I went into it because I have always been interested in history. I have been at it now, on and off, for about 20 years. What really surprised me was that my male line traces back to 18th Century Denbighshire - I do not have an obvious Welsh surname.
Having got back into the middle ages (which took a long time) I find I have numerous royal and noble ancestors. I am confident that this is equally true of everyone, as I am far from aristocratic. My grandparents were all working class, but I have traced three out of four to Edward I and one of the three to Edward III. Also, I found my wife and I are distant cousins many times over. We both descend (far back) from Lancashire and Cheshire gentry, including some who lived very close to where we live now.
I strongly suspect we are all distant cousins if we but knew it.
Scotland has the wonderful Scotland's People website. You have to buy credits, and then use those credits to look at birth marriage and death certificates (1855 on) or OPRs (Old Parochial Records - baptisms, banns and burials. (pre 1855) The OPRs are variable and have gaps.
There is the "100 year rule" - you can't view birth certificates post 1921, nor marriage certificates post 1946, nor death certificates post 1971. These have to be ordered and are considerably more expensive.
Thanks for the info, all. That’s helpful and will save me a lot of leg work.
The 100 year rule then, virtually rules out much research re my mother and siblings, my parents’ marriage and the deaths of nearly all my aunts and uncles that side. So it does sound as if my best bet is to start much further back and work forwards.
@Sandemaniac, names, yes...it’s driving me round the bend, so many of them are the same or similar. I smiled when I read about the ‘minds’. We’ve at least one, my grandmother and who knows, there may be more. This should be fun.
I don’t think I’ll come across any glamorous occupations along the way. Most of the folk on my mother’s side worked in ‘fish’ and related jobs; my father’s in building or painting. (not the kind that requires and easel and beret).
My main research is done on Ancestry. Yesterday, I had reason to use FindMyPast (although I don't have a subscription at the moment). Just out of curiosity, I searched for my grandfather, who had a very identifiable (and so far as I can tell, unique) name. FindMyPast threw up a link to a birth record. This was odd, as Ancestry has steadfastly refused to find such a record. I went back to Ancestry and did yet another search for a birth record- zilch.
Now I could pay a month's subscription to FindMyPast to access this record, but it is unlikely to tell me anything I didn't already know. I know where and when my grandfather was born and who his parents were. But this does raise the point that Ancestry SHOULD have found this record and didn't and I am not sure why.
Does anyone else have any insights on the relative reliabilities of Ancestry and FindMyPast?
I wish I knew, @Rufus T Firefly. I’d like to know as FindMyPast keeps pestering me with emails. The library has given subscribers temporary home access to their Ancestry subscription whilst we’re still in lockdown. I suspect this will change once it reopens, hence I’m getting in as much research as I can before then.
One thing you will probably encounter if you have enough Scots in your tree is the naming tradition - which lasted well into the 20th century:
1st son named after father's father.
2nd son named after mother's father.
3rd son named after father.
1st daughter named after mother's mother.
2nd daughter named after father's mother.
3rd daughter named after mother.
Thanks for this--it's been driving me mildly batty wondering why some families have a third son showing up as "Junior," when I'm more familiar with the pattern that makes the eldest son his father's namesake. Now I know.
I had a "I've got something to tell you when you have a mo" text from my mother this afternoon. Frankly, they scare the hell out of me as they could mean she's found my birth certificate, or she could be at death's door, you never can tell.
This one was rather more interesting. Her cousin arrived with some of his parent's furniture (his father was Mum's mum's half-brother), including a set of Victorian dining chairs. Mum thought they looked familiar, found the old photos, and there in the photo of my granny as a bairn in the house she was born in in 1913... yes, you've guessed it, is one of those chairs!
She's also found a great crested newt. I'm still not sure which is most exciting.
Re Ancestry and FindMyPast, I think Ancestry slants American and FindMyPast slants British. I've noticed that the transcription of names on Ancestry isn't always that great - maybe broaden the spelling on the ancestor's name?
I've found a lot of family trees on Ancestry are just plain wrong. It's like people have just found a potential ancestor of around the right date and thought, "yes, that sounds like a good one, I'll go for that." I've been researching my family history for more than 20 years and I know how important it is to confirm any findings from more than one source before being rock solid certain.
Indeed - my "name family" crash-land in a village circa 1720 - I'm happy it's them that start breeding in the next village about ten years later, as both parents match (though John and Sarah are hardly rare names). I have no clue where they came from, and I'm very suspicious of trees that have them coming in from the far side of the county. Not impossible - one lot quite clearly moved from Surrey to Essex circa 1830, but I need evidence!
I also have one line where I'm damn sure they're right, but I can't kill off the chap in the direct line to confirm his birth year, he just vanishes off the radar. Records for him in the Record Office - including one that was indexed after I thought he'd died, when his goods and chattels were sold off, but that he actually signed! - but he's not with his wife and daughter in 1841 (or, if he is, he's lost in the damaged enumerators book), or onwards.
I've found a lot of family trees on Ancestry are just plain wrong. It's like people have just found a potential ancestor of around the right date and thought, "yes, that sounds like a good one, I'll go for that." I've been researching my family history for more than 20 years and I know how important it is to confirm any findings from more than one source before being rock solid certain.
I’m amazed at how far some people travelled. I know for sure that my ancestors travelled from Frome to Bath to Merthyr, and another of my ancestors travelled from Herefordshire to Blaenavon.
We think nothing of travelling that far today, but whenever we go to Hereford, I wonder how they made the journey and how long it took them.
I have just come across an Ancestry record where someone has transcribed "dr" in the "relationship" column of the 1901 census as "doctor" rather than "daughter" Maggie, aged 10, was a doctor, as was her sister Jessie, aged 7.
I've now found the transcription of Maggie and Jessie's cousins on the 1901 - Agnes, aged 4, doctor. Annie, aged 1, doctor. The weird thing is that whoever transcribed it understood "son" - so it goes son, doctor, son, doctor, son, son.
You'd think the penny would drop. Meanwhile Maggie appears on 12 trees. Seven give her place of death - four have (correctly) London, England, but three have London, Texas.
It’s weird. I’ve taken to looking at the Ancestry public family trees; fine when they’re accurate, not so when they’re not. A classic was that of my grandfather where they mentioned a son, stating that was the couple’s only child. (and no, he wasn’t the eldest and other children had been born by then). He actually had five brothers and sisters! Maybe the researchers got bored and gave up on the project, who knows? With some of these, I feel like saying “‘Oi! That’s my family/uncle/grandparent you’re talking about there.
I've now found the transcription of Maggie and Jessie's cousins on the 1901 - Agnes, aged 4, doctor. Annie, aged 1, doctor. The weird thing is that whoever transcribed it understood "son" - so it goes son, doctor, son, doctor, son, son.
You'd think the penny would drop. Meanwhile Maggie appears on 12 trees. Seven give her place of death - four have (correctly) London, England, but three have London, Texas.
Yes, if you believe all you come across, you’d have thought that half my family lie buried in the States, the other half in Scotland. It’s all those folk with the same names that gets me in a muddle,
I have an example that isn't the researcher's fault.
I couldn't find a death cert for my gt gt grandfather's second wife. I had a fairly small window to search because my gt gt grandfather described himself as a widower on the census twelve years after their marriage. But even with only ten years to search, between the census returns, I couldn't find her death.
It turned out that she had done a runner* and emigrated to Australia, where she claimed to be a widow. She had provided a year of death for her first husband, whose name was not unusual, and indeed there was someone of that name who had died in the right place in the right year!
She had then met her second husband, and had a large family by him. Her descendants were baffled than on each of the Australian births there was a different marriage date for the parents. In fact, they weren't married and must have made up a date each time. They married after their eighth child was born, six months after my gt gt grandfather died in Scotland - presumably she got news of his death and hadn't wanted to marry whilst he was still alive because it would have been bigamous.
Her descendants even had a photo of the gravestone of the random-with-the-same-name who had died in the right place in the right year.
* She was a much younger second wife, only a couple of years older than gt gt grandfather's eldest child. In fact she and her future step-daughter must have played together as children, because they were near neighbours. No idea what possessed her to marry him, but she seems to have skipped off quite quickly.
It’s weird. I’ve taken to looking at the Ancestry public family trees; fine when they’re accurate, not so when they’re not. A classic was that of my grandfather where they mentioned a son, stating that was the couple’s only child. (and no, he wasn’t the eldest and other children had been born by then). He actually had five brothers and sisters! Maybe the researchers got bored and gave up on the project, who knows? With some of these, I feel like saying “‘Oi! That’s my family/uncle/grandparent you’re talking about there.
The 'researchers' you are referring to are the people like you who enter their data on the information they have. Likely, those who listed only one person in the generation came through that one person's line. Since you are aware of the other brothers and sisters, you can enter them yourself. It helps if you can find sources that also confirm their connection and add the links to that information.
To other, not terribly exciting news: I’ve discovered that one of my grandfathers had a half brother, born to great granny four years before she married my great grandfather. Father unknown.
The mysteries that pop up. What happened to my great great grandfather after his wife my g-g grandmother divorced him (early 1880s)? He vanishes from the records at that point though his former wife lists herself as widowed when she remarries some 20 years later. She traveled pretty extensively and in her last few years was wanted for kidnapping in California which she seems to have evaded by going to Europe, applied for an emergency US passport in Belgium (early days of the Great War), and was buried in northwestern Wisconsin (I could understand somewhat her being buried in southwestern Wisconsin since she grew up there and later raised her two children there post-divorce but not 200 miles north).
I didn't really get going on my family history until after my parents died, and then I didn't have much time until I retired, 6 years later. How I wish I had been able to ask more questions, but sadly nobody from their generation is still alive.
My father's name is a very common one. Legend has it that his grandfather was Welsh, and spoke 5 languages. Interesting, as both my cousin and I taught languages, but I have no way of proving it, or finding any evidence that makes it likely. Similarly, no evidence that he also taught at Aberystwyth College, now university. So family legends are not reliable at all.
My mum told us that her father died when she was 9 and I have done a huge amount of work on his side of the family, especially as six years ago I actually moved into that area. As I drive over that way I often wonder if my ancestors worked in those fields ( they were ag labs ). I discovered that my grandfather was illegitimate and he was brought up by his grandmother. I struggled to trace his mother, and finally cracked it when trying to buy her death certificate. The GRO eventually produced it, as the local record office found no trace. Her death had been reported by her partner as if she were his wife, and she not only adopted his surname but changed her Christian name. The records were officially corrected thanks to the intervention of her brother. Her burial records her assumed name. I have drawn a blank when trying to find out anything about her partner.
Strangely in 1911 when my mum was 18 months old, she was not living with her father, but boarded out with a neighbour. My mum's mother had died when she was 6 months old. I suppose her dad needed help to care for her. He later remarried, so the person I knew as Nan was not actually a blood relative. It was only after Mum died that I was able to work on her history, and found, to my great sadness, that she had a number of relatives, first cousins even, living almost round the corner. She never knew them. As I have moved back into the same area I keep coming across connections with my village, but so far, no living relatives. It is harder to work forwards than backwards.
I use Ancestry, but I have just bought some charts and folders so I am going to start moving things on to paper, and putting such photos and certificates that I have all together.
@Puzzler , it sounds as if you’re a sight better organised than I am! Our daughter is gathering up the Ancestry files for us. Son scanned a load of old photos a few years ago and she’s suggested that we begin to try to match names to faces. It makes it all seem so much more real.
One odd thing I have found out - through a very distant cousin indeed - is that one of my great-aunts had a husband who went to work one day and never came home. That is, he simply vanished and nothing more is known of him. She never heard from him again and had to support herself as best she could for the rest of her life.
There is no death certificate (he was born in 1898 so must be dead by now) and it seems likely that he either changed his name and took up a new identity or he went abroad.
It is also possible, of course, that he was abducted by aliens.
My father-in-law had a brother who walked out the door one day (when he was in his early 20's) and never returned home. Many years later, it was found that he had gone to Australia. When contacted via the Salvation Army, he made it clear he didn't want to talk to the rest of the family. These things happen.
Another, darker, possibility is what happened to a friend of mine about 20 years ago. He told his wife that he was going out to get some fresh air and never returned. His car was later found in a clifftop car park. Although there is no proof, the assumption has always been that he suddenly became overwhelmed by the pressures he was facing and threw himself off the cliff into the sea. No body was ever found and it was some years before his wife could legally certify him as dead.
In much the same way that some countries have Baby Hatches , for when a new parent does not wish to raise their baby
I have often thought that a way for folk to Start Again in another place would be a very good idea.
Somewhat tangentially, does anyone have a British Newspaper Archive sub who could search for something for me, please? My dear mother is expecting me to do the impossible (again...) with a local news story - I've had a poke through the free search myself, but I suspect I will get better results by supplying someone who knows what they are doing with the info.
My cousin who would now be in her early seventies, simply disappeared over 50 years ago. Later evidence of My uncle's life, including the fact that his marriage to my aunt was almost certainly bigamous has led the family to suspect abuse of some kind.
Funnily enough, I had a family member who vanished as well - he went back to Australia (where he'd emigrated to pre-WW1) in 1919, and cut all ties with his family. PATDYS was kind enough to take photos of his grave in Adelaide for me.
Online resources for genealogical research keep expanding and I can't always keep up. Two new researchers have begun posting in Family Search and early Cape history archives (that complicated period covering the first 50 years of Cape of Good Hope history) in what is now South Africa, and I'm suddenly looking at new details on my family line. (Disclaimer that I'm not a trained or even experienced genealogist and rely a great deal on the work of others.)
Many of the slaves brought to the Cape were baptised and given sets of names (with classical references: Apollo, Nero, Phoebe, Venus, or just based on the month when they were sold (October, September, January) but also Christianised first names plus the place from which they were abducted or sold. My mother's maternal line begins with Christina or Christijn of Angola, one of numerous Christina of Angolas brought to the Cape along with dozens of Christians, Abrahams and Adams. It is now thought that my family ancestor Christina of Angola later took the name Regina (or Tavina) van Rapenberg van Guinea and was born in Dahomey (what is now Benin) in 1650. She might have been force-marched to the coast from as far away as the Sudan.
This would place her aboard the Hasselt, the second Dutch slave ship to reach the Cape in 1658. The eight-year-old Regina was sold several times; her daughters would become freed slaves and escape across the mountains to freedom outside the Cape Colony in Swellendam. The family names of Regina and Christina come up again and again through the following century.
Very interesting. My own family history intersects only briefly with South Africa as far as I know. My great grandparents (and my grandmother?) lived in Ermelo in about 1902-1904 (when my great grandmother insisted on moving back to England).
Very interesting. My own family history intersects only briefly with South Africa as far as I know. My great grandparents (and my grandmother?) lived in Ermelo in about 1902-1904 (when my great grandmother insisted on moving back to England).
Not surprising that they moved back to England, @Net Spinster. I don't know much about Ermelo (Mpumalanga), but at the end of the Anglo-Boer war in 1902 only one homestead was left standing in Ermelo after British bombardment and I can imagine it would be a very uncomfortable place for English settlers.
Many British and Commonwealth families will have had some historic connection to South Africa between 1899 and 1902 since this war was the biggest deployment of British troops since the Crimea, involving half a million soldiers including volunteers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
I know I'm being comically naïve when I write this, but did you bother drawing this to their attention? For my part, I'm curious as to what they said, if anything.
Not yet. I can't decide whether there is any point.
I've gone back and looked at the reviews on the website, all of which purport to be from Americans, but the English is poor in each case.
My son says that it's not a scam as such because I did get something for my money which corresponds to what they were selling, but clearly I would not have bought it if I had realised that The Carol Family was printed on it.
The illustration on the website shows someone standing in front of the chart, so that The Carol Family was partially obscured by their arm.
It's definitely a scam. Rather like those chairs you can order for what seems an absurdly low price, until they arrive and you realize they are four inches tall, and the photo was staged to deceive you.
I think you can complain to Amazon, but I'm not at all sure there will be much recourse. Some of those places are fly-by-night.
ETA: Yikes, just realized you didn't say it was Amazon. By the sounds of it, I'd suspect it was a Chinese company, no matter who's fronting it. I'd go ahead and complain for the form of it, but without a whole lot of hope.
You might want to look at some software like Gramps (which is open software). Choose one that uses or can export (to a degree) and import in a standard format (GEDCOM, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM). And one that can create reports of various sorts. I admit I'm likely to have to do hand editing on some of the graphics since I don't think any software producing graphical trees (storing is fine) likes family trees that cross (e.g., cousin marriages or two sisters marrying two brothers or a widow/widower marrying another member of their first spouse's family).
I use Family Tree Maker, but I am not sure if either of my kids could navigate round it, and don't think either would thank me if I started printing off reports for them. My plan was to give them a decorative nine generations chart.
Now that I am looking at it more closely, I can see odd phraseology such as "record the prosperity of your family" but the charts for sale looked exactly what I wanted; a nine generation chart to give to someone with a minimal interest in genealogy.
The website certainly looks very convincing. I’d try emailing their returns email address. I can’t see how there’d be anything to gain for them by sending out trees with a wrong name on. It’d be just as easy and cost effective to send them blank.
Having got back into the middle ages (which took a long time) I find I have numerous royal and noble ancestors. I am confident that this is equally true of everyone, as I am far from aristocratic. My grandparents were all working class, but I have traced three out of four to Edward I and one of the three to Edward III. Also, I found my wife and I are distant cousins many times over. We both descend (far back) from Lancashire and Cheshire gentry, including some who lived very close to where we live now.
I strongly suspect we are all distant cousins if we but knew it.
Demographers have calculated that there is a near 100% probability that anyone with English ancestry is descended from Edward III. Partly that's just math, but the dude definitely got around.
Re Edward III , I've got a gap in the C18th with no documentary evidence, other than a line in a book saying that the tenant farmers of X farm were the descendants of an "acknowledged bastard" of the big house. Assuming this is correct, I can trace back to Edward III via Joan Beaufort and her second husband, the Black Knight of Lorne.
I have had an exciting development. Years ago I was contacted by a distant cousin through the Aberdeen Family History Society, and we've kept in touch. Ancestry DNA subsequently confirmed our relationship. She has focussed on a single-name study; we link through my great great grandmother, whose maiden name was the one-name study name. She got a male relative to do one of the haplogroup tests.
An lo! This haplogroup test has linked her family (and by extension mine) to an Icelandic Viking burial!
So, although I don't have that haplogroup, as this is on my mother's side, the Ancestry DNA test and the haplogroup test together link me to an c11th century Icelandic Viking!
I'm a bit vague on the science, but thrilled by the concept!
As some whose family tree has conked out everywhere before the 1690s (and most lines before that - one is unguessable beyond the 1820s), I don't blame you in the slightest for being thrilled by that.
There is some truly fascinating stuff coming out of aDNA analysis at the moment, not least how far people travelled in prehistoric times (admittedly, that's not just DNA analysis, but...). Sadly I think my career has long since passed the point where I stand the slightest chance of getting into an aDNA lab - that and desperation are the only things that would get me back into academia - but I can at least watch from the sidelines.
The Viking burial is part of an ongoing project and I think the expectation is that more information will be forthcoming. If I read it right, the suggestion is that the Viking haplogroup connection moved from Scandinavia to Flanders and from thence to North East Scotland.
There's been a lot of research into the medieval links between Flanders and Scotland; perhaps I should start reading up.
I did my MtDNA (mitochondrial DNA passed down the maternal line). It's not that useful for finding relatives as it mutates very slowly. My maternal line hit a dead end at my great, great grandmother in Omagh, Northern Ireland. She was protestant so my MtDNA could be Scottish, English or maybe even Irish in recent origin, given protestant settlers did sometimes intermarry with local Irish women. My haplogroup is T2b4a and my closest known matches with this haplogroup are in Denmark, which makes sense given migration patterns, but doesn't help at all with my family tree! Apparently it is most common in Russia and fairly common in central Europe based on current research. I don't know how common it is in Ireland, though have seen others with it with ancestry in England.
Reading this thread has made me reevaluate my paternal line, which is Scottish. I was looking at my tree to see if the Scottish ancestors followed the naming tradition. My ancestor who migrated from Neilston in Scotland to Clare in South Australia was called Archibald. So was the man I had listed as his father. Looking at someone else's tree I noticed they had information from his marriage certificate to his third wife (first wife died young, second wife lived to a reasonable age and then he married for a third time when he was almost 70). On that certificate his father is listed as John, not Archibald, as has been on the tree since someone researched it on paper years ago. I had noticed that his name was not listed in the family he is supposed to be part of in the 1841 census, but there was another boy the right age with a similar name, so I thought he probably just went by another name. I also have genetic links to other surnames in that tree from Neilston and Barrhead, but probably the local families were all intermarried.
Looking at someone else's tree I noticed they had information from his marriage certificate to his third wife (first wife died young, second wife lived to a reasonable age and then he married for a third time when he was almost 70). On that certificate his father is listed as John, not Archibald, as has been on the tree since someone researched it on paper years ago. I had noticed that his name was not listed in the family he is supposed to be part of in the 1841 census, but there was another boy the right age with a similar name, so I thought he probably just went by another name.
Oh what a tangled web we weave
when first we marry and concieve!
We have a number of Chinese antiques that I inherited from my Dad's sister and her husband. I was told by my mother that this uncle's family were dealers in Asian art. I never gave it a thought. Just on a whim last night I was doing a search on the Internet in general of all my relatives of that generation, to see what might come up if anything. Low and behold my Uncle was a junior, I had no idea as he never used it. I found the death notice of his father and in it was told the story of how he had helped many Chinese people and out of gratitude they had given him many gifts over the years. Surprise! Now, these antique art pieces mean much more to me knowing they were given to the family in thanksgiving for the kindness shown.
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Having got back into the middle ages (which took a long time) I find I have numerous royal and noble ancestors. I am confident that this is equally true of everyone, as I am far from aristocratic. My grandparents were all working class, but I have traced three out of four to Edward I and one of the three to Edward III. Also, I found my wife and I are distant cousins many times over. We both descend (far back) from Lancashire and Cheshire gentry, including some who lived very close to where we live now.
I strongly suspect we are all distant cousins if we but knew it.
Thanks for the info, all. That’s helpful and will save me a lot of leg work.
The 100 year rule then, virtually rules out much research re my mother and siblings, my parents’ marriage and the deaths of nearly all my aunts and uncles that side. So it does sound as if my best bet is to start much further back and work forwards.
@Sandemaniac, names, yes...it’s driving me round the bend, so many of them are the same or similar. I smiled when I read about the ‘minds’. We’ve at least one, my grandmother and who knows, there may be more. This should be fun.
I don’t think I’ll come across any glamorous occupations along the way. Most of the folk on my mother’s side worked in ‘fish’ and related jobs; my father’s in building or painting. (not the kind that requires and easel and beret).
Now I could pay a month's subscription to FindMyPast to access this record, but it is unlikely to tell me anything I didn't already know. I know where and when my grandfather was born and who his parents were. But this does raise the point that Ancestry SHOULD have found this record and didn't and I am not sure why.
Does anyone else have any insights on the relative reliabilities of Ancestry and FindMyPast?
Thanks for this--it's been driving me mildly batty wondering why some families have a third son showing up as "Junior," when I'm more familiar with the pattern that makes the eldest son his father's namesake. Now I know.
This one was rather more interesting. Her cousin arrived with some of his parent's furniture (his father was Mum's mum's half-brother), including a set of Victorian dining chairs. Mum thought they looked familiar, found the old photos, and there in the photo of my granny as a bairn in the house she was born in in 1913... yes, you've guessed it, is one of those chairs!
She's also found a great crested newt. I'm still not sure which is most exciting.
I also have one line where I'm damn sure they're right, but I can't kill off the chap in the direct line to confirm his birth year, he just vanishes off the radar. Records for him in the Record Office - including one that was indexed after I thought he'd died, when his goods and chattels were sold off, but that he actually signed! - but he's not with his wife and daughter in 1841 (or, if he is, he's lost in the damaged enumerators book), or onwards.
Yes - that happens a lot.
We think nothing of travelling that far today, but whenever we go to Hereford, I wonder how they made the journey and how long it took them.
You'd think the penny would drop. Meanwhile Maggie appears on 12 trees. Seven give her place of death - four have (correctly) London, England, but three have London, Texas.
Yes, if you believe all you come across, you’d have thought that half my family lie buried in the States, the other half in Scotland. It’s all those folk with the same names that gets me in a muddle,
I couldn't find a death cert for my gt gt grandfather's second wife. I had a fairly small window to search because my gt gt grandfather described himself as a widower on the census twelve years after their marriage. But even with only ten years to search, between the census returns, I couldn't find her death.
It turned out that she had done a runner* and emigrated to Australia, where she claimed to be a widow. She had provided a year of death for her first husband, whose name was not unusual, and indeed there was someone of that name who had died in the right place in the right year!
She had then met her second husband, and had a large family by him. Her descendants were baffled than on each of the Australian births there was a different marriage date for the parents. In fact, they weren't married and must have made up a date each time. They married after their eighth child was born, six months after my gt gt grandfather died in Scotland - presumably she got news of his death and hadn't wanted to marry whilst he was still alive because it would have been bigamous.
Her descendants even had a photo of the gravestone of the random-with-the-same-name who had died in the right place in the right year.
* She was a much younger second wife, only a couple of years older than gt gt grandfather's eldest child. In fact she and her future step-daughter must have played together as children, because they were near neighbours. No idea what possessed her to marry him, but she seems to have skipped off quite quickly.
The 'researchers' you are referring to are the people like you who enter their data on the information they have. Likely, those who listed only one person in the generation came through that one person's line. Since you are aware of the other brothers and sisters, you can enter them yourself. It helps if you can find sources that also confirm their connection and add the links to that information.
To other, not terribly exciting news: I’ve discovered that one of my grandfathers had a half brother, born to great granny four years before she married my great grandfather. Father unknown.
My father's name is a very common one. Legend has it that his grandfather was Welsh, and spoke 5 languages. Interesting, as both my cousin and I taught languages, but I have no way of proving it, or finding any evidence that makes it likely. Similarly, no evidence that he also taught at Aberystwyth College, now university. So family legends are not reliable at all.
My mum told us that her father died when she was 9 and I have done a huge amount of work on his side of the family, especially as six years ago I actually moved into that area. As I drive over that way I often wonder if my ancestors worked in those fields ( they were ag labs ). I discovered that my grandfather was illegitimate and he was brought up by his grandmother. I struggled to trace his mother, and finally cracked it when trying to buy her death certificate. The GRO eventually produced it, as the local record office found no trace. Her death had been reported by her partner as if she were his wife, and she not only adopted his surname but changed her Christian name. The records were officially corrected thanks to the intervention of her brother. Her burial records her assumed name. I have drawn a blank when trying to find out anything about her partner.
Strangely in 1911 when my mum was 18 months old, she was not living with her father, but boarded out with a neighbour. My mum's mother had died when she was 6 months old. I suppose her dad needed help to care for her. He later remarried, so the person I knew as Nan was not actually a blood relative. It was only after Mum died that I was able to work on her history, and found, to my great sadness, that she had a number of relatives, first cousins even, living almost round the corner. She never knew them. As I have moved back into the same area I keep coming across connections with my village, but so far, no living relatives. It is harder to work forwards than backwards.
I use Ancestry, but I have just bought some charts and folders so I am going to start moving things on to paper, and putting such photos and certificates that I have all together.
There is no death certificate (he was born in 1898 so must be dead by now) and it seems likely that he either changed his name and took up a new identity or he went abroad.
It is also possible, of course, that he was abducted by aliens.
Another, darker, possibility is what happened to a friend of mine about 20 years ago. He told his wife that he was going out to get some fresh air and never returned. His car was later found in a clifftop car park. Although there is no proof, the assumption has always been that he suddenly became overwhelmed by the pressures he was facing and threw himself off the cliff into the sea. No body was ever found and it was some years before his wife could legally certify him as dead.
I have often thought that a way for folk to Start Again in another place would be a very good idea.
Would save a lot of heartache
Many of the slaves brought to the Cape were baptised and given sets of names (with classical references: Apollo, Nero, Phoebe, Venus, or just based on the month when they were sold (October, September, January) but also Christianised first names plus the place from which they were abducted or sold. My mother's maternal line begins with Christina or Christijn of Angola, one of numerous Christina of Angolas brought to the Cape along with dozens of Christians, Abrahams and Adams. It is now thought that my family ancestor Christina of Angola later took the name Regina (or Tavina) van Rapenberg van Guinea and was born in Dahomey (what is now Benin) in 1650. She might have been force-marched to the coast from as far away as the Sudan.
This would place her aboard the Hasselt, the second Dutch slave ship to reach the Cape in 1658. The eight-year-old Regina was sold several times; her daughters would become freed slaves and escape across the mountains to freedom outside the Cape Colony in Swellendam. The family names of Regina and Christina come up again and again through the following century.
Not surprising that they moved back to England, @Net Spinster. I don't know much about Ermelo (Mpumalanga), but at the end of the Anglo-Boer war in 1902 only one homestead was left standing in Ermelo after British bombardment and I can imagine it would be a very uncomfortable place for English settlers.
Many British and Commonwealth families will have had some historic connection to South Africa between 1899 and 1902 since this war was the biggest deployment of British troops since the Crimea, involving half a million soldiers including volunteers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
It occurred to me that if I died my family would not be able to make sense of my boxes of notes.
I decided to get a decorative printed tree to fill out and give to each child, so that they would have the bare bones of the family tree.
I browsed several options, and ordered one from what I thought was an American website.
It has arrived, from China. The quality is poor. But the main problem is that it has The Carol Family printed on it.
Our surname is not Carol.
Admittedly the website illustration showed The Carol Family on it but I assumed that was just to show that there was space for a name.
If any Shipmates have the surname Carol, and would like a poor quality family tree form, pm me.
I've gone back and looked at the reviews on the website, all of which purport to be from Americans, but the English is poor in each case.
My son says that it's not a scam as such because I did get something for my money which corresponds to what they were selling, but clearly I would not have bought it if I had realised that The Carol Family was printed on it.
The illustration on the website shows someone standing in front of the chart, so that The Carol Family was partially obscured by their arm.
I think you can complain to Amazon, but I'm not at all sure there will be much recourse. Some of those places are fly-by-night.
ETA: Yikes, just realized you didn't say it was Amazon. By the sounds of it, I'd suspect it was a Chinese company, no matter who's fronting it. I'd go ahead and complain for the form of it, but without a whole lot of hope.
I use Family Tree Maker, but I am not sure if either of my kids could navigate round it, and don't think either would thank me if I started printing off reports for them. My plan was to give them a decorative nine generations chart.
Now that I am looking at it more closely, I can see odd phraseology such as "record the prosperity of your family" but the charts for sale looked exactly what I wanted; a nine generation chart to give to someone with a minimal interest in genealogy.
Demographers have calculated that there is a near 100% probability that anyone with English ancestry is descended from Edward III. Partly that's just math, but the dude definitely got around.
I have had an exciting development. Years ago I was contacted by a distant cousin through the Aberdeen Family History Society, and we've kept in touch. Ancestry DNA subsequently confirmed our relationship. She has focussed on a single-name study; we link through my great great grandmother, whose maiden name was the one-name study name. She got a male relative to do one of the haplogroup tests.
An lo! This haplogroup test has linked her family (and by extension mine) to an Icelandic Viking burial!
So, although I don't have that haplogroup, as this is on my mother's side, the Ancestry DNA test and the haplogroup test together link me to an c11th century Icelandic Viking!
I'm a bit vague on the science, but thrilled by the concept!
There is some truly fascinating stuff coming out of aDNA analysis at the moment, not least how far people travelled in prehistoric times (admittedly, that's not just DNA analysis, but...). Sadly I think my career has long since passed the point where I stand the slightest chance of getting into an aDNA lab - that and desperation are the only things that would get me back into academia - but I can at least watch from the sidelines.
There's been a lot of research into the medieval links between Flanders and Scotland; perhaps I should start reading up.
Reading this thread has made me reevaluate my paternal line, which is Scottish. I was looking at my tree to see if the Scottish ancestors followed the naming tradition. My ancestor who migrated from Neilston in Scotland to Clare in South Australia was called Archibald. So was the man I had listed as his father. Looking at someone else's tree I noticed they had information from his marriage certificate to his third wife (first wife died young, second wife lived to a reasonable age and then he married for a third time when he was almost 70). On that certificate his father is listed as John, not Archibald, as has been on the tree since someone researched it on paper years ago. I had noticed that his name was not listed in the family he is supposed to be part of in the 1841 census, but there was another boy the right age with a similar name, so I thought he probably just went by another name. I also have genetic links to other surnames in that tree from Neilston and Barrhead, but probably the local families were all intermarried.
Oh what a tangled web we weave
when first we marry and concieve!