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

[ethelfleda]

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?

I love tracing my tree, I’ve met distant cousins from Canada, been in touch with distant relatives in Connecticut and I’ve managed to get some lines back to the 1700’s.

I have a bit of a stumbling block on my granny’s side though as her dad was adopted, but not officially. I have his birth certificate, his mum was unmarried and he was named Bob Smith, then at the age of 5 he appears on a census with the family who then brought him up and who’s surname, Jones, he was then known by for the rest of his life. I don’t know where he was for the first 5 years of his life. On the census he is boarding with the Jones family along with an adult called James Smith, who I’m guessing is a relative. I can find James Smith on the earlier census living with his family in another town, where bobs mother was from. But I can’t find any connection between the smiths and the Jones family. All very odd.

Also my gg grandad was Swedish. I got lots of info from his uk naturalisation forms where he put his Birthday down as January 28th but on his Swedish birth record it says 28th June. I’m not sure why he made himself older maybe it was so he could go away to sea. He also says on his naturalisation form that he has no siblings, but he has a brother, still living at that time, in Wisconsin, who’s descendants still live there today. I hope to get in touch with them one day I just need to pay a subscription to ancestry. At the moment I use the free access at the library.

I love doing family history. I find following leads on ancestry a very therapeutic pasttime though I often forgot where I started and why.... I have done ok on some lines (back to 1700s) particularly where other family members have done some research but very badly on others - illegitimacies are such a pain! Especially when a father's name then turns up on the marriage certificate and I am not sure whether they were the father or a later husband or just a fiction to seem respectable.

I don't get to do much on the ground research as family are very dispersed so have to rely on online sources. Does anyone have advice on dealing with Scottish relatives with common surnames? Ancestry doesn't seem to have full text for lots of the Scottish censuses. Or Jewish relatives with Czechoslovakian (Slovakian side) and Hungarian origins? The war, redrawing of country boundaries and my lack of those languages have left me somewhat stumped!

@JasperRising The Scottish census records are held by register house in Edinburgh. they are available to access through the Scotlands people website. They have been transcribed for Ancestry but they aren't always correct, I have an entire family apparently born in India according to Ancestry, but when you look at the actual record it shows quite clearly that they were born in Scotland. Scotlands people also holds all the birth marriage and death records for Scotland.

Thanks Linnet ! I have come across some interesting transcriptions in Ancestry but I think India instead of Scotland may win.

My tree contains a huge amount of agricultural labourers - very important for the economy at the time but not terribly exciting now. One of my ancestors was a pioneer in early photography and another was shot down by the Red Baron in WW2.

DH’s tree on the other hand is another matter. He is descended from virtually all the aristocratic families in Cornwall and we feel very wistful as we wander round the National Trust houses there and ponder how this could have been ours but for a quirk of fate!

Nico I certainly have heard of John Clare - he wrote beautiful poetry, mostly about the countryside IIRC. I love some of his poems - it must be the agricultural labourer coming out in me . . . . .

Find my past has the newspaper archives. You have to play around with it and try similar words as things get wrongly transcribed.

I have found family graves, we never even knew where my great grandmother was. It was unmarked but we are taking over the plot and having a small stone made.

Even if you don't use it long term then a site like ancestry is the best way to start.

This is all so fascinating. Can I just ask, how does someone get started in this? My family is mainly Irish but a big family and I wouldn't know where to start to trace it back.

TheDistantSky start with any certificates (birth, marriage etc) your family has and also talk to relatives to get as much detail as you can from them - names, maiden names (very useful!), birth/marriage/death dates and locations etc. This will give you some information to start searching from (plus if you're using internet resources they are often least useful for current generations). Jot the information in a rough family tree and then, if you're in the UK, find out if your local record office or library gives free access to Ancestry sources or similar - if it does go have a play there for free to see if you enjoy it before paying for a subscription! You can also then get software to build your family tree - either on a platform like ancestry or as s a separate piece of software.

A lot of UK record offices have family history groups who hold open mornings or days where you can talk to them - not exactly sure what they offer though as I haven't been to one!

Hopefully some one knows a bit more about Irish specific sources.

I started with dna tests as my only known biological relative, my mum, not only wasn’t sure who my dad was but also only had her mum and some half siblings. So I got various tests for me, my children and my mum. Luckily my dad’s dna results were just sitting there on most of the sites waiting for me with a great family tree, still a work in progress.

I’d love to do all the in person old school type research but so much travel!

Unfortunately birth/marriage/death certificates only began in 1837.

Before then you must rely on church records (not great If your relatives weren't too bothered with church or were into job-lot baptisms)

Again the census only really began to be useful in 1841.

After you've exhausted the online resources you have no choice but to go old school!

I’ve had an ancestry kit sitting at home for ages but not done it yet. I really should.
I don’t get as much time to research now but agree about the buzz you get when you visit the places where ancestors lived. You just feel so comfortable there like it’s the right place to be. Sounds weird. I’ve also experienced an affinity with a place before I even knew of a family connection with it.
Agree with previous posters to check other people’s work. Someone on Ancestry is not agreeing with my research despite me having done it the hard way at the public record office and tracking through original documents!!
The biggest wow moment I had was to hold my great great grandfather’s attestation papers when he joined the marines and I just thought he would never imagine that 140 years later his great great granddaughter would be holding these.

My biggest piece of advice is to think about what you want to know.

So do you want to go back as far as you can? Or find out details about someone's life?

Once you get back over 100 years expect people to have 8 or more kids so tracing their lives becomes unrealistic really or certainly not for the first few months!

Very boring on one side of the family but a colourful mix of dissenters and visionaries on the other side. However we do have a slade trader too...

I am a history lecturer and i jave not the slightest interest on my family tree, I have no interest in my ancestry beyond thos relatives i can remember from childhood. I reallt struggle to see the appeal of these endeavours, can anyone tell me what thry get out of it?

@MorvahRising My tree contains a huge amount of agricultural labourers - very important for the economy at the time but not terribly exciting now. One of my ancestors was a pioneer in early photography and another was shot down by the Red Baron in WW2.

Richthofen died in 1918, so I hope that's WW1!

I also have some very early photographers in my tree, it's fascinating when you can find photos they've taken for sale on ebay.

@ethelfleda - it's very difficult tracking a family tree back further the early 1800s unless you get really lucky. The official records start to dry up. Published family trees are only as good as the research, a lot on ancestry are quite poor - some of the american family trees I've reviewed have been very bad, lots of connections made to people with about the right name at about the right date but no real proof.

I can definitely recommend the newspaper archive. It's very satisfying adding to the story of the relatives you've identified.

Funkykingston - you have no interest in how historical events impacted on or shaped people’s lives 🤔

For me it fills in gaps that were bothering me more than I knew - which specific regions in Europe did my ancestors leave for the states and when and why. My oldest child prompted it, her paternal great aunt had done lots of old school paper research but it’s very difficult for many African Americans to get beyond a certain point and she wondered what further details dna testing might reveal.

I get way too much out of it, it makes me completely immerse myself in various (popular) history books and documentaries- I really want to know as much as I can about the individual direct ancestors and also the groups they were part of - from the early settlers on one side to the homesteaders on the other. It just makes it sort of personal? I also like to draw upon them when I’m struggling to do something/anything- if they could travel all that way and survive I can probably get through this day 😀

Dog oops, typo, of course it was WW1!

DH is also descended from Sir Eliab Harvey who captained the Fighting Temeraire at the Battle of Trafalgar. He was apparently a big gambler and drinker so I’m quite glad those traits haven’t been passed down!

FunkyKingston

I wasn't in the least bit interested in history at school, so finding out that one of my families were major players during the Wars of the Roses was mindblowing, and certainly gave me the push to read up a lot more about those times. My problem with the way history was taught when I was at school was that it was boring lists of facts and dates with no attempt to relate to it on a more personal level. When you make it more personal it's far more interesting. Wonder how many war memorials would be vandalised if the yobs doing it knew that one of the names was their gt grandfather?
I'm also fascinated by the reasons behind why some of my ancestors moved away from the areas where their families had lived for generations. Yes you can explain this by economic situation, and in the 19th C the railways made it far easier (but why, and how, would a family move 100 miles across the country in the late 18th century?) I was also surprised to see that at least one family moved from Kent to North Yorkshire in the 1860's in response to a newspaper advert, and there were regular ads tempting people to emigrate to Canada & N America.

I have had no luck on the German side of the family.

The English has been easy, going back to the doomsday book. As most of the family were titled their family peerage is available in many books.

My tree is full of knights and castles.

Funkykingston - you have no interest in how historical events impacted on or shaped people’s lives 🤔

Of course i do, but i don't think doing it via one branch of a particular family simply because they share my dna (possibly) is a particularly effective or rigorous way of doing that.

Imagine if that was one’s approach to sex, darling you’re simply not effective or rigorous enough 😀

This is a hobby, a pastime, a little escapism not worthy academic toil. It’s fun and it’s informative, adding to your personal body of knowledge about geography and conflict and history and religion as experienced by those you’re descended from.

I've done it. I was rather surprised to be able to get back to the 1500s for one branch of the family. Haven't quite established the exact route, but I may be very distantly related to a particularly odious politician (think Farage, but not). Lots of farm labourers who stayed in the same hamlet for generations - a hamlet so small it barely features on Google maps - and did nothing of interest except procreate, it would seem.

Seems I'm about as British as they come - haven't been able to find any history of immigration at all, and a great uncle did his DNA test and was told he was 100% British too. I'm somewhat disappointed not to be more exotic

I have looked out of interest on ancestry - I was lucky in that for both sides of my family, some distant relative had already done the work in both cases and traced the trees back for hundreds of years.

However, I think I must have the most boring family tree ever! My dad's goes a little like this:

John [Surname], Ag Lab, [Nottinghamshire Village], Married Anne, son of John [Surname], Ag Lab, [Nottinghamshire Village], Married Anne, son of John [Surname]... Continue on and on for 500 years. The most exciting thing was when John was occasionally Joseph or Thomas.

My mum's was very much similar, substitute in a different village and surname. The most exciting thing there was occasional incest.