AMA - I'm a professional Genealogist / Family Historian.

[FamilyTreeBuilder]

Just that. Have my own business helping people look into their ancestry, the history of their houses, help with DNA tests , ancestors who have emigrated etc.

What an interesting job.

My mum's side of the family comes from Ireland. I only know very basic details (original address of my granny's family, dates of birth) - how easy is it to find family history from 1930s Ireland? I've never had time to look into it and have always just assumed it'd be difficult, for some reason!

Also, have you ever done the family tree of a 'stranger' (a paying client I mean) who's turned out to be related to you many generations back?

Interesting. Which sites do you recommend for people doing DIY family trees?

Do you make a living or is it supplementary income?

Oh wow, I've always thought being a Genealogist would be such an interesting job. I've done quite a bit of research into my family history but always get stuck when it comes to my paternal grandmother & her family as she was born and raised in the Seychelles (around 1920) before later moving to Kenya (where she met my Grandad). Any ideas where I could start looking for any info? X

I love researching but never sure where to start, particularly for my DH. His grandfather migrated to the UK from Jamaica and there is so little to go on and I’ve no clue where to start trying to trace. Any ideas?

Erm you don't happen to be any good with iFamily, do you?

Because I desperately need to merge two databases (of thousands of people, many without birth dates), and I've been trying for years to master merging and never quite managed it... I've been doing my best to follow the instructions, but nope.

How interesting- I spent ages trying to find info on my dad (never met him) but he just seems to have disappeared - do you have access to better records than things like AncestryDNA? Is AncestryDNA any good or just a con?

How can I find information about Sri Lankan relatives?

@CarrieMoonbeams

What an interesting job.

My mum's side of the family comes from Ireland. I only know very basic details (original address of my granny's family, dates of birth) - how easy is it to find family history from 1930s Ireland? I've never had time to look into it and have always just assumed it'd be difficult, for some reason!

Also, have you ever done the family tree of a 'stranger' (a paying client I mean) who's turned out to be related to you many generations back?

Things are always tougher within 100 years because of privacy laws. These vary around the world - in the UK for example the census isn't released for 100 years, in the USA the rule is 72 years as the 1950 census is just out. Ireland has births up to 1921, marriages to 1946 and deaths to 1971. A great starting point is the official Irish records site : www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/. All free to search and see the original records. Going back in time in Ireland is harder as there was no 1921 census, census prior to 1901 have been lost, and parish records are patchy. And that's before you get into the issue of various spellings of surnames. However there is a lot of interest in Irish genealogy and you might get lucky.

Never found someone i'm related to yet but it;s a matter of time, if you have a white British background we're all related to each other at some point!

@AlexaShutUp

Interesting. Which sites do you recommend for people doing DIY family trees?

If you don't want to pay, familysearch let you start building a tree free of charge. Ancestry is the main paid for site, and if you'd prefer to have your tree offline, I quite like Family Tree Maker www.mackiev.com/ftm/ or Roots Magic.

@PastMyBestBeforeDate

Do you make a living or is it supplementary income?

I'm not doing it full time, but i've always only worked part-time anyway. It's like anything self-employed, you have peaks and troughs of demand. Up to Christmas was really busy with people wanting reports for Christmas gifts, January is slower.

Placemarking! I'll be back!!

I've vaguely thought about trying to trace my paternal side (aunt has done lots on the maternal side) but it's hard to know where to start and I have a very common surname and my grandfather was born and lived in London, so needle in a haystack!

I know that he was one of 'lots', and he turned his back on the rest of his family as they were criminals and he wanted to live a straight life.

I know his own dad died when my grandad was 4 from falling off a ladder but that's all I've got to go on. Grandad is dead and I assume most relatives who knew him are too.

Where would I even start?

Ooh to add to the above I think I've got granddad's marriage certificate so that might contain his father's name? Need to dig it out

How interesting.
I inherited loads of paper work from my grandparents who had done loads, and I am fortunate that they both wrote everything down - lots of memories and details about their personalities.

I am struggling about how to organise the physical stuff. Am thinking a box with lose plastic wallets in might be easiest?

Also- any tips for notes taking- I am terrible with it. Love finding out little stories, but I really should print them out to be kept.

Going to answer the next three questions about non-European ancestry together.

A really good starting place for any country is the FamilySearch wiki. www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Main_Page. Once you are on the country page you will be able to see whether records are held locally, centrally within a country, or whether anything has been digitised. To be honest, for Kenya, Sri Lanka and Seychelles you are going to struggle. There is not much online at all. This is really down to demand. The big genealogy sites will digitise the records which most people want to see, and as the market is driven by North America, that's mainly European. Facebook groups can be a fantastic resource as you can link up with other people looking into the same country and share information about what's available. Often it's a case of pinpointing a specific village or area and finding a local expert.

Jamaica is a bit easier, and there's a good guide here. www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/overseas/how-to-find-key-jamaican-family-history-records/. However within a few generations you will probably hit the barriers of enslaved people who were not named and again hit a brick wall.

DNA tests can help link you with people you are genetically linked to and share information but DNA testing isn't a big thing in lots of parts of the world so the risk is you don't match with anyone closer than about a 6th cousin.

So in a nutshell - join a Facebook group or other society for people with a similar genealogy.

@iFamilyWoes

Erm you don't happen to be any good with iFamily, do you?

Because I desperately need to merge two databases (of thousands of people, many without birth dates), and I've been trying for years to master merging and never quite managed it... I've been doing my best to follow the instructions, but nope.

Never heard of iFamily - sorry!! The genealogy standard is a .gedcom file. If you can output/save in that format would that help?

@CandyLeBonBon

How interesting- I spent ages trying to find info on my dad (never met him) but he just seems to have disappeared - do you have access to better records than things like AncestryDNA? Is AncestryDNA any good or just a con?

I think you're confusing two things. Ancestry DNA is the DNA testing part of the site, the main Ancestry site is just the records. You can research on Ancestry without doing a DNA test, and vice versa. DNA testing is not a con but your results and whether it helps will depend on who else has tested. In my family not many people have so I don't have any close matches. I'd say in your case you would be very unlikely to find your Dad directly, and you'd have to go through the matches working out who is mother's side and who is father's side and going from there.

The Ancestry site is the best for records in my opinion and worth paying for, but I use it every day. There are other sites too - FIndMyPast has records which Ancestry doesn't, and I think does a 2 week free trial. FreeBMD and FreeCEN are projects to transcribe for free access. FamilySearch is brilliant too. British Newspaper Archive is brilliant for adding detail to people's lives as you wouldn't believe the trivia which was reported in papers in the past.

@MumstedInadequate

I've vaguely thought about trying to trace my paternal side (aunt has done lots on the maternal side) but it's hard to know where to start and I have a very common surname and my grandfather was born and lived in London, so needle in a haystack!

I know that he was one of 'lots', and he turned his back on the rest of his family as they were criminals and he wanted to live a straight life.

I know his own dad died when my grandad was 4 from falling off a ladder but that's all I've got to go on. Grandad is dead and I assume most relatives who knew him are too.

Where would I even start?

You start by writing down what you know. Full name for your granddad, approximate year of birth, when he died. Do you have his death certificate? You also know roughly when his father, your great grandad died, roughly. You could have a look on FreeBMD to see if there are any births/deaths in the London area which fit - this is free of charge.

Someone falling off a ladder and dying may well have been reported in the paper, as will criminal activity. One thing I'd caution - I worked with a client recently who had been told a similar "freak accident" story about the death of an ancestor and it turned out the poor man took his own life. Always take family legend with a massive pinch of salt. It may be true, it may not be true, it may have been a different person and the story has been misremembered over the years.

@MumstedInadequate

Ooh to add to the above I think I've got granddad's marriage certificate so that might contain his father's name? Need to dig it out

Yes it will. And it will (or should) tell you his occupation and whether he was dead or alive at the time of the marriage which helps you narrow the window for a death search. Also look at the witnesses to the marriage as these were often relatives too.

(Scottish marriage certificates are MUCH better as they give details of the mother too, and the date of the parents marriage, if they were married)

@grafittiartist

How interesting. I inherited loads of paper work from my grandparents who had done loads, and I am fortunate that they both wrote everything down - lots of memories and details about their personalities.

I am struggling about how to organise the physical stuff. Am thinking a box with lose plastic wallets in might be easiest?

Also- any tips for notes taking- I am terrible with it. Love finding out little stories, but I really should print them out to be kept.

It's really what works for you. A lever arch binder with a poly pocket for each person or generation could work, or a separate box or whatever. As long as you understand the system that's the main thing. I'd also always scan/photograph all documents to have a digital backup.

From a keen amateur - been working on my own tree and helping other for a good 15 years now - two questions:

How did you get started and what qualifications do you recommend?

Has the advent of DNA changed your work?

@FamilyTreeBuilder yeah I've done all of that - built an extensive tree in ancestry.com and did the dna thing - traced right back to 1500s in my mum's side (turns out my mum was NOT her father's daughter so that's a bit of a dead end!) but there isn't much about my parternal grandfather nor my dad. Interesting though.

Apparently I'm related to Charles 1st by marriage!

@newrubylane

From a keen amateur - been working on my own tree and helping other for a good 15 years now - two questions:

How did you get started and what qualifications do you recommend?

Has the advent of DNA changed your work?

I got interested when my dad's uncle produced this massive handwritten family tree in the late 80s when I was a teenager. I was fascinated by it, still have it now.

In terms of qualifications, the best place to start for newbies is the FutureLearn course www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy. From there it really depends what you want to do. If it's just about broadening your knowledge then sites like Ancestry and FindMyPast put out loads of stuff on their YouTube channels. There is also specialist stuff on DNA from people like Debbie Kennett and Maurice Gleeson which is great.

For people who want to do it professionally and join one of the genealogist associations, the two main places are the Uni of Strathclyde who offer a MSc and the IHGS - Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies (both fully online) Uni of Dundee also used to do a postgrad Diploma in family history but they appear to have stopped offering it.

I've been doing my family tree for years. Hit a brick wall with ine branch as the names used by people (and some facts) just don't match any official records.
Gtx3 grandfather lived with a woman and had a child. On all info it says they're husband and wife. They had one child. Wife died and he remarried 2 months later as a widower. No marriage or banns for first relationship.
On marriage cert he says his father is Edward. No family with father Edward and his name as child exists in the county he says he's from (checked census returns).
I have a likely family but different names. Guessing it's a case of tracing all of them on records to try to validate identity?