Family Tree - anyone doing theirs ? How're you getting on ?

[mojomummy]

I've started to do ours ( mine & DH) & am a bit frustrated with the general lack of info from our families.

Is anyone else tracing theirs ? how are you getting on & where are you finding the quickest, easiest & cheapest ways to get info ?

Thanks

hi mojo me and dp have been doing his family tree as his birth father died when dp was just 6 weeks old so he didnt know anything about him luckily his mum gave us an address of one of his uncles who had already done the family tree but there is a very good website www.1837online.co.uk its a family tree site and you only pay for pages that you use so it is a lot cheaper than the other sites we have been doing the tree now for over a year and we are back to the 1700s hope this helps if you want anymore infor feel free to contact me

Hi tjacksonpf, 1700's ? wow ! I have been on the 1837 & 1901 site, but having trouble tracing a great great great grandad. Have looked at ancestry.co.uk, but I think it's very expensive - around £69.95 for a set period.

Am thinking I will have to visit somewhere where all records are held (is it london?) but not sure where/how to go about it...any clues ?

i started mine recently and found out that most had been done, back to 1826 in fact!! If u look at genereunited and type in the few names that u know there may be someone who has already started their tree and its only £9.95 to join for a year there.

Ive been doing mine since mid feb 2006....

doing VERY well (i think).... all my GG, grandparents, almost all G3, and LOTS of G4.... on one line i even get back to G^8 (well someone who im related to genese reunited has ) who irnonically lived a short walk from where i do now... tho infact almost all my branches sseem to stem from within 5 miles of my front door!

Its fasciniating... i use family tree maker 2005 (part of the who do you think you are package which i got from PC world, and by ordering it online first and collecting ti friom the store made it £10 less so only £20 in total)

Combine that with genes reunited and ancestry.co.uk for the census.

I have lots of links to pretty massive family trees (only 350ish on My tree so far).... if i added all the links on id have nearly 20,000 people already.... thats in less than 2 months!

BTW my G^8 are back to 1650..... got lots of my own independant links to 1790ish

WE have gone back to around 1460 with one branch of dhs family. The family went from Scotlanf to Ireland, to America at the founding of New Amsterdam, to Canada when the war of independence happened, to India, back to Canada and finaly back to scotland!

I have done mine back to 1802 - recent times compared to others here I see.

I have to say, I have not found a single website to be of any real use whatsoever although the war grave commission one did show me what was inscribed on my mother's cousin's memorial.

The vast majority of my information comes from 3 sources: The Family record Centre in Islington, London, the Cornwall Record office (my ancestors are Cornish) and certain graveyards in Cornwall where many are buried.

Mojomummy, would this \link{http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/frc/visits/visits.htm\website} help you at all to go about visiting the Family Record Office in London?

If you want answers to specific questions you are not sure about, I might be able to help you out.

Smugly i have one branch of mine back to 1066!! only because member of family wrote book on it!!
Website ideas sound great for other side of family who were a bit scandalous by sounds of it!!

furthest back I have got it 1599 (in Amsterdam but born in France !).

I have been doing it for about 25 years - it is much easier now that you can do a lot online - particularly if you can get back to the census times (1851-1901 available at ancestry.co.uk - costs about £15 for a month - you can blitz it !).

If you are stuck and would like some advice just ask.

another place to ask for advice it rootschat.com.

I don't think there is anything at the Family Record Centre now that is not on ancestry.co.uk (not that I am plugging them !) - apart from the 1841 census (and maybe some missing ones like south Norfolk in 1861 and parts of Islington in 1851 - to name a couple that have affected me).

Which area are you looking for and what are you stumped by ?

I was wondering if any of the family tree software is especially good? I got some very inexpensive software through my credit card/Sunday Times. It's not easy to type the info in. I am thinking to just type all the info I have into Excel and print out the trees that way, it would be easier (or would it?).

one of the current "computery" magazines has reviewed all the common family tree software packages this month..... i know cause my Daddy pointed it out to me... tho didnt pay attention to which magazine it was 9COULD have been PC answers as he regularly reads that but may not be!)

Family tree maker 2005 came out by far the best... with a VERY high score (i think 80%ish) whre as others were 20% / 30%

At first i didnt like it that much but now im getting the hang of it...

In PC world you can get the who do you think you are package for £30 (£20 if you do it online, + free delivery or collect in store within the hour)

you also get a CD rom of English parish records, Scottish parish records and 1851 census.

It also helps you subscribe to ancestry for a month free (which everyone gets free anyway!) + DVD episodes of who do you think you are)

A REAL bargain IMO.... + you can do loads on it....

Well worth £20 especially when you dont even need to pay the petrol to get there!

Oh and a MILLION times easier than doin on excel... when it draws out my family tree in as small as readibly possible it takes 16 pieces of a4.... make it nice and even and it becomes 81 pages i cant even begin to imagine drawing that out without a family tree package designed to do just that!

British Origins is quite good. Also genuki and family search.org. Don't forget freebmd and freecen.

MB and throckenholt - very impressed you've gone back so far! How did you do it btw?

Helped by the fact that the family have a rareish name (several as a matter of fact). many were rich, and left wills etc. Some of dh's family had done a lot of the leg work.

Other branches of the family have been traced back to Lituania in the 18th Centuary, and arrived in the UK. One branch were Barons in Poland. All rattling good stuff.

My folks are dead common and most threads die out in the mid 1850s

have been doing mine for a few years very very addictive ! found ancestry best web have found most of best info there but also church of later day saints which is free really useful, has lots of english old parish records which is great for babtism records ect. also use family tree maker very importent to have good programe to begin with especially when your tree is very large. Good luck

I'm in Scotland and I've managed to get a lot of information recently on my family through Scotlandspeople.gov.uk I decided to make a start on Dh's family and knowing that one of his ancestors had a very unusual name was so useful as I just typed in the name and he appeared on the screen. I've managed to trace this unusually named ancestor and his wife right back to the early 1800's to a tiny Scottish Island. So far Dh's family and most of mine are all contained in Scotland so it's been fairly straight forward.

Although I do have a branch in my family who went to the states. I managed to trace them because American records are easier to trace as they don't have the 100 year rule on census records, I did that a few years ago.

Another branch of my family came from Norway but so far I've only got the marriage of the Norwegian guy marrying a Scottish girl. Haven't managed to trace him back to Norway yet but I'm working on it.

I love doing my family tree, I've been digging for info for about 16 years and as Throkenholt said it's so much easier now that records are available online.

So you've actually looked at original documents? I wish I could do that - maybe when the children are older. I'm pretty much restricted to online research atm.

I need to review what I've got so far. My great-uncle has been recently gone into a nursing home and I've been meaning to get some stuff to him for a while now.

DG - my ancestors are also from Cornwall and Devon (maternal line)!

Forgot to say for mojomummy, Family History societies are quite good too; just google FHS and the county you're looking for.

oh and just last week i took me and my charges to feed the ducks.... had to walk through the church and my little 5 year old was reading the graves and found loads of my ancestors...

then told his mum (my boss) that he "met" all my family in the church..... she wondered why they were all there.... had to explain they were dead!

Mojo - just sent you an email

throckenholt - very impressed you've gone back so far! How did you do it btw?

very slowly ! Ihave visisted many records offices over the years - in the early years you could actually look at the original registers - now it is much more microfiche and microfilm. And much much more available online now. ("online" did not exist twhen I started researching !)

As far as software I just use word and excel - I find the others very irritating because they are so slow to enter info into and take up lots of space with unnecessary words when printing it out (eg Fred was born on the bla of bla in wherever, England. He was married on ...... - when you could do that with a couple of brief lines !)

Family Tree MAker is a very good piece of software. My DP has been using it for years and I started my tree about 4 years ago. We have now merged them ! It is great because you can scan documents, certificates, photos etc and it is all kept in each person's record.

Also a useful web site is www.freebmd.org.uk (can't get links to work today). Not complete yet but they are adding to it constantly. Has anyone mentioned www.genesconnected.co.uk - part of Friends REunited. I've had several distant relatives contact me through it and have been able to add to my tree as a result. Plus I had one chap with a lot of time on his hands actually do a bit of research for me, which was great.

Linnet, perhaps \link{http://longstrom.com/norwaylinks.htm\this page} may be some use to you. I found the Danish demographic database very helpful - Denmark had censuses before the UK did.

Wow ! I'm very envious of all your good progress !

I've got stumped by my granny's grandfather - apparently he was born in a workhouse (not sure where) & is the illegitimate son of a maid & the son of a grand house. I've found his date of death details & worked out he was born in 1869, but cann't seem to locate him on the census. granny can only remember his 4 daughters names, which I am also unable to trace & he had 4 sons -but no-one knows their names.

I was hoping there might be somewhere that has the marriage certificates you can view (rather than use all your credits up e.g. 1837.com) so I could trace the maternal & paternal line.

I'm going to go through the sites recommended here this evening, so you never know what might come to light

I'm putting everything on genesreunited as well & have joined up. Haven't made any connections yet though...still only been a fortnight

I did my dad's line many years ago then hooked up with a 7th cousin in Canada who had got all the way back to 1666.

At Xmas I started my mum's line and my dad's mum's line and have got back to the late 1700s on most of the lines.

I have been using ancestry and the mormon's site- they seem to fill in each others gaps- and also lostcousins.com. I signed up for a free trial to familyrelatives.org which allows you to view transcripts of the actual certificates, but it doesn't support my version of Mac OSX or my browser, so I'm stuffed.

It is highly addictive and I am spending hours on it!