Finding my past

That is a long way back. I have some information my Mum researched before the internet including parish records, but not that far. She found quite a few similar names that it was believed were the same, but slightly differing spellings. Her grandfather had signed his name in the family Bible with an altered spelling, so suggested others could have done the same.

That is interesting regarding the records, as I believe those from census were free when you could go into the record office and look it up, but now they are on websites where you have to pay. You used to only pay for things like birth certificate copies. When I first had the internet I was able to look up details from the census regarding my family, but now you have to pay. 

I've not got names of the people that far back, but as far back as I can go they were all agricultural workers who probably never went further than a few miles away from thier home village. But asking questions, around the question, like who held the land has enabled me to go that far back. Of course I can't be absolutely sure that we do go that far back, it is quite likely, for many people of the agricultural classes barely noticed the changes at the top of society, they just had different landlords and maybe a slightly different system of paying taxes and working the land.

You can look up census records free and many others, some parish records too if they've been digitised, but the further back you go the more likely they won't have been digitised and maybe held in county archives, which you should be able to access if you visit the record office, or they're in private collections who will charge a fee.

Many people couldn't read or write very well and surname spellings do change, often due to regional dialects being misunderstood, or because spelling wasn't standardised when the records were made. AI has been able to tell me what are the common misspellings of some names.

The idea of being related to royalty is a bit romantic, the further back you go the more likely you are to have some royalty in your family, but most of us wouldn't know because many would have been illegitimate, may not have ever been acknowleged by thier royal parent, if they even knew they existed. Which if there were any royalty in my famiy would probably be the case being basically peasants in a feudal society, you weren't always "free". There were many levels of people, from slaves to near slaves and on up to royalty

That is interesting regarding the agricultural link. My parents looked up some county records. I live too far now. My Mum was able to go a fair way back as the name was unusual.

You should be able to trace your family name as it's unusual. If it's based on a location, you can find that area, find who owned the land, was it in the doomsday book and take it back like that. It depends on what aspects of geneology you're interested in, finding long lost cousins etc, to tracing back a few generations, or like me, finding out the deeper ancestral roots. AI can find in momments what would take me hours, days and weeks to find and give me a headache trying to read badly scanned copies of already faint documents with difficult handwriting.

You should be able to trace your family name as it's unusual. If it's based on a location, you can find that area, find who owned the land, was it in the doomsday book and take it back like that. It depends on what aspects of geneology you're interested in, finding long lost cousins etc, to tracing back a few generations, or like me, finding out the deeper ancestral roots. AI can find in momments what would take me hours, days and weeks to find and give me a headache trying to read badly scanned copies of already faint documents with difficult handwriting.