Geneology.... is this anyone's hobby or pastime?

[50Running50]

My Dad recently visited and we spoke s bit about his childhood and family which peaked my interest a little bit!

So I spent an otherwise boring Thursday evening up into the small hours looking up family on a website! Fascinating and I think I've got the bug!

Anyone got any experiences?

It's so interesting. I had a relative who was electrocuted building the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

My granny's oldest sister emigrated to US before she was born & they never met ! I've traced her family & am now in contact with her daughter

brokenharbour You should be able to find this out via census / 1939 register etc. or get a copy of your grandparents birth certificates from the GRO. You can order them online.
If you want to pm me with the info you have, I'll see if I can track them down and get you going again.

It's amazing what you all discover!!

I've got quite far just on my own memory and then by using available information

Definitely addicted now. My gran always claimed we were related to Baden Powell. So this spurs me on,just to see as she was a bit of a dreamer!

Between my uncle, my mum and I, over the last ten years we have done a lot of research into our family history. Every few months something new is found out which never fails to be a surprise. I have visited a couple of places where ancestors lived, one of which turns out to be only a mile from where one of my living relations is.

Yes, amazingly since moving to the US and having more time on my hands I started this and discovered Unknown ancestors had lived in the same part of the US before becoming part of the pioneer trails and founding a small town which is still going. I am fascinated, but DH who doesn't particularly want to drive for ten hours to a back end of nowhere to view town is less thrilled! He has done did family but they all lived in the same place for ever!

I've done this for a few years now, and every so often get really hooked into it. It can while away an awful lot of your time! For me it's more of a winter hobby.

I've just renewed my ancestry.com account which I share with my PILs. I also dip into various other online sources as and when, and use the gravestone website for images to clarify some data.

It's so fascinating. I do get sidetracked a lot too.

My parents are keen genealogist and I've recently got into it.
I've being working on my husband line because my parents have done all the easy stuff on my line.
It's really interesting.
One of the most notable things I found was 2 little children from the same family died on the same day. a baby and a 4 year old killed in some kind of accident.
Also I have an ancestor who died in the Irish famine. It's recorded that she died of "Want"
DH's family have a habit of marrying their cousins and I've discovered that it's been going on for years and I also found a guy who married his dead wife's sister.

When you have exhausted all avenues for your tree, try DNA matches - even more addictive, and understanding it really stretches your mind. It takes an initial outlay for the test, but I recommend ancestry.com and My Heritage as good sites to start with and there are free sites such as gedmatch where matches are shown.

One g-g-g-g-aunt married and had her first and only child at 56 - which merited an extra note in the records.

I always kept this in mind - to not trust statistics and use a condome.

I'm already landing a trip to wales to the place my gran and her family lived

Does the trail go cold if looking outside of the UK?

No, I think US records ate even better and we have records in Canada and NZ as well.

I find genealogy a fascinating and addictive hobby. Some of my family branches are easier to research than others, one in particular have lots of immigration records and a slightly unusual name which is a mixed blessing as you have to research all the various spelling variations.
As well as the interesting stuff you can also find out desperately sad stuff too. My great great grandmother died a couple of days after a difficult birth, leaving a very young toddler and twin babies, a few days later, one of the twins died from severe malnutrition at eleven days old. My great great grandfather remarried a few years later and emigrated to Canada where his second wife and new baby also died in childbirth. Finding out this really affected me, more so because this wasn't just names and dates on a paper but my great grandma (the oldest child) who was a relative that my family remember very fondly.
On a more lighthearted note, I also found a newspaper story about a relative on that branch in the mid 1800s who was arrested for jumping from the dress circle of the theatre in an attempt to get onto the stage, however he landed in the orchestra pit and broke his leg.

I found initially just by browsing through a telephone directory in the 1990s a branch of family who had believed that my great grandfather had been washed up dead on the shore of northern Ireland in 1905. In fact he hadn't and he had left a wife and children in northern ireland, had moved to Scotland, changed his name completely and then got married again and had several children there including my grandfather.

My mother broke the news to my grandfather and he was overjoyed and went to northern Ireland to meet his half brothers and sisters that he had known nothing about the year before he died.

Doing family history research can be a fascinating hobby and you can find out so many interesting things.

Ooh yes. Very addictive.
The amount of illegitimacy is surprising considering what a social taboo it was. People just seem to have gotten on with it most of the time.
Lots of posh and rich people in MILs tree. Money seems to beget money and free people to be creative and interesting.
Conversely poverty continues grindingly for generation after generation.
Sad stories of women dying in childbirth or shortly afterward.
Many people dying of consumption.
The disabled and blind being clapped away in institutions.
5,6,7,8,9 people living in two bedroom houses.

Advice: don't believe everything you find in other peoples research. It can give you pointers but try to consolidate by finding your own confirmation through actual records.

I agree with confirming all your findings by looking at the official records and double check with as many sources as you can before adding the info to your tree.

A couple of years ago, I loaded some new family tree maker software onto my computer and forgot to tick the privacy settings so basically my entire tree was available on ancestry to anyone who had a link. Several people added big chunks of my research to their own trees before I sorted it out.

But how did they know that my research was accurate and definitely related to their relative?? You do see lots of people claiming to have tens of thousands of people on their tree, as if the aim is to have the largest number of ancestors, but I prefer to have solid, confirmable facts and records about a smaller number of people and to look into their history, where they worked, where they went to school, visit the church where they married, things like that. It's much more interesting than a long list of "could possibly be related, has the same name and date/place of birth so I'll add them anyway"

@TheSpottedZebra can I just say thank you? I've spent hours on Find My Past today. My dad died when I was 9 and that side of the family is very splintered. I found out so much. I also solved the mystery of who my grandmother was married to before she met my grandad (US military man from Texas ) That site is fantastic. So thanks again There's also a free 14 day period for anyone who wants to try it which I've signed up for and will no doubt forget to cancel

You're very welcome @MakeYourOwnFuckingTea - glad it was helpful helpful to you and that it helped clear up some stuff. I don't do genealogy myself but my mum does - she too lost her father very young and knew little about that side of her history. So I hear A LOT about it all...

Ancestry is the other big site, they too have have a free trial period and sometimes do free weekends. Family Search is another, and they are sometimes especially good for USA based people. However they're run by the Mormon church and the ethos behind it is baptising people after their death, so you may not may not agree with that!