Family History

Hello Daisy - I had to smile when you said about people still speaking to you.
My own relatives only approach me and speak to me, when they want family history information.  I used to feel flattered and think that perhaps at last a family member would stick around because of this interest we had in common. But no, without exception they contact me, are very 'official' and cool towards me, ask for the info they want, take it and then disappear again.  

It has taken me a long while to learn, but now I don't hand my research out and instead give them pointers on how they can find it out for themselves.  If you are doing a lot of research yourself, you will understand the work and resources it entails, and will probably understand why I now do that.

Offending people seems to be an easy thing to do when you have an AS - not our fault though. I think the behaviour of people who just use you for your research is much worse.

You asked about researching Scottish records. I have Scottish ancestors on one side of my family.  I have used the Scottish censuses on Ancestry for those and the reliable records on the IGI. I haven't used scotlandspeople though.

On Canadian records - I have some family who emigrated to Canada (British Columbia) one hundred years ago and found a lot of records for them online. You have to search for the various district records for those.  Some districts have nothing at all online, some are really good.

I mentioned people on here talking about relatives they have spoken to through or because of their family tree research - I have offended probably every "relative" I have found through genealogy. I don't know how I do it! So if you still have people speaking to you, you are doing better than me.

I was told about http://www.origins.net/ for genealogy and it seemed really good because it was free. But then I began to find that it was not complete (a lot of missing information) and also incorrect information. I contacted the site and informed them that the information was incorrect, but they didn't correct it or reply to me.

www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk is the best site for Scottish genealogy. I use http://ancestry.co.uk/ too. I really struggle researching Canadian relatives, and English relatives, as I haven't found sites as good as Scotlandspeople for these nationalities.

I wonder if anyone else is researching Scottish family? I would love to discuss what people have found when researching this region, or share hints and tips.

Yes I remember now - looking on FindMyPast a couple of years ago for a great-great uncle who was in the Navy and disappeared. The weird thing was, I eventually discovered him buried in a churchyard half an hour from where I live - no where near where he originated from.  When I began investigating the people who lived in his village of burial, I found two families related to his mother - a connection! I had one of those punching the air moments that you describe.

There has been a lot of discussion about the actual transcription of the Censuses. Having to read through the actual censuses of a whole village/town/community is not unusual - when you can't find someone in the transcriptions. Some of the transcriptions of names are very 'inventive' aren't they - like you I've read names on the documents that obviously read as they should be, but the transcription is way out.

Another thing is the people left out altogether. For years I was unable to find the birth registration of one of my grand-fathers  - almost gave up in the end. I thought perhaps I'd got the name wrong somehow or the spelling or the place of birth. Then I decided to go through the actual documents and he was there - he had been missed out by the transcriber.

Following that I lost his wife - my grand-mother - on the 1901 census. After much lateral thinking I found her ninety miles away from where I expected her to be, transcribed with the wrong age and a very mis-spelt surname. Another Yippeee there!

Your experience with finding William Brady shows the importance of looking at the wider family - not just the direct line you descend from, but of the brothers and sisters of each of your ancestors as well. If you don't do that it is the research equivalent of wearing blinkers. You have to be very 'open minded' and inventive with this sort of research, don't you?

Oh the census... there have been times when I've gone though the census by hand because of no results on Ancestry (thank goodness my ancestors lived in small places!) only to find that I didn't get any results because according to Ancestry my ancestor Thomas Milburn was really called Thomase Millison living with his father John Milliron... My favourite have got to be my Carter family that I found transcribed as "Leota"... I mean, no wonder I didn't find them

Sometimes a dead end requires a new angle of attack... a clean fresh pair of eyes... or a chance find... The "Irish" ancestor I mentioned, William Brady, appears as an 18 year old boarder, which was why my family thought he came from Ireland (Irish name + not on previous census = Irish immigrant, which wasn't a bad theory apart from being entirely wrong). After I also failed to find him, I eventually looked at the family he was living with... sure enough, several censuses earlier, I found his mother living there and the wall tumbled down- the family he was with was his grandmother's brother, and his birth had been registered under his mother's married name, and the last census he took his stepfather's surname before reverting to her maiden name  Those are moments when you just punch the air and hiss "yesssss!!"

I believe FindMyPast has the deaths at sea records. I don't know if they are anywhere else.

On copying other peoples information  -  I think the best part of researching family history is the actual searching and discovering things. If you are just copying a list of names and dates, you can say you have the family tree, but you won't know much about the people.

Trawling around in the records is fascinating and all sorts of incidents and people can be unearthed  -  extra children you didn't know about, illegitimate births etc. Showing off a load of dates and names may look impressive but without that background work of having read the censuses and looking at the birth, marriage and death certificates you won't have any background knowledge. 

Look what you have found out about your Mark.  You have done really well to have managed to trace all the way to his death, especially as he was at sea.  Following people through the early census records is often difficult  - what with mis-spellings and people moving around. Have you noticed that sometimes you get stuck on someone and seem to reach a dead-end, then they turn up a long while later when you are looking for a completely different member of the family?

Where did you find the deaths at sea records? 

Copying other people's information blindly defeats the point in my opinion... it is just name hoarding :( It is sad, especially for those of us who want to get it right!

I found the original entry on Ancestry I think, as a "you might be interested in..." while looking up somebody else. It was a surprise to find that, of all places, the Old Bailey was where he ended up being tried and yeah, I saw the website and the trial notes! He got a few newspaper entries as well. I think this was the biggest mistake of Mark's life... he sounds like he was in a bit of shock after the event and must have suffered horribly- I think I read that at that time about 1/4 of all people imprisoned in Newgate died before they got to trial! Mark and the ship's cook said that he wasn't a violent person by nature and the Governor of Newgate said that Mark came across as a "quiet and inoffensive man". From his Merchant Navy records, I know that he continued to be a mariner, making trips nationally and abroad- at one point he was in hospital on Malta, although I don't know what for. I believe he died in Oct/Nov 1851- that's the date of the burial, which matches his name (which was not common), date of birth and is in a churchyard right next to the port. My current theory is that perhaps he died on board the ship and was put ashore in that port to be buried rather than buried at sea. Annoyingly, the deaths at sea records didn't start until 1852... so I'll never know. Yeah, this family is the one with the most detail of all my branches and I guess therefore the one I feel most attached to. This is something those name hoarders miss out on!

It sounds as though you handle the people who ask for your research very well. I had one enquiry where the person wanted me to hand-over the whole family tree. The family tree he had made was just copied from other peoples - I even recognised where some of the material had come from by the mistakes.

It looks as though you use the Old Bailey website. I find that site fascinating, even just to read through when I don't have any ancestors to look for. Your drunken ancestor sounds a bit of a rogue. You have quite a long detailed story there. I think when you find as much information as that, you feel you know them all better. It definitely gives you a sense of where you came from.

It was strange that Mark got off, especially with all the witnesses. What happened to him after that? I know people often disappear, which is frustrating. 

(Argh! That is the second time it has let me write a big long post before then informing me I've got to log in... I keep forgetting and have to write it all out twice!)

Yes, thankfully I’m not really one to bow to peer pressure. The cousin who doesn’t like being corrected now doesn’t get one iota of my research. The husband did not get his GEDCOM. The cousin who accepted my gentle questioning of her research now gets occasional bits of relevant information from me about people and mysteries in the family. I would be willing to re-send all the certs and information to the other cousin if he’d be willing to suck it up and give me his new contact details. It is his loss really- he spent decades looking for one of our relatives in Ireland and I’ve since found him conclusively in Northumberland and he still doesn’t know.

One thing that surprised me about the court case (and I reckon surprised him too!) was that despite admitting he did it, having his shipmates witness him doing it, having the police turn up seconds later and seeing him there, he was found not guilty. I think it was on the basis of the fact he was blind drunk and the other guy had been persistently provoking him until he snapped. The victim was extremely lucky to have survived- he wasn’t expected to. I never found out what happened to the guy after the court case was over. He must have been deeply unhappy with the verdict to say the least. At any rate, even though Mark “got away with it”, I notice that there were no further children after the event, his wife died 6 years later in her brother’s house, who then raised her children, and there is no evidence of Mark being involved with the family after then. Later on still, his only son died in a mining accident aged 18, his daughter was widowed and lost her baby aged 21, and the only surviving grandchild, from whom I’m descended, was born in the workhouse, creating an inspirational story by rising up the ladder to be quite well off in the colliery business, potentially owning property and winning lots of prizes at the fruit and veg show...

Pandoren, you seem to have had a problem with people wanting your research. I think this can be a problem for everyone, though with Asperger one can be more vulnerable to pressure from people.  I think it is okay to exchange information, but you do have to be careful of people who just want to take information and 'run'. As you will know this research takes hard work, money and time. People can be quite unpleasent if you don't pass it on to them, but I'm not sure I would give valuable research to someone who was being unpleasent to me.  It is difficult to know the best course of action if you are dealing with a relative.

I also have been cautioned about the accuracy of some of the information on familysearch. As I understand it, if the information has a Batch number it has generally been taken directly from the parish records and is therefore fairly accurate. The results with '1991 members' on the read-out are the least likely to be accurate, I understand.  I am not sure if they took the 1991 attribution off the results when they changed the system a couple of years ago.  Some of the old files still had it on at that time.

As you say, you also have to beware of the family trees that are copied from the incorrect information. I always tell people that they should double check all information against another source - as there is so much incorrect data out there. I constantly have people coming to me with the same type of mis-information as you describe, where the dates of deaths,age and children do not correlate, but the people just haven't questioned it. 

Rootschat is good isn't it.  I have been on there to browse but never requested information.  I like the way you can isolate the area you need research from. From the posts that I've read on there, the users seem very helpful.  The site I've used the most is 'ancestry', though I did try 'genes reunited' for a year or so. 

You seem to have found some interesting stories amongst your ancestors.  Doesn't it feel good when you find a person with an interesting past, like your would-be murderer. Think - people in the family would probably have been hiding that man's history for decades, feeling it was shameful, but when we find someone like that it is really exciting.

I actually prefer not to find living relatives, although I know it can be helpful. I find it awkward talking to them and just about always accidentally offend somebody. As well as that, it seems a lot of the time if we have more than one family history person in the family we end up all treading on each other’s toes and there have been moments of research contention (one of my cousins takes this badly, the other is quite calm about it. Another cousin’s husband, back when I was fairly new to research, asked me for a GEDCOM and ignored my asking him what a GEDCOM was in favour of getting angry at me for not giving it to him… Another one asked me for copies of my certificates and when Royal Mail ate the lot, he stopped talking to me because he didn’t believe I’d sent anything…). I’ve stayed away from lines in the family that have been researched by other people and focused on ones I know are going to be “mine”.

There are certainly helpful sites out there. I can’t travel so I’m limited to what I can find online for now. I used Ancestry for most of the post-certificate research (this is a paid site, but libraries in the UK often allow free access) and familysearch for a lot of the pre-certificate research, but further to the previous recommendation I’d like to warn people to be aware that familysearch can be a bit unreliable- I’ve come across a number of transcription errors on the site as well as the fact that some of the information is “submitted”, that is to say that people who are members can say in their trees that Joe Bloggs married Jane Doe in 1800 even if that is actually wrong and it will come up as a result in the search. Apparently there is a way of telling is something is “submitted” but I’ve never worked it out. Sometimes the mistake is subtle and easily missed, sometimes it sticks out like a sore thumb- I had one relative who apparently married his first wife in 1808, his second wife in 1806, and the last child was born when his wife was 65. It was depressing how many people copied that tree without thinking.
Perhaps the most helpful site that I've been part of is a community board and chatroom called Rootschat. They give a lot of advice and sometimes, with polite requests, look up websites and locations for you. I think this one was advanced my research the most. I've got grave pictures and stuff as well because of good people on here.

My favourite family is the Brady line in Northumberland. It started off as a ‘brick wall’ that my mother failed to break and after I knocked it down it opened into a mass of drama and tragedy. There are newspaper articles, lost children, mining accidents, possible bigamy… the most surprising thing I found was when Mark Brady, a mariner, had a drunken lapse of judgement in port in London and ended up spending 19 weeks in Newgate Prison before being tried in the Old Bailey for attempted murder- the entire notes being on the website! He is a real pain in the rear end though… not only does he not appear on any census, it seems his death was not registered (I have a burial I think was him though) and his baptism has gone through a game of Chinese Whispers (even with the PRs and BTs) giving him two or three possible dates of birth, a possible twin brother and about five different surnames for his mother. I guess the tree would be quite boring without him…

Hi -

Family history is one of my interests. I've been doing serious research for about eight years and now have a lot of files full of 'people' from the past.  

About a year ago I began looking further back than the censuses - pre registration - into the parish records. This is more difficult in that people move parishes and it is sometimes difficult to trace where they've gone. I started with the familysearch.org site and then moved onto some of the parish records that have been photographed and put online.  Some can be purchased on cd.

I am constantly finding surprises - one of the best things about family history research - along with the relatives/branches of the family you find, who you never realised were there. 

I am a keen family history buff.  The thing that I didn't expect was to find so many new living relatives as well, that was a real added bonus.    For anyone who is interested in doing their family history and perhaps are unsure where to start then may I suggest going to the free website familysearch.org which has a vast genealogical database that is expanding all the time.