I have to tell somebody

[Prokupatuscrakedatus]

Nobody in my family is even remotely interested, but I have to tell somebody:

I just found the marriage of Peter Heckmann and Agnes ter Boven on 04.02.1680.
They are my 9th great grandparents.

@Pixiedust1234
Until civil records were introduced (started by Napoleon) and standardized (for want of a better word) first names had to be used, curch records were written in the local dialect - the language people used in their daily lives.
So a Margarethe could be a Griet, Greet, Gretken, Girt etc.
Plus the further back you go the less standardized the writing was. (Hochdeutsch as the language of records, books, new etc is fairly new)

Plus my ancestors (Lower Rhine and Frisia) had no heritable family names:
The Frisians up to 1810 had their own naming 'laws' (I have a copy of the certificate of my ancestors "nametaking' in December 1811 in French - his siblings took different names, that was fun) and for my Rhinelanders the name of the house they lived in was often more important than the family name and the children could be known under both, one or the other (one ancestor married a widow and took the name of her late husband, then was widowed, married again and took the name of the "house" of his wife).

That's incredible and very interesting. Congratulations on such a momentous find. I would love to do this myself.

My brother in law is similarly fascinated by genealogy and provides us all with folders of information relating to the ancestors. We are all equally uninterested lol! But that is a fabulous find.

@username8888
That's why I told it here - I would not inflict my hobby on friedns and family. 😀
The really intersting stuff is when you start to add local history, living conditions, places etc. to your records to lend substance to your findings.

@missingingredient
Future learn has an "introduction to family research" course (free) which teaches everything you need to know if you search in the UK

Thank you, thats the sort of thing I find utterly fascinating

My mother was told her grandmother had died leaving her grandfather with 3 children, they subsequently ended up in the workhouse.

When I started researching into the family tree, I discovered the truth was he had abandoned his family, the 2 older children had gone into the workhouse, and the mother had lived in a room with the youngest

When I told my mum, she was quite angry and confused about why anyone would want to hide the truth.

@Prokupatuscrakedatus thank you. I will absolutely have a look.

Barskits, so true - I think they just get so excited by the possibilities. I'm looking at my 4xgreat grandparents at the moment and one branch lived around Bedale/Catterick and surrounding villages. An American lady has enthusiastically added all her research concerning the family to ancestry including people baptised before they were born and married after they died. Also deciding that an aristocratic gentleman farmer is definitely part of the family despite none of the others having nary a pot to piss in.

I often think the one plus about the current trend for yoonique names for children will be the advantage to future genealogists.

Chatting to a historian some time ago, they mentioned the number of people who emigrated who changed their names when arriving in their new country, for so many reasons - escaping their past, ease of spelling and pronunciation, immigration officials not being able to spell.

In Australia, people sent out on convict ships would often change their names and other personal details when

Sorry - posted too soon
In Australia, people sent out on convict ships would often change their names and other personal details when they'd served their sentence so they could have a fresh start, and many convict records were removed from Australia's archives by individuals embarrassed by their convict ancestry, literally pages torn out of record books.

@Prokupatuscrakedatus what website do you use if you use one for your family tree documenting and also which website do you use for tracing the marriages etc?

@OnABreeze
I started by visiting archives (25 years ago) and then, of course, the mormons (for their own reasons) microfilmed chuch records and documents and made them available to the public. The transkriptions are done by volunteers with very little knowledge of naming customs, languages, skripts etc. They did their very best, but those transkriptions can only be used as hints and have to be verified by looking at the originals.
I document my findings offline using documentation software, which can cope with the naming traditions. I can attach copies of all my findings, interviews, fotos, background info etc. and can do lots of lovely printouts nobody wants to see apart from city archives. There are lots available.
Softwarelist

It’s not about getting into a ‘philosophical debate’ as you put it at all.

And yes, of course people can trace their grandparents etc, and it doesn’t matter whether their grandparents (or other family members they’ve grown up with and to know ) are biologically linked or not, as ‘family’ doesn’t have to be blood linked.

However, when it comes to tracing back ancestral lines through the generations, if someone isn’t the biological descendant of those particular ancestors, then there’s not much point in that research. This is why it’s best to do a dna test to find out who your real distant ancestors were.

Does anyone know when they are going to update the BMD index? I mean 2007 is the latest date you can search on. Surely this can't be it ??

FreeBMD do you mean? I think it is all done by volunteers, so whoever is available does the transcribing. There are also a fair few gaps (and of course the more people use it the more transcription errors are found), so they might be trying to sort those before moving into very recent records.

Also, going back to the point somebody made about parentage, I don't think it matters whether you are genuinely related to the person or not. I am tracing the tree of the man who was my grandmother's first husband. He died, and she then married my grandfather and had my dad & aunt. She and her first husband also had children, my dad's half brothers and sisters, so I am related to them, even if not to their father. I want to trace his tree in memory to him, because if he hadn't died, I wouldn't be here.

Thanks! Wow, you must do lots of work. Well done!

Out of interest do you watch Heir Hunters? I'd imagine it's a programme you enjoy...

@Herefishy
I' am not in the UK, so no.
But the the Wikipedia article makes it sound fun.

The genealogy bit of Heir Hunters is fascinating. The ambulance-chasing bit, not so much imho.

This is so fascinating! I'd love to do mine!! Where do I even start though? Any tips?

That's so cool!

@caz198917
Gather family papers, fotos with names and dates, talk to elderly relatives.
And then work your way back through the generations.
The FutureLearn course teaches you how to research in the UK (free)

As far as fotos are concerned:
I have a foto of 25 people, I recognize 2 and there is noone left alive to tell me about the others.

Thank you, I may have hit a dead end already. All my grandparents have passed. Xx