Researching your family tree

[VoluptuaGoodshag]

Anyone done this and what juice did you find out? Also, how do you go about finding out the more interesting stuff? I've done quite well at getting names, dates of birth, marriages and deaths but there is nothing to tell you what the person was actually like.

I have found a few scandals in family tree, is that juicy enough? The sort of stuff that Census records reveal. One of DH ancestors was estranged from his siblings. I have contacted distant cousins and they were shocked to find out that there was this long lost eldest brother, they had loads of info on the family and it seems like this brother was thrown out of the family & his entire existance denied.

My great-grandmother told her children that her mother died when G-g'mother was 10, she (G-gm) had to raise her baby brother. No other siblings... except that Census records very clearly show that G-gm had an older half-sister, who married, had kids. But G-gm never told her children, why was she ashamed? Big mystery!

I found the black sheep of my family through a Google search on the surname and birthplace of a hymn-writing minister to whom I am related. (He was transported for 14 years for stealing a waistcoat, a pair of socks and some malt).

The census returns give occupations - sometimes there are records related to those occupations that might help you to put flesh on the bones.
And you can investigate what might have caused your ancestors to move from one place to another by finding out what was going on in the place they left.

i found out that my nan's mother was born in india
i use genensreunited and im hooked . i have credits to look at the census' and records too , really interesting stuff.

Hiya - I'm in the process of trying to do this just now but am finding really difficult and don't really know where to go next!! I have discovered from other family members that my Great Great Grandmother had a child with the Laird of Aboyne but she was forced to marry someone else because she was actually the Laird of Aboyne's maid soit didn't look too good!!! Would love to find out lots more about that!!!

Great story, zephyrcat, but if it was hushed up at the time it's unlikely to appear in official records.

Can you get access to all census information from any year and area from Genes reunited? I joined a while back but didn't look into the site very deeply.... I would need census info from Scotland.........

have you checked out the 1901 census that's quite interesting, i can't find any info on my family at all though

Fleshing it out with census and other records helps I've found family members in prison accused of sheep-stealing, in workhouses, having a fiance die between the banns being called and the wedding date and then having a baby 6 months later. Plus the original church records sometimes have notes in them like the 4 year old who died playing on the back of a cart and fell off. And the couple who had (I think) 11 children die before the age of 18 months before the twelfth survived. It all goes to build up a bigger picture.

Plus reading social history books is good -- I've found that some of my ancestors lived in what was reputedly the worst slum in Victorian London, and read about Bedfordshire farm workers in the eighteenth century, and so forth and so forth.

It helps if you are looking in an area that's had oodles of helpful researchers who've indexed things in the past, but in any event if you go to the actual county record office you'll find all sorts of fascinating records that aren't in the online sources.

Also, for the branch of my family I know most about, I've traced back and then forward again, trying to establish the whole extended family structure spread over several nearby villages (with occasional branches moving off to somewhere farther-flung). I think I've got a lot more out of that than I would have got from tracing just my direct line.

Zephyrcat - Scotland's census records are only available on scotlandspeople.gov.uk, although the 1841 census for Scotland is also available on Ancestry. Scotlandspeople also has the marriage/birth/death certificates and they are different to the English ones so give you much more info - a marriage cert tells you the bride and groom and both their parents AND the mother's maiden name, so you can go a long way with one certificate!

Thanks AlienEars I will have to go off and have a look - I've got sooooo many loose ends that I'm at a loss with! Do you have to pay to view the cencus info on there?

Scotland's People is the Scottish records site. And have you looked at the Statistical Accounts? It's also worth joining Family History Societies for areas where you have ancestors - they can be very helpful.

lemonaid, one of my relatives lived in one of the worst slums in Victorian Liverpool!

Whoops, cross-posted with AlienEars. Yes, you do have to pay for Scotland's People.

I got bit by the geneology bug a few years ago. A family grave dated back to famine times (I'm in Ireland)and I just wanted to be able to understand who they were. So with the help of some elderly aunts and local parish records I soon had a wealth of info. Putting it in a family tree became fascinating and in a sense very humbling, I now have it hanging up - I got a caligrapher to do it for me - and its something everyone comments on. Now have to do DH and its shaping up to be every bit as interesting.

Yes, you have to pay for the credits - I think they are quite sneaky as you do a search and get a list of results, so it's 1 credit to see each page of that and then 5 credits to see a particular certificate/census page. Every time I have used it I have ended up with 3 credits left and don't want to waste them, so end up buying more...

They also put a time limit on the credits (I can't remember how long, it might be a week) so make sure you know what you want to try and find out before you pay your money!

Has anyone got a link for England's census'?

ancestry.co.uk has a lot of census stuff. You do have to pay for that, but if you go for the UK only membership rather than one of the world memberships they keep trying to push at you then it's not bad value.

Free 1901 census here

To clarify: not actually free to view the page images, but free to search.

Yeah Genesreunited is a fantastic idea. I had an email last night from someone on a different branch of my tree and we were able to link the two up together, it's a great time saver. I'm definitely going to delve into it more once I've a bit more time on my hands and see what my Irish links are. So far I've got a whole load of ancestors who were farm workers/labourers/cotton workers and bekery owners. One branch of the bakers emigrated to Rhodesia as it was known then and became bakers to the governor there and baked a cake in the shape of a crown for the royal visit (the late Queen Mum).

My Gran was one of 12 and 4 of the kids died in infancy. How awful and common was that!!

Thanks alienears - Ijust did a vague search and it said I needed to pay £6 for enought credits tosee the results so I tihnk I need to get all my exact dates in front of me so i'm not doing it too randomly. Think I'll go and renew my genesreunited membership as well while I'm at it and start digging again!

Maybe I should look up a typing course while I'm at it!

Can you upload GEDCOM files to Genesreunited?

What is gedcom? I've just seen it on the genesreunited homepage saying 'upload gedcom' (I'm guessing that means you can use gedcom files on GR)

I had a stroke of luck when looking into dp's mothers family tree, we just put our details on genes reunited and someone contacted us, they were a very distant relative, and kindly sent us a detailed family tree that she had researched.
It revealed that dp's mums auntie was actually her sister who her mum had had young and been brought up by her grandma, does that make any sense? lol

right so how do you start a family tree, unfortuantely a lot of my relatives have dies so would be starting off with very limited knowledge would it be possible to do it>??