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.

Thanks OP! Yes, gtx3 gather appears to have not been married to his child's mother. I have searched area they lived in + her home county (according to census returns)+ his home county (ditto). No marriage, no banns. Checked surnames only in case he has been economical with the truth about his name and similarly nothing.
It could well be that he too didn't have married parents. It's one to return to.
I have got my dna kit thingy to do and send in so it will be interesting to see what the results bring. Hopefully they'll confirm that my research has been correct!

@FamilyTreeBuilder
Thank you for clarifing that. First wife got an inkling something was amiss, after she had a baby... she wrote to his first wife's (my GGM) place of work asking about her. The two wives had a back and forth letter correspondence for quite a while becoming friends. In the last letter the second wife is taking her case to court, then there are no more letters sadly. I would be interested to know whether GGF got prosecuted. This all happened in a town in the north of England. Any ideas how I can acccess the information or is this something you can do?

As an aside I photograph graves for Find A Grave it's a lovely hobby.

@FamilyTreeBuilder He pops up on port registers in Sydney, New York, Shanghai - and this was the 1860s

Wow! I want to know more about this man! That's incredible. He could've written a book

@MyShrivelledGnarlyFinger oo interesting Can anyone get involved? Thanks

Thanks @FamilyTreeBuilder

[quote Baubletree]@MyShrivelledGnarlyFinger oo interesting Can anyone get involved? Thanks

Thanks @FamilyTreeBuilder[/quote]
Yes. Sign up and put the radius you are willing to travel. I make a point of not photographing graves which are before 1960 out of respect for relatives who may not be happy seeing their loved one's graves on the site. If I'm asked to photograph a younger grave then that's fine by me.

www.findagrave.com

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer 🙂 Will definitely dig more!

@FamilyTreeBuilder - I hope you don’t mind me picking your brains again. I have signed up to Ancestry, and made a start on the family trees for mine and dh’s side of the family. My mum has given me some information which has got me going on her side of my family, and she thinks she has information for my dad’s side (he passed on in 2000), and is looking it out.

I am having more trouble with dh’s family, especially his dad’s side. I have a name for dh’s paternal grandmother, but I can’t find any birth records for her at all - and Ancestry hasn’t got any hints either. Do you think my best move would be to get a copy of their marriage certificate, in order to get the names of his parents, in the hopes of finding a thread I can pull?

I was having the same problem with my dad - I can’t find a birth record for him (he was born on Malta, I think, while my grandfather was posted there), but my mum remembered my grandad’s first name, so I could get on a bit.

@FamilyTreeBuilder Can I ask how you write up your findings when you're doing short commissioned pieces, like the ones you said you were doing before Christmas? Is it simply a family tree, or do you add narrative?

A few years ago I started trying to put together a family tree. Can university records be accessed/searched? My grandparents were both at Edinburgh University after the year 1900. I. think other siblings of my grandmother also went to university. Thank you for such an interesting thread.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius yes a marriage certificate would be a good starting point. It will at the very least give the name of his father and the ages of the couple when they married, allowing you to calculate a rough year of birth. One thing to consider is whether she may have been married before - so is marrying as Jane SMITH but was born as Jane YOUNG, for example. Overseas birth records are tricky. Few are online, there will be records in Malta somewhere but you'd probably have to go there to access them (or pay them to do it for you)

I usually provide both. Little mini trees as you read through the report which helps keep people straight about who is who. You really need the narrative for the explanation - most people who request a report aren't used to looking at documents and registers and picking out key pieces of information so you have to guide them through it.

Depends on the university. There aren't central records online for searching for graduates. Some universities have their own database - venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/Documents/acad/2018/search-2018.html - is the one for Cambridge. You can also sometimes search graduation lists in newspapers. Most universities will confirm by email the dates and subject studied.

On the Findagrave thing - yes, anyone can get involved. Go to www.findagrave.com/ and register. Tell them where you live and then you'll be able to access the photo requests, the little camera at the top and it will tell you what people are looking for locally. You can also put your own requests in, I recently got a photo of a grave in Detroit for a project I was doing.

Another thing you might enjoy is transcribing records for Familysearch - you need an account with the site first, then select get involved and indexing. All sorts of different records which need to be digitised, not just in English.

Great thread

@FamilyTreeBuilder That's so interesting. Thank you. How long does it usually take you to pull something like that together?

My mum has sent me some more information today - a family tree she started to make, with some more names and dates on it, which will be useful, I think.

But I learned that my dad had a younger sister - she only lived 18 months, but I never heard of her until today - and now I wish I had taken more of an interest sooner - before dad died.

@theflippantpenguin it really depends what the client has asked for. If it's a basic "start with my granny and go back three generations", it's about a day's work using the major websites like Ancestry and the newspaper archive. The more reports you do, the quicker you get at writing them up.

Thank you. This is such an interesting thread.

Hello, I hope it’s ok to ask a question. I started researching my dads family tree because he seemed to know so little about it ( I knew pretty much everything about my mum’s). I traced the family surname ie great x 3 grandfather to a village in Norfolk. This somewhat surprised me as the surname is strongly associated with the northeast. I live fairly close the the P.R.O which is great for free access to Ancestry etc, but can’t go back earlier than about 1830 . I wonder whether the family were originally reivers but am wondering how I can go about tracing the family back to the 16th century. Any suggestions welcome!

Well the simple answer to 16th century is that you probably won't be able to.

The further back you go, the rarer the records and the more difficult to read. The reason you are getting stuck in the 1830s is that this is when civil registration of births, deaths and marriages started in England and Wales. Census started in 1841.

That's not to say records don't exist before that because they do, but many have been lost over the years. You have to remember that 1522 is 500 years ago - it;s a loooooong time. If your family are particularly prominent then you may find them in the Peerage website, or in published ancestries/genealogies of prominent medieval/Tudor families in Google Books - and as these often all use the same uncorroborated sources, should be treated with caution. If there are coats of arms, you can start researching heraldry and see how coats of arms change over time through marriage etc. There are also things like manorial court rolls which go back even further BUT they are written in secretary hand, in abbreviated Latin. Some have been translated and transcribed so search online - no idea about the coverage from Northumberland.

Do not start assuming reivers just because the records don't match family stories - it's more likely the family stories are wrong.

Thanks family tree builder. My family isn’t in any way prominent , they were farmers. My father had a very sketchy knowledge of his family, which is ironic as he was a historian and actually did family research for others on a paid basis, but I think the issue is there was divorce, and also illegitimacy amongst his near ancestors and he didn’t want to turn that rock over. He thought maybe there was Scottish ancestry ( the surname can be Scottish) which I eventually found but in a different branch, the Ulster Scots you mention upthread who came back to Paisley to work in cotton mills in the early 19th century and eventually moved to London.
Anyway, I thought maybe parish records would yield some further information.
Would a trip to Norwich and a look at the Norfolk records be worth it?

Which is your favourite British bird and why?

Bit random.

Can I pick more than one bird? We have a local peregrine falcon who sometimes lands in the garden and he is magnificent, I like him (or her) very much. And a couple of years ago a family of tawny owls had chicks in a hollowed out tree not far away which was really special.

But my favourite is the robin. Such feisty little birds.

Robin is a good call. You did say to ask you anything, so I was keen to know if a geneologist was more disposed to penguins, parakeets or pheasants.

As an aside, who is your favourite dictator from the last 1,000 years?

@FamilyTreeBuilder, thank you for such a fantastic thread. I've made a note of all your tips and will be going through my family tree to try to fill in gaps and corroborate my entries.

I have two queries that I'd love to help with, please, if they pique your interest.

My OH has made a start on his tree and we've done quite well with some branches, but hit an early dead end with one of his grandparents. They were born in South Africa to parents from Ireland and Scotland, and finding records is really difficult. The Irish great-grandparent's name seems to have been changed when they moved to South Africa, too. Think O'Malley to Malley. Do you have any pointers that might help us get beyond the great-grandparents, please?

Another mystery is that a great-grandparent on the other side (in England) was married and divorced before marrying into my OH's family. We think there may have been a child from the first marriage, but the child seems to disappear and both parents emigrate without the child. The child was initially with relatives. We've had no luck finding a death certificate, and Ancestry has flagged some records for children's homes (I think possibly with mental or physical ailments) but we can't corroborate these. Is this likely to remain a mystery or could we do more?

Thank you very much.