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Original poster

family tree, can anyone help?

100 replies

cheeryface · 18/10/2006 21:25

i am pretty clueless really. i have been to all the sites recommended in past posts on mumsnet and i have paid a fiver on genes reunited to look at records.

thing is they don't really give me any info.
tried looking up my great grandmothers death certificate but all it tells you is there age at death which i already know anyway.

so, how should i be going about this? it's something i have always been curious about but i don't know how to go about it!

OP posts:
hauntymandy · 18/10/2006 21:30

you can apply for a copy of the certificate.
My mum has copies of alot of our families..birth death marriage etc.
Also look on the census
post a name on here..we could all be related!!!

Original poster
cheeryface · 18/10/2006 21:39

my great grandmother was Annie Gidman...anyone

OP posts:
zephyrHellcat · 18/10/2006 21:43

Are your family from England? Only asking because if they are Scottish it is sooo much easier to trace people!! I'm trying to find DP's family with very little to go on and can't get anywhere... it's so frustrating!

Original poster
cheeryface · 18/10/2006 21:53

well, i believe my great great grandfather was from scotland, that would be annies father. how would it be easier?

OP posts:
zephyrHellcat · 18/10/2006 21:56

If you go to a site called scotlandspeople.com, you can pay £6 for 30 credits i think it is and you can look up births, marriages, deaths and cesus records and it gives you the full entry - e.g. a marriage record will show who got married, the date, where they got married, their Father's names and occupation and their mother's name and maiden name so you can use those to go back the next generation. I started with not much info and got back to 1840 doing that!! If you need any help just give me a shout

Original poster
cheeryface · 18/10/2006 22:04

ooo thanx for that

OP posts:
minder34 · 18/10/2006 22:09

cheery...do you have any idea of date/place of birth? I have a full subscription to ancestry.com so can look-up for you.

DumbledoresGirl · 18/10/2006 22:11

Cheeryface, are you able to get to the Family Record centre in London? I found out most of my family history there. Alternatively, if you know where your ancestor lived, you can go to the local county record office and look through records there. Regretably I have managed to find nothing new at all online. And the money you have to pay to look is an absolute outrage.

zephyrHellcat · 19/10/2006 10:30

DG if you go to the faimly record centre can you get to see certificates/records with full information as opposed to the 'logs' that come up on genes reunited?

With dp's family we need to get some more certain inf before paying out for certificates that may be the wrong people!

DumbledoresGirl · 19/10/2006 11:09

No ZC. You have to pay to have certificates. But I am not sure what the info you get on Genes Reunited is like. At the FRC you see the indexes which usually give you enough info for you to be reasonably sure you have the right person. Plus you can cross reference info by looking at other indexes.

zephyrHellcat · 19/10/2006 11:17

Thanks dg - sounds like the same thing as you can access from genesreunited. When you do a search, you get the results split in to quarters of a year, so you choose which quarter and then get a list of names... e.g. for a birth you get surname, first name, middle initial district registered and mothers maiden name.

With our limited info alot of it is guesswork though and is getting costly and frustrating!!

Original poster
cheeryface · 19/10/2006 11:20

minder34, i believe i am looking for annie Gidman nee rodgers born in 1960. not absolutely sure she was born in england though, could have been Scotland.
how much did you pay for full subscription? i'd feel a bit cheeky having you search for me very nice of you to offer

OP posts:
Original poster
cheeryface · 19/10/2006 11:22

no ,no sorry born 1900, died 1960

OP posts:
minder34 · 19/10/2006 13:08

cheery...feel free to throw loads of names at me. I really don't mind - in fact if I've hit a brick wall with my research I always pester friends about doing theirs! - sad, I know. It could be a slow job with Annie though as her surname doesn't narrow it down much without a location. I'll have a dig about anyway though.

zephyrHellcat · 19/10/2006 13:10

Minder could I ask you a small favour to help me out with dp's family? I don't mind paying towards your membership for your help!

throckenholt · 19/10/2006 13:11

if she was born in 1900 then she would be in the 1901 census (hopefully).

How about going onto rootschat.com and asking someone to do a lookup for you - then you find out if it is Scotland or England - and know whether to go the scotlandspeople or somewhere like ancestry.co.uk.

MissyBabee · 19/10/2006 13:14

hello, i've been having a look at doing this too. the websearches proved very frustrating. didn't know how to proceed. kind of given up on that, but i do want to draw up a family tree on my computer with the names that i do know.

does anyone know a good computer programme you can buy that helps with this, as i thought it would be easy and then it started getting very confusing and messy?!

i have a mac, so i need a mac programme.

[sorry, not trying to steal the thread ]

zephyrHellcat · 19/10/2006 13:16

You should register with genesreunited - they draw up the tree for you and you can print it off. Also if anyone else matches a name in yor tree they alert you so yo can contact them...

portonovo · 19/10/2006 13:16

Internet sites can be useful, but generally you make more progress doing it the old-fashioned slow way.

So for instance, actually pay to get hold of your great-grandmother's death certificate, if you haven't done so already. This might give you info such as where and when born, possibly details of her husband, details of who the informant was - often a spouse or child.

If you know roughly when she married, get hold of the marriage certificate and you might get some more clues from that - name of her father and her father in law for example.

If you know her birth date, or even the rough year, search the indexes to get her birth certificate, that should tell you her mother's name and hopefully the father's too.

Use the census material - a lot of it is available online on a pay-per-view basis, such as the 1901 census, or you can visit libraries or local record centres if you happen to live in the right area.

If you painstakingly get the birth, marriage and death certificates for each person you're interested in, and hopefully find some census data, this gives you lots of info and helps you slowly move backwards a generation at a time.

Have a look on www.freebmd.org.uk - this has lots of indexes to births, marriages and deaths. It's not complete yet and not totally infallible, but it's free and a very useful too. I always start there.

MissyBabee · 19/10/2006 13:19

thanks zephyrHcat, i will have a look

throckenholt · 19/10/2006 13:23

you pretty much have to get back to 1901 before online stuff becomes much use (in England at least) - that is when you can start tying into the published census returns.

Sometimes you have to buy certificates of birth or marriage (or death) at £7 a go to decided which is the right person.

One genes reunited you can search for your names - maybe someone has put something up - but make sure you check things - don't trust what others tell you.

joelallie · 19/10/2006 13:25

My brother has just written a book about our family history from 1600 - 1800 approx. He did have a starting point though in that there was already a book about the family that mentioned a few details and names from that period. He used google and searched on the names he had. He also found that wills were really useful. I can't remember where he found those - don't have the document with me but I'll have a look and let you know.

minder34 · 19/10/2006 13:26

of course I will zephyr..names please!

zephyrHellcat · 19/10/2006 13:33

Thank you ok, here goes.. DP's dad, Rodney William Myers born 4/9/32, in Finsbury,London - want to find his parents but dp can't remember their names (not a good start!) His Mum's maiden name was Clifton.

DP's Mum is Norma Myers born 1934 I think. Her maiden name is Brand. Her Father is Richard Brand born, we think, 1910. His wife was Maud(e) Stanley. Normal lived with her grandparents on Gaysford Rd, Shepherd's Bush, London in the 50's I think.

We are totally stuck with this and dp is getting stroppy because I've got my family back to 1700's and not his!! So, anything at all you can find from that would be really brill

NastyNemo666 · 19/10/2006 13:36

bit of a sidetrack but if I was trying to find information on someone would these be the sites to use???
Also how do you go about getting more information as I have just typed in persons name I am looking for in the ancestery.co.uk one but cant get any more information without paying.