist · 24/06/2021 08:15
@PawsQueen
I find it fascinating. My mums side is very olive dark skin, brown eyes, black hair. Always presumed "white British". Ancestry found me her great grandad who was black, born in Barbados and came to Dundee and married there. It only clicked when I looked at the surname (he's obviously chosen it himself and I can't go any further back than him) that he was a slave
That's amazing, Paws.
There's a really good series shown on PBS in the US called Finding Your Roots. The guy who presents it is African-American and they cover a lot of DNA stuff and enslaved ancestors.
Did you get the story of why he moved to Dundee from the Caribbean?
Flaxmeadow · 24/06/2021 08:31
Sometimes people get missed off, @mysterymile. Lots of my ancestors are gamekeepers and estate workers on big Highland estates, they'd be off doing whatever and living in bothies which the enumerators never got round to.
The enumerators were not the ones who chased the census up. They were the ones who transcribed the forms into the census books. Clerks in an office.
The ones who chased the census up and then returned the forms to the enumorators were census takers. They were very efficient, chasing up rural areas and even the homeless in large towns and cities. In some cases helping people fill in the forms. Very thorough and it would be unusual for a household to be missed
TheGenealogist · 24/06/2021 08:36
Very thorough perhaps but still missed people. Or spelled their names wrong. Or wrote Albert James when the person was James Albert. Census takers / enumerators for a larger part of the census went on what people told them. And people lie. 1911 is the first census we have where people filled in the forms themselves in their own handwriting.
Every census there are people missing because they deliberately ensured they were left off, or because they were off half way up a mountain in a bothy, in a fishing boat, camping in the woods...
Flaxmeadow · 24/06/2021 08:46
No they appear to have been really efficient. The Victorians seemed to have liked paper shuffling, book keeping, bureaucratic efficiency and the like
I have English ag lab ancestors in barns and tents in the middle of nowhere on the census, and also a sister of an ancestor is homeless on the street in a big city, poor girl. She is on the 1841 census. Also some are shacked up in a back yard and their "home", if you can call it that, is even described. I suspect they had been living in the multi occupancy house attached to the yard but sneaking in at night
DoingItMyself · 24/06/2021 08:56
@mysterymile
They say 48% of my dad's dna is from Roscommon. That was more specific than I expected. And he's definitely my dad, which apparently he hadn't expected.
louloulemons · 24/06/2021 09:09
Can I ask about military records?
I have a great uncle who was killed in the D Day landings. Because he had emigrated to Canada and was in the Canadian army, I’ve found his whole military file scanned in and available to view online. It’s amazing! Complete with handwritten letters from family members and even a scan of his pocketbook with a bullet hole through it!
A great uncle on the other side of my family was on a ship that was bombed in the war and perhaps was a POW before he died. I wrote off to get his records and got a single piece of paper with basic details I already knew. I’m desperate to find out more for my grandfather who has always wanted to know what happened to his brother.
Curioushorse · 24/06/2021 09:15
I have a relative who is involved in researching an aspect of DNA (deliberately being vague. Apologies!). He swears that up to 10% of people (it varies by age and region) are not fathered by who they think they are i.e. their mum lied/was unsure about their biological parentage.
I think he said they estimated that figure was probably accurate going back centuries too.
How far does that knowledge impact on you?
IdblowJonSnow · 24/06/2021 09:20
I'm keen to know more about my mum's dad and his dad who were both in the merchant navy. My great grandad was killed at sea on the SS Volo off the coast of Egypt.
I'd like to know the countries both travelled to during their careers. Any idea how I'd find this out please?
PastMyBestBeforeDate · 24/06/2021 09:27
I'm utterly stuck on my Irish ggg grandparents. They just have Ireland as place of birth in the census and inconsistent ages. I have their father's names from a wedding certificate and that's it. The names aren't especially unusual. There won't be any travel records given the timing and destination.
Any suggestions other than DNA although even DNA might be useless this far out?
PrincessNymeria · 24/06/2021 10:14
Me, my sister, mum and dad have all done DNA tests.
The confusing thing is, my sister and I have nearly 50% shared DNA with each parent, about 45% with each other, but we both have ethnicity estimates our parents don't?
My sister has over 45% "English" DNA, neither me nor either of my parents has any, my dad and both have 75+% Irish, Scottish and Welsh, and my mum around 60%.
I have a small % of "Mesoamerican" DNA which neither of my parents or sister share?
Any ideas how that works, or where I could find that info?
Also, I saw above that 18% ethnicity indicates a grandparent with that ethnicity, my mum has around 20% Scandinavian DNA, and nearly 20% Eastern European, does that mean that DNA comes from more recent ancestors than I'd assumed? I'd put the Scandinavian in particular down to ancestors with large amounts of viking DNA, breeding other ancestors with large amounts of similar DNA, passing it on, and on?
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