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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask if you’ve researched your family tree...

111 replies

ethelfleda · 21/11/2018 17:38

Did you find it relatively easy or not?

I appear to have reached a stumbling block... my maiden name isnt that common and managed to go back to the 1700s
My parental grandmother is German and I have no idea how to trace that branch
My maternal grandmother was welsh and surname was Jones... my maternal grandfather (also welsh) was an Evans!

Just interested to see how well others have done and did you uncover any interesting stories or anecdotes from your research?

OP posts:
VeryFoolishFay · 21/11/2018 21:58

My great great grandfather went to Lewes Prison for 2 years in 1874 for attempting to bugger a cow. He and his wife separated some years later (after more children!) He was indicted 20 years later for buggering a donkey, although it never went to trial. He spent most of his adult life in and out of court. And he finally killed himself in 1903 by throwing himself under a train, gruesomely reported in the local paper.

WhyDidIEatThat · 21/11/2018 22:03

😯😯😯 partly envious of that ancestor story veryfoolishfay but I’ll pretend to be fully horrified

FullFatCoke · 21/11/2018 22:05

Yes, and I found out that three of my great-great-great-grandmother’s siblings converted to Mormonism in the mid-1800s and moved to Utah to become polygamists!

We found this too ! There's a little town and a high school named after our ancestor in Utah. I didn't know until we found him that a lot of Scottish people became Mormans in the early days of the Church and emigrated.

WhyDidIEatThat · 21/11/2018 22:08

I’m really sorry, my (maternal) ancestors killed lots of Mormons in the Mormon wars 😕

Dockray · 21/11/2018 22:13

DNA tests linked me to a distant cousin in California who is obsessive about dna and has tested loads of other distant cousins. It's been really fascinating to see the various tiny bit of DNA that we share. Our common ancestors were born in 1730 and it's amazing that we are still tied to them after nearly 300 years.

I've recently had a breakthrough on my maternal line thanks to a scribbled note in the margin of a non conformist baptism record and found that I have ended up living just a few miles from where my gggg grandmother was born. I grew up on the opposite side of the country and had no idea when I moved here about the family history.

If I could go back in time I would shake ggg grandfather who just listed Scotland as his place of birth in the census. I want to know whereabouts!

Burlea · 21/11/2018 22:19

My cousin has researched our family, great great grandfather was from a wealthy family was engaged to a daughter of a lord, GGGF came to our small town on holiday and met a lady off the boats and married her. He was disowned by his family and friends. He had a younger sister who was a dwarf she was sold to the circus. GGGF rescued her (re bought) she became a money lender but cheated lots of people and was sent to Australia in chains.

Osirus · 21/11/2018 22:21

I have very strong Romany roots too! Pretty much most of my father’s side is Romany and the stories I’ve discovered are rather colourful. Going back far enough I have links to a few lords and knights. It’s incredibly fascinating and also very sad at times too.

I recently took the DNA test and my Romany line was confirmed tracing a percentage of my DNA back to northwest India, where the Romany Gypsies originally came from.

Fruitbatdancer · 21/11/2018 22:24

On my dads side I’ve gone back to the 1500’s where he was a base born (bastard child- as per church records! And only lived about 5 miles from where I do now. Have actually been to some local churches and found family names on plaques from the 1700’s.
My mums side is fraught with difficulty - my great grandparents weren’t married (such scandal!) and there is family legend of prostitution and murder! All in the east end of London. I’d love to know more but lack of marriage (and obvs Facebook!) make it difficult to put things together.
Not done the DNA thing but considering it so following with interest!

WhyDidIEatThat · 21/11/2018 22:33

Has anyone else retraced ancestral migrations or visited birth/death places? I’m really keen to go to Scotland and Ireland especially (I’m in England so no excuse not to) and, I dunno, see what that feels like.

SamanthaJayne4 · 21/11/2018 22:35

I am descended from a couple of Celtic kings and a many times great uncle was a pirate! Grin

Random18 · 21/11/2018 22:40

I would really really like too.
And I know so little.
I will do it at some point but does it always cost a lot of money?
And have many people done it in Scotland?
It seems I need to pay to see 1911 census? Whereas in England it is free?

WhyDidIEatThat · 21/11/2018 22:45

That ScotlandsPeople site gets really expensive after a while

WhyDidIEatThat · 21/11/2018 22:47

www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

RomanyRoots · 21/11/2018 22:55

I have an ancestor who is listed as born in Scotland and nothing else.
I could guess at an area, but not from a reliable source and i'm not going to pay for a slim chance.

YouBetterWORK · 21/11/2018 23:12

I only got so far back with mine, thought my family name is quite unique I'll find lots. Not so, further back you go the spelling changes a bit, then another bit, around 1800ish came to a standstill. There is probably more to find but with the name spelt goodness knows how little chance of me finding it!

I'd love to find something really interesting about an ancestor, so far it's just names and where they lived.

takemebacktoLondon2012 · 21/11/2018 23:22

I found out what happened to my Mums long lost Uncle and discovered she had nine cousins she knew nothing about - found out when and where her parents married - she had no idea mainly I think because her Mum was pregnant with her at the time - same was true for her Mum , and her Mum , and her Mum - very short pregnancies run in her family!

i managed to trace Mums grandmother back to Edward I but the thing Im proudest of is I managed to find my Dads half sister and introduced her to him and his brother - just in time as my uncle died the next year and my Dad is about to turn 90 so time was of the essence

WhyDidIEatThat · 21/11/2018 23:32

I love this thread, don’t know many people in real life who understand how endlessly interesting family trees are.

onthenaughtystepagain · 21/11/2018 23:50

To research other countries a good free place to start is familysearch.org , that's the massive Mormon site based out in Utah.

Beware of taking others' work without checking it, eg the hints on ancestry, some are crazy.

WhyDidIEatThat · 22/11/2018 00:01

Yeah ancestry keeps trying to tell me I was born in Austin TX three days before I was born in England 😂 I have my birth certificate, why does it think I need hints about myself?!

FullFatCoke · 22/11/2018 00:10

I’m really sorry, my (maternal) ancestors killed lots of Mormons in the Mormon wars

See, I didn't even know about the Norman Wars! Off to Google

Quizshowaddict · 22/11/2018 11:59

*WhyDidIEatThat Wed 21-Nov-18 22:33:26

Has anyone else retraced ancestral migrations or visited birth/death places? I’m really keen to go to Scotland and Ireland especially (I’m in England so no excuse not to) and, I dunno, see what that feels like.*

I visited a little village in Northumberland where my gt grandmother's ancestors came from. I felt such a strong connection to the place. Probably helped that it's a beautiful part of the country too. I'd move there in a flash if I could. I didn't know where gt gran was buried but found her grave within minutes after stopping at a church in another village that (at the time) I didn't even know she had a connection to. Almost felt like she was drawing me there.

I've visited a lot of places my ancestors lived. Britain is a fascinating place at the best of times, and it's nice to have an excuse to go wandering round quaint places you might not otherwise have thought of visiting.

200 years ago, one of my mum's ancestors and one of my dad's lived about 5 miles from each other in Somerset. Eventually two people from different parts of the country got together and I'm the result. What I find so fascinating is how my ancestors have roots all over England yet debunked the myth that before railways they didn't travel much! (To be fair, there was a lot more travel afterwards).

Nomad86 · 22/11/2018 12:17

My ancestors owned a castle. Then gambled it away. DH says I'd have made a good lady of the manor, too.

newrubylane · 22/11/2018 12:23

Yes, I've been doing mine for many years. Started with my mum's side, which was all very local and I knew lots about from my mum. I got back into the 1700s with that.

I then struggled with my dad's for a long time because neither he nor his siblings had much knowledge at all, and they got their names muddled up on each side of the family etc. My dad found an old friend of his mums who was able to point me in the right direction, and I eventually tracked down my grandma's long-lost half-brother as a result.

Have since made good progress on all branches and recently had a DNA test done. the results weren't all that exciting - I'm pretty much entirely British, nothing much exotic going on in there. However, the Ancestry connections it provides are helping me to confirm various relationships, and happily a lot of the tricky work I had to do on my dad's side has been confirmed.

But weirdly I've had very little confirmed on my mum's mum's side at all, and ancestry has also thrown up a second cousin who has family from the same village as me, but our trees don't match up at all, so I'm now embroiled in yet another mystery - and have gone full circle back to the branch of the family I first started with!

newrubylane · 22/11/2018 12:26

@Random18 - 1911 census definitely isn't free in England...

There are sites where you can search for free, but you just get a list of results. You can't view the records without paying (unless I'm missing something)