Genealogy

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.

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.