Researching your family Tree

If you go back as far as possible you will eventually trace back to Africa - but it's best not to mention that on here.

Norwegian Spruce

Why does everybody want everything for nothing these says?

Sensible answers only please.

my old man has been using computer at library as it allows him to use some
of the paid for sites free of charge.

https://familyhistorydaily.com/family-history/access-ancestry-databases-for-...

Ancestry.com is the best for researching your family tree.

Best advice is don`t do it. It will become an obsession and take up all your time.

thanks donny.

ha ha mac,

old man is never in house, and i meet new ancestors each time i track him down

greeat great grandfathers wedding certificate....so new leads to go further back

Suggestion: You might not be (and probably aren't) the first in your extended family to have done this, try asking around, you may alreay have a cousin, e.g. Nordic_harbour, who has already done all the leg work for an entire half of your family tree. Get two and it's job done.

Has anyone done it and if so, how far back were you able to trace your ancestors?

old man is back to first half of 1800s

but soon he will be onto parish records and stuff

on mams side we had a cousin , 10 years ago, who did some stuff, and we got lots of letters from usa
and a few folk came over to meet us.

that was because cousin hit upon a tagged bit of research

I've managed to get back to the early 1700's. It is a bit of a slog though and many times you come to dead ends (not a pun).

You can literally spend hours or days or weeks and get no further.

Family search is free https://www.familysearch.org/en/ and I'd try that to start just to see what you have to do. So are https://www.freebmd.org.uk/ and https://www.freereg.org.uk/search_queries/new?locale=en which I found really useful.

I found FindMyPast to be most suitable for me. They have copies of the original census forms which aren't always transcribed accurately and the 1939 census. You have to pay but can get a free month (I think).

Another problem is recording the information. What do you intend to do with it? Do you would want to make it available to other family members? There's much more to say on this side of it. https://www.wikitree.com/ may be a start for this side of things.

I know quite a bit about researching your family tree but not an expert by any means.

thnx charlie/donny, not planning to anythig with it other than for pure interest to me.

You might get as far back as Abba then

I want go as far back as the Viking invasions

you can get one of them dna kits

get an idea where your ancestors were from.

It's straightforward to begin with but it does get complicated.  You have to be skilled at seeing the details.  If you make a mistake and put someone in your tree who shouldn't be there, everyone behind them will be wrong.  I had a Victorian family - dad, mum, 4 kids, who had the same names and ages as completely unrelated family.  You do find some gems.  I owe my existance to an attempted murder on Friday 6th February 1863.  In fact, all his children, grand-children, great-grandchildren etc. do.  Everyone exists to some extent to 'sliding doors' moments but it's fascinating to pin-point such an event.  I also found my great-grandmother grew up in a house on Ashburton Grove.  That street was eventually demolished to make way for the new Arsenal stadium - the team I just happen to support.  I've also done a DNA test.  That is a bit of a lottery.  You only get 50% from each parent.  Therefore, say your mum had 30% African DNA, there's a good chance you wouldn't inherit any African DNA from her.  I have a lot of Huguenot (French) ancestry on my dad's side.  None of it shows in my DNA.

The best place to start is from living relatives. If they're still alive parents, grandparents, etc will have a mine of information that will be lost if not recorded. My elder brother started on the family tree route and it's quite amazing how much they remembered.

even the old ones with fading memories can often remember their grandparents from childhood visits,
and aunts and uncles and cousins they holidayed with.

Old family letters, address books, photographs often with who and were written on the back, old paper cuttings kept by someone anything like that can prove invaluable. The really important stuff like old marriage certificates contain information not generally available.

The dead relatives will tell you very little.

What about a séance ?

should be a free governement national database rather than people scratcing around for infor paying website for the privlidge.

Apr 2, 2019 -- 7:56PM, peckerdunne wrote:

The dead relatives will tell you very little.

Artifacts from dead relatives may tell you a great deal.

Apr 2, 2019 -- 7:59PM, scandanavian_haven wrote:

should be a free governement national database rather than people scratcing around for infor paying website for the privlidge.

I originally thought that but when you try and do it you can see why there's not. There's such a wealth of information out there that collating is a phenomenal task. I'm still in awe of the 1939 Register which was used, by the NHS, and manually updated until quite recently.

if it was auto collated by ancestry they would soon have it done, but revenue would dry up

How do you auto collate when by far the majority of parish records aren't digitally recorded? Even when records are recorded they differ greatly in the details recorded. Imagine how many births, deaths and marriages published in local newspapers nationally aren't recorded and they have invaluable details. Given the rules for recording births varied over time and people couldn't register them after a certain period, stigma associated with out of wedlock births, general level of illiteracy so couldn't sign or spell their name, and it goes on and on.

I don't know how seriously you've tried donny but often wise the details just aren't there and never will be.

There was so much inbreeding going on back in the day, which makes you wonder if it's that inbreeding that results in genetic mutations/deformalities/mental impairments today ?

for example, lets say a generation is 25 years, and the generation above me was born around 1965, going back 30 generations to the year 1265 and doubling the generation each time, 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents etc, it would mean in 1265 I would have 536,870,912 million ancestors walking the earth all involved in my creation, yet the world population around that time was around 360 million, and of course you double that to over 1 billion for 1240 when the population was not much different to 1265.

Scandi - I may be wrong but can't you get a free trial time with ancestry? I have been doing mine for 17 years now and though it isn't full of exciting stuff I did find out some cool stuff and even got to know a 2nd cousin through it. mac is correct of course once you start it can become quite the obsession. I have traced different sides of the family to different eras. My mum's maiden side in to the early 1700s London is the furthest so far.

i just mean, if my dad does some work, he can link stuff up, but there isnt an automatic feature to
link his family tree, as compiled by him and link it to each person he has included.

if they did , then that would be my version of autolinking


there are quite a few of dads family missing or lost due to census being incomplete.

also war records are missing as lots of ww1 records were bombed in ww2

dads been at it for about a year, and i try to help him, but hes now quite good whereas
i am still a novice. but i'd rather be reading golf stats and looking at odds.

Apr 2, 2019 -- 10:29PM, scandanavian_haven wrote:

There was so much inbreeding going on back in the day, which makes you wonder if it's that inbreeding that results in genetic mutations/deformalities/mental impairments today ?for example, lets say a generation is 25 years, and the generation above me was born around 1965, going back 30 generations to the year 1265 and doubling the generation each time, 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents etc, it would mean in 1265 I would have 536,870,912 million ancestors walking the earth all involved in my creation, yet the world population around that time was around 360 million, and of course you double that to over 1 billion for 1240 when the population was not much different to 1265.

SH, while there were certainly more 1st cousin marriages back in the day, what your statistical analysis is really showing is mostly a vast number of marriages between 4th, 5th, 6th... etc cousins. eg a man and a woman who shared a grt grt grt grt grandparent. This would be the case for a huge % of marriages and the couple would be unlikely to have any idea that they were 'related'. So that is not harmful at all, and is unavoidable if they are both from the same place (unless it is a London scale city). Only the 1st or 2nd cousin marriages would be likely to cause genetic problems for offspring I believe.

Apr 2, 2019 -- 4:08PM, The Management wrote:

If you go back as far as possible you will eventually trace back to Africa - but it's best not to mention that on here.

They'd be even more peeved to go further back and find they are descended from fish

yeah that makes sense tober, with your first cousin you share up to 13.8% of you DNA, 12.5% average and up to 5.04% with second cousins, average 3.13%. That's why there's a higher rate of birth defects within the Pakistani community where marrying cousins is common. But also h0mo sapiens interbred with Denisovans and the Neandathals going futher back, as long ago as it was, crossing species? I haven't Hank but I will.

Going back in time your number of living ancestors gets bigger and bigger until it peaks about 1200-1300AD, then it starts getting smaller.

Also, as you go back in time, your living ancestors are more and more evenly distributed around the world.

So a 'pure bred anglo saxon' would have 100% of his year 1900 ancestors as white english people. But in 1800 perhaps only 88%, with 12% living in Ireland.

In 1700 only 50% English, 25% Irish, 25% continental European.

In 1200 he will have only a small % English as it will more reflect the world population at that time. By the time anyone - if they could - traces their 2,000BC ancestors then everyone in the world will have the same ones.

Also, when going back as far as medieval times, not only race or nationality, but also social class becomes irrelevant. So everyone (in Britain at least, though most other people) is a direct descendant of the Norman and Plantagenet Kings of England. A medieval beggar will be direct ancestor of Elizabeth II, and so on. it is a mathematical certainty.

Looking at it from the other direction...

Anyone who had kids thousands of year ago is going to be the ancestor of everyone alive today (unless their line dies out within a few generations). You either have all descendants or none.

And someone who has a bunch of kids in 2019 will be the ancestor of everyone alive in 4019, Presidents and Kings or whover is around at that time.

As to family tree research, i have done that through Ancestry UK and Find My Past. I think the ancestry sub is about £20 a month, and the other one I think is about £12 although i paid a year in advance last time.

It is something I get into every now and then for a few weeks over the years. It's easy enough to cancel the subs when you are not going to be doing it for a while. I have used BMD a bit which is free but generally I've not really explored the free options as I don't think they were there when I started doing it. If it could be done efficiently for free though I don't see how these firms could stay in business.

As people have said it is crucial to have some info from parents about maiden names of grt grandparents etc as you can't really get started without that. Once you know that info you can find the people in the 1901 or 1911 census and take it from there. Then you will find a further generation back but you really need order birth/marriage certificates of individuals to make progress beyond the census info. When ordering certificates you need to get them direct from the GRO which i think is about £9 each. There is a link on Ancestry to order them but they charge about £25 !

I think I have traced about 75% of my ancestors that were living since 1830 and maybe 30% that were around in 1790s. There was one branch that someone else had traced back to 1580 or so.

Once you have exhausted the census and certificate data it is on to parish records. These are much more available on ancestry and FMP than they used to be, but still quite patchy. Irish records are more available than before also, though very hit and miss, and always hard to know that the names - which can be spelled 50 different ways - are the people you are looking for.

Been doing it on and off for a couple of years.  Ancestry.com.   I find I need massive chunks of time to get anywhere.  I am 50% Irish and a lot of records were lost when the
Public Records office was burnt down, so I am having to work backwards and then forwards from earlier records.

Probably wouldn't take long if you just want to track direct i.e. mother father, mother father,  but if you wan to include other members of the families, which often
contain interesting stories, the scope of the project can become massive.

I got given a very old, much copied and sellotape, hand-drawn family tree by my late Auntie which went back to around 1600 which started me off.  Via Ancestry, I made contact with a distant relative
in Canada.  He was absolutely thrilled when I sent him the hand-drawn tree as he was able to get a much better understanding of his heritage.   He and his extended
family have made two trips to the UK and Ireland to pursue his research.  This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't given him the info I had.

There is of course the elephant in the room - the illegitimate child, which would unknowingly throw a complete spanner in the works. And of course the futher you go back the more likely meaning maybe not tracing so far back is a good idea.

Well yes, that's the funny thing about people "tracing their history" and saying "I'm King Thorin's descendent, from 14 generations ago". That is of course ruling out the inevitable illegitimate children or even adopted cases. And switched babies in 14th century maternity wards, when the NHS was notoriously sloppy. You don't have to watch many episodes of "who do you think you are" to see you don't have to go far back to see scandals and wierd turns, and that's the relatively well documented cases.

Not sure how to break this news to the person who started the largest known family tree in history - containing 13 million people.

Just a last point or question

What exactly is a direct descendant? which may sound like a daft question but still.

Is that your mum's mum mums mum mum etc and your dad's dad dad dad dad dad dad dad etc so on the direct female / male line... or

or is it your mums dad dad mums dad mumd dad or you dads dad dad mums dad mums mums dad? etc

I have googled this but no clear answer.

direct descendant is blood lineage, like not lnvlving step kids who entered family by marriage , afaik

your mums mums mums mum is a direct antecedant

Apr 5, 2019 -- 12:44AM, scandanavian_haven wrote:

Just a last point or questionWhat exactly is a direct descendant? which may sound like a daft question but still.Is that your mum's mum mums mum mum etc and your dad's dad dad dad dad dad dad dad etc so on the direct female / male line... oror is it your mums dad dad mums dad mumd dad or you dads dad dad mums dad mums mums dad? etcI have googled this but no clear answer.

'is it your mums dad dad mums dad mumd dad or you dads dad dad mums dad mums mums dad? etc' Yes

I ended up in kerry
Meeting a guy who looked like me
Turned out my grandad had been
A naughty boy out of wedlock
On a trip back from u k
Kept it quiet by giving
The mistress twenty plus acres ......
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME