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.

Brill, thank you, will email you

In the Independant today there is a free cd rom with a 30 day subscription to Ancestry.co.uk and in tomorrows there is a free 224 page reference book - haven't tried the cd yet but looks like it might be handy!!

Zc - will definitely buy independant today. Ofcourse I will also read it through... Sounds like a good deal tomorrow too.

ZC - just emailed you the info you needed - have fun

I've traced back quite a way and I have sat on wintery nights and told the story of our family to the kids till they know it off by heart then I told them it's our special story and they can now add their own story to that and pass it on to their kids. They love it and it's like a sacred tale when we snuggle down to tell it - it's got loads of details like how one relative left his country because of famine and one was a maid and got married to the gardner at the castle etc.. one saw a gohst and how everyone met each other and got married.

Does anyone know if you can view marriage certificate details for England online? Scotlandspeople gave loads of info - parents names/dob/occupations etc just from buying credits but I can't find anything for uk and it's driving me mad!!!!!!!!

Have just got the 1881 census on disc. Need to get the reader loaded on my PC but once that is done if anyone wants anything looking up, feel free to email me.

antlxstew at yahoo dot co dot uk

You can search the UK 1881 census free at ancestry or at familysearch.org a site run by the church of the latter day saints

English and Welsh - you can't see any of the registration certificates online - you can see the indexes at ancestry.co.uk and freebmd. The only place you can see the certificates is at the original registre office (or church - or county records office where most of them are deposited).

You can order them online from the \link{http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp\General Register Office) using the index number.

Scotland's registers started later (1855 I think) - but they are all online - for a fee.

oops - General Register Office

Zephyrcat, I don't think you can access the 1881 census info for Scotland free anywhere online. When Familysearch claim to have the UK census - NO IT ISN'T! It's only England and Wales. Try your local history section at the library - ours has the 1881 Census on CD.
There is a site which has free census info, have a look at\link{http://freecen.rootsweb.com/cgi/search/pl} It is gradually being built up by volunteers from the 1841 census, then the 1851 one, so you may be lucky.
\link{http://www.rootschat.com} is helpful. You can get good advice and also sometimes someone from an area not local to you will offer local knowledge or do a look-up.

oops - freecen and rootschat

Did any get the Independent yesterday with the free CD "Family Tree Maker"? Do you know if you can export data from Genesreunited to Family Tree Maker?

Sorry to sound like a total fool here. But I'm very new to all this and have been trying really hard to piece together my father's family tree and keep coming up against blanks. So I want to go back to scratch. Where would you start if you were right at the beginning with nothing to go on but your father's name, the first names of his mother and his father's name?

I've only just started so I don't know much, but I've just been playing around on GenesReunited.co.uk typing names into their search thingy, and it has come up with loads of matches - i.e. someone from another part of the family has already input the data so I can just link into theirs. Try doing that?

Imaginaryfriend, I would get hold of the marriage certificate of the grandmother/father (If you know roughly when they were married I can get the info for you to send off for it if you haven't got access to them) Then once the certificate comes through you have the father of both people and the address at time of marriage, you can then start researching the father - try to find his birth certificate etc...

The main aim is to get back to a person born pre 1901 so that they can be located on the census.

It can sometimes be really straightforward and you end up just going back along each decades census finding lots of new ancestors. But all it takes is to have a very common surname or for them to lodge, join the forces, emigrate and it all goes pear shaped.

I'll tell you why it's particularly hard but why I'm particularly interested. My father's family were ALL killed when a bomb fell on their house in the second world war. This included his very young wife (my dad was 18 at the time and away in the RAF) and their 6 month old baby. He was so traumatised by this he didn't remarry until his 50s to my mum so was a very old dad and he died in 1990. He spoke very very little about his family and I only have what my mum tells me to go on. They were based in Yorkshire, in a tiny village called Grindelford (I think), but I don't know when or where his parents married, only their first names. I'd love to find a newspaper article about the bombing itself because it was apparently quite a freak accident - the bombing had happened in Sheffield and my father's house was hit by a random bomb the aircraft dropped on their flight home. Is there anywhere to trace newspaper articles?

WriggleJiggle - you should be able to get the info in gedcom format which you can import into most family history software.

newspaper trace - your best bet would be to ask at the local records offfice for the area.

Also here

with nothing to go on but your father's name, the first names of his mother and his father's name

go to ancestry.co.uk - look up BMD - try and look for your fathers birth registration - should be the quater he was born (they split into 3 month quaters). That should give his mothers maiden name.

Then work back from that date to get the parents marriage - use the rarer of the two surnames to check on - then cross reference on the other name when you get a likely candidate.

Also you could try and work through the death indexes and try and find their burials - which should give their age so that you can then go and find their birth registers.

Once you get back to 1912 (I think) they don't put the mothers maiden name.

You will get index references that you can use to order copies of the original certificates (at £7 a go) which will give you - for birth - mothers maiden name, and for marriage both names of the fathers of bride and groom.

Zephyrcat - I am Scottish and all my siblings and cousins have a surname for a middle name so I guess it's fairly common here. Also the forenames seem to switch about from generation to generation so I have nothing but Andrews or Roberts going back fecking years. At least in the future it'll be a bit more interesting namewise with Kylie, Noah etc.

I have numerous examples of John son of John son of John etc.

Or William or James. Once for variety I have Benjamin son of Benjamin (for 4 generations).

Thank you so much throckenholt. I'll try those options. Where does your mn name come from by the way?

Imaginaryfriend - are you able to give us their names or would you rather not? There is a Grindleford in Derbyshire - is this the same one? No mention of a bombing though.

Yes I can give names, and yes that is the same Grindleford. My mum said the address that was bombed was Westbourne Rd. in Sheffield so I don't know now if the Grindleford my father used to mention was where he grew up before the bomb or after IYSWIM. My mum remembered some names though: My father's father was Harry (maybe Harold) Lodge and his mother was Violet Isabel Lodge (nee Thornhill). My mum thought they would have married somewhere between 1860-1900 and that the house would have been bombed anywhere in the 1940-45 range. It was flattened by the bomb and only Violet Isabel was left alive, I think she was trapped under the rubble for some time before she was found.

Oh yes and my father's name was John David Lodge although he was always known as David. He had 2 sisters, Mary and Margaret and 1 brother Jimmy. There was a huge age gap between my dad and Jimmy - when my dad was born Jimmy was just getting married. My dad was born in 1919 my mum thinks.