One of my interests is researching my family tree. I've done fairly well with it (I'm back past UK registration on all sides bar illegitimates where the parent isn't known). I have a few interesting or frustrating ancestors here and there.
One sort of sad thing is that I only seem to like my relatives when they are long dead...
Anyone else like doing their family trees?
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…
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…
