Genealogy

For as long as I can remember I have had many interests. I think that's often the experience of many Autistic women. I kind of go from one 'favourite interest' to the next.

One of my main interests as an adult and which I have had such passion for is 'Genealogy'. I can still remember the elation which I felt when I started to read my first book on the subject. It was a thin book but packed with information and I just knew this would be a passtime that I would really enjoy.

I started researching my ancestry in the early 90's and at that time it was less expensive to get information from the various record sources. I did such a lot of research before even approaching any of the British record offices and I think that is why I have found so much interesting information. Years later I could corroborate what I have found against the records of births, marriages and deaths in both the Scottish and English records.

One of the most enjoyable things about this hobby for me has been visting various places where my ancestors lived. Many of them lived in the big cities of Scotland and England as well as abroad.

The only thing which isn't so good is when it comes to meeting new found relatives. I find that having Aspergers just makes be so nervous that I don't really want to meet them when it comes to the point. I just imagine they will think I am too strange or that trying to talk to them, whilst remembering information will make me appear really stupid. Two years ago I visited someon relatives in Kent where my Grandmother came from. I had my elderly Auntie with me which was nice as otherwise I doubt I would have met up with the people. They turned out to be lovely and down to earth which I was so pleased about but there was still that feeling of trying to communicate with complete strangers.

In a few weeks I will meet someone else who is related to me and I am very nervous. I just hope my Auntie will be able to come with me but I'm not sure if she will.

I love this hobby and think it as an activity where Autistic people can excel.

  • I have just joined the community. I love reading all your comments on this. I very much enjoy researching my geneolgy also. I have got back to the 1550's on some. I love finding photographs, and then I look for family resemblance, though I miight or might not be right about it. My Great-great grandfather is in the Jersey Archives (1889),and I have a copy of that, in fact I've done quite well with my Jersey crowd on pictures, I think they had more money than my others, where many worked as agricultural labourers, and did'nt tend to have their pictures taken. Though one husband of a second cousin was a gravedigger in Kent, 1920's and got his family pictured in a local paper of the time as everybody knew him! Haven't met any living relatives, I would find that very difficult, but I am interested in how the different branches of families have developed through to  the present day.

    Just before I finish, I would just like to pick up what a couple of you wrote about uncovering scandal. I am so pleased that your living relatives took it well. I admit to having not put the illegitimacy I found onto my public Ancestry tree. I know it would have greatly upset my late sister and father. They were very proud of the paternity they believed in, and which I found was uncertain - possible but uncertain. The paternity was very humble, but they were very attached to it! Personally I find the variation interesting. I had a grandmother from Kent too, for the person who said that - Goudhurst near Cranbrook it was. Fascinating to get a book with picture in. Au Revoir

  • me to. 

    found 9 brothers/sister well 1/2. ive been doing it since a teenager. its not dull or borinhive been tracking forwards. love finding living folks and trying to find a picture of each. ive never met any of them but ive developed a relationship with some really nice people. try it its fun.

  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Yes, it's interesting what you can uncover. It was my great-grandmother, btw: my mother's paternal grandmother. My Mum was about 8 when she died, and remembered her as being a very judgemental and strait-laced woman, who'd torn a strip off one of her sons (Uncle George) for marrying a single mother. She must have known that if any cracks showed in the façade, she could have ended up in prison.

    My mother had always wondered where her father's middle-name (which all his brothers also had) came from: it turned out it was his mother's legal married name! Sadly, apart from the death certificate, I've so far not been able to get much info on my grandad's older half-brother, who ended up as an electrician in London, and died about 10 years before my grandad.

  • That's great being able to hear first hand from the lady in her 90's. My dad is in his 90's now and although he doesn't remember much about being young, if I find out a little bit he remembers and adds to it. I read a book about life in the early 1900's in Britain and about what people's kitchens were like in the old flats. I was asking him about the kitchen range and coal bunker in the kitchen and he started talking about the coal man coming up the stairs and pouring it in. Over the years (when he was a bit younger) I found out such a lot from the little bits and pieces he gradually remembered. I managed to find out the name of a place in Ireland where he would visit relatives and it turned out it was that place his ancestors were from. It is called Culleybackey. I want to go there some day. He remembered a cottage at the end of a small street and an old man in the house who was blind. I thought that was interesting as my dad's father lost his sight too eventually.

  • Imagine finding two of your ancestor's photographs in a book! Recently my Aunt got hold of a book about Sandwich in Kent with photos from over 100 years ago and a photograph of my Gt Grandfather's garden was in it. Also pictures of people but we aren't too sure who is who.

    It's interesting that you speak about your ancestor maybe having OCD as my mum's great Aunt had OCD. I have been so interested in her line of the family as I'm sure that person had Asperger Syndrome. She was a loner and found it nearly impossible to make good friends. My mum said she made a friend and then that person got really obsessed about a church that she joined and didn't keep up with my Gt Aunt. My Gt Auntie spent her life living at home with her mum and when her mother died she apparently never got over it and was always quite down.I have quite a few photos of my great aunt and she isn't smiling in any of them although everyone else in the pictures is smiling. She has this really strained look about her.

    The person who I got in touch with last year is descended from this side of the family but a slightly different line and her Grandmother who she never met took post natal depression and was too unwell to care for her son so he got sent off to boarding school.I would love to find out more about this lady. Her sister was apparently really highly strung but cheerful lady.

    My mum had depression all her life and I'm positive she also had Aspergers. She was diagnosed Manic Depression which she never felt was right as she was really clever and would have read up all about this illness and figured something didn't fit.

    So this line of the family really fascinates me. I have an ancestor on this side (the mum of my Gt Aunt with OCD) and I can't for the life of me find out much about her. She was born in Manchester but her mother died when she was little and after that she was brought up in Worcestershire somewhere. Then suddenly as a young adult she was living in Gibraltar, but I can't find out who she went with or why.

    I've been trying to find out more about my dad's side of the family which should have been easier as they lived in Scotland or half of the family did but I haven't had too much success. The other half were from Ireland and amazingly I have found out a bit about them. One came from Germany though and as you say it doesn't seem as though there are many records going back there.

    I would rather not meet relatives as I found it really stressful meeting that lady last year. Just trying to remember enough about the family tree and speak to a stranger, drink my coffee etc felt a bit of a nightmare. It was fine when I met other relatives in the south of England as my Aunt is comfortable chatting to folk which meant I could just add bits which was easier.

  • I know what you mean about meeting people. The idea that someone might want to meet me now almost puts me off trying to get in touch with possible ancestors. I found an address of someone who I think might be a relative and another address of a widow of someone and although I would love to find out more about them, I don't want the stress of the possibility of having to meet them. It turns me into a nervous wreck.

  • I noticed the reply doesn't appear below a person's post.

    Hi Mlle, that's amazing about your Grandmother. I think uncovering scandals can maybe make Genealogy interesting. Imagine she was so strait laced too. Covering up her secrets.

    My dad had told me that his father had gone to Ireland and was offered the chance to play in a well known football team at the time. He often spoke about this as did his brothers. When I found information from the Ellis Island records of people going in and out of America I found out that he went there when my dad was just a tiny baby and left his wife to look after him and the house. He did the same again when he was a bit older and still a toddler. His wife, my Grandmother didn't want to go and live there but my Grandpa did. Imagine a husband just going off and leaving his wife to look after a new baby just because he had big ideas of being a footballer.

    My dad's brother also told me that when my Grandma was about 50 she went into hospital for an operation. He arrived home from his work and my Grandpa said 'you can visit your mum, I'm off to Ireland for a holdiay and he was on his way to catch the boat'.

    I got in touch with a relative from my Grandpa's brother and she was telling me there was a big fight between the wives of the brothers. They ended up getting houses right next door to each other too and hated one another. The fight was over some Gt Grandma who was apparently a 'money lender' and someone had torn up all her books when she died. I'm not sure if that Gt Grandma was on my ancestors side of the family or the wives side.

    I also heard that a relative had been tracing my mum's mum's family and found out they were smugglers!

  • Former Member
    Former Member

    This is a passion of mine, too. I've only 'met' one or 2 new relatives by email, so no face-to-face so far. I've been quite upfront with family members about the scandals I've uncovered. Fortunately, they took it well – even my Mum, when terminally ill, coped with the fact her apparently strait-laced grandmother had left a husband and 3-year-old son in another town, moved in with her grandfather, had 7 kids, and then a church wedding in the same church she'd married in 24 years previously, while claiming to be a widow. Her legal husband outlived my great-grandfather.

    My father's Scots (mostly West Highland), and my mother was English-French-Irish-Welsh and possibly a bit African/Afro-Caribbean. I've got back to 16-17C in some lines, and in one, there's then a 200 year gap (when they lost nearly everything) and then it's back to the 11C. I was surprised to discover that one side of the family was Huguenot, not Irish, as had previously been thought, due to a mess-up of the spelling.

  • I've been interested in genealogy for several years now. I'm not entirely sure what started my interest, but I suppose it may have come from several sources. The main of which is that both my grandfather and grandmother come from different countries and I've wanted to trace both sides of my family to find out more about my ancestors.

    I went onto GenesReunited and later Ancestry.co.uk and I found out about my grandfather's side of the family. I went back to his grandfather on his father's side, a farm labourer who lived in Cherhill. I stumbled across an online message in archives on Ancestry about this book called 'The Manor and Village of Cherhill', the village where my third great grandfather lived. They actually wrote the names of both my third great grandfather and his wife. I was astonished at this discovery and vowed that I must get a hold of this book. My mother, aunt and I went to our local library to request a copy of the book to read for ourselves. When we looked at the book, it took awhile to search through it. Then we noticed this couple in front of a brick cottage, and underneath were the names of my ancestors. When I saw that, I was taken aback, here was a photo of two of my ancestors I've never seen in a picture before. It was incredible, and it made me wish I could have shown my grandfather before he died. It was such a priceless moment seeing that photo, as I'm sure that it must have been difficult to get a photograph taken of yourself in the 1800's when you were just a farmer labourer.

    I was not able to check further down my ancestry line since neither my mother nor I can drive, and find travel difficult, but through the websites I was connected to, I could find out what other people had discovered. Through that I could travel back to the 1700s, and find out their names. I could also discover through further research some interesting stories via people's names and where they were in census documents and marriage records.

    However; on my father's side I had a lot more difficulty. My father's surname is quite common and because of this it made searching for his family tree all the more difficult. I was able to search some of his history, but one particular avenue carried a lot of interest. On his father's mother's side, through other people's family trees, I traced the line all the way back to an ancestor that arrived from Belgium. I have three different countries in my ancestry, and I found that very interesting.

    As for my grandmother's family history, I was not able to find out about it myself since she came from Germany and we now know from writing to a relative that it appears that the Europeans' were not so interested in family history and you can only find out about it visiting local parishes and towns in Europe. A family member which I got into contact with after my grandmother unfortunately died, had shown me the names, births and deaths of my foreign ancestors, and that was just as interesting. My grandmother was part of a big family of twelve children, and I knew a little about my great grandfather and grandmother from my grandmother. She always told my mother and I about how stressful it was for her father who had to work in the salt mines and come back to work in the allotments to grow vegetables, and how my grandmother was so strict with them over how clean everything should be. There were comments about how clean her linen was from neighbours, and from the stories I've heard, I could swear that she had a severe case of OCD. Still, it's interesting to put names to these ancestors I've heard about, have known most of their names, but not further into my grandmother's family history.

    I've not met my distant family relatives. Through my mother, we were in contact with someone via GenesReunited that lived in Canada, but we slipped out of contact, >.<;. As for my grandmother's side of the family, well, I'm still in contact with my family relative that gave me the information about her side of the family. I can understand your difficulty with meeting distant family relatives, if I were able to, I would have just as much difficulty myself.

  • Same- I've been researching my family history since I was 19. As far as living relatives go, I want what information they have or what photos etc they may have, but I am not interested in knowing them as people.

  • I love family history too. I have only been doing it for 3 years, but have discovered a fascinating aray of ancestors back to the 18th century. I have not contacted any long lost relatives, except my fathers sister, who I have now visited and we exchange  ancestry information. She is in her 90s and does not use a computer. I am also emailing a cousin I have never met.

    I am adicted, and do all the typical aspie things of not bothering to eat etc because I can't tear myself away from it. I have to be careful not to talk about it too much as well.

    I would not want to meet any new found relations, I talk to them only on the internet. It's a wonderful hobby.