Merlin820 32 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 (edited) I am going to start tracing my family tree, will be doing my maternal side as my Dad has done his side. I've got as far back as my Grandad so a bit to go yet. If anyone on here has done this, any tips would be gratefully received. Is it worth registering on one of these tracing sites such as ancestry.co.uk or just better to go to actual official records? I can get a lot of information from my Mum which will give me a good start and my Grandad also wrote his memoirs which gives a lot of information about his parents. Be interested to hear how far anyone has actually traced back. My Dad did his and it appears his ancestors were Irish and were smuggling weapons from Ireland over to the mainland. :D Edited October 4, 2010 by Merlin820 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
French-A + 166 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Merlin I am currently helping my granda trace his family history pretty much from his most recent descendants as far back as is possible He has signed up with ancestry and also had an awful lot of actual historical record himself from being part of the harrington historical association but i believe he has traced his family roots back until the early 1800's The main problem he has found has been due to the fact that many of our ancestors changed the spelling of their names between censuses wether this was intentional or just due to illiteracy at the time also we have one person at least that appears each time the census was done to have guessed his age to the nearest 20yrs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
E29NP1546080952 1,383 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 (edited) Is it worth registering on one of these tracing sites such as ancestry.co.uk or just better to go to actual official records? Yet over in the Irish Republic you can search the online census records for free! I was thinking of doing mine, but it's a nightmare on my mothers side. Edited October 4, 2010 by pmtts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burnsy2023 2,895 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 I thought this was going to be about gardening and then I felt rather silly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strathy- + 171 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 I've just finished doing my Mothers side of the family which I found to be really easy. I took it back to 1740s and found out that my great grandfather was a well known Captain of a huge ship and a news article that explained his accidental death in 1849. Took me about 3-5 hours to get a full tree built for one side of the family. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin820 32 Posted October 4, 2010 Author Share Posted October 4, 2010 I've just finished doing my Mothers side of the family which I found to be really easy. I took it back to 1740s and found out that my great grandfather was a well known Captain of a huge ship and a news article that explained his accidental death in 1849. Took me about 3-5 hours to get a full tree built for one side of the family. Really? How? I thought ancestry you could get access to birth certificates but it didn't come up with anything like that when I searched my Grandad etc. Just shows an entry on B/D/M register with a reference on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SO191 0 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 I traced my, great, great, great, great Grandad back to 1781 in Essex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrative Account 7 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 (edited) I can trace part of my family tree on my mum's side to circa 1720 in Caerleon, Newport, Wales. I thought it'd be boring as anything when I started, but once you start you can't help but get drawn in!! ++ EDIT ++ Cancel that - I've just traced it back further, now I'm now back to circa 1630! It'd be my (deep breath) great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather! Edited October 4, 2010 by deedubya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewZinc 5 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Hi Damsel, I used a combination of websites to do my research and got back to 1700 with my family name and 1625 with one of my other lines! Ancestry was the most useful. You start by entering as much information as you know and it then starts bringing up possible matches to Census / Birth records etc which you can then review. The great thing is that it searches all the trees already uploaded by users so, as I found, I could benefit from other peoples' work on my ancestors. You have to pay a fee (£12.95 per month for me, though I will cancel when I'm finished) which allows unlimited searches and viewing records but you cannot view original birth/death/marriage certificates, just the indexes. These allow you to order the originals but don't do this through Ancestry as it is twice the cost of the Government General Registry Office. I just ordered the ones of my direct GGF, GGGF and so on of my family name. As I am Scottish, I also was able to use the Government's Scotland's People website which allows you to search Scottish records (1 credit per search) and download original certificates (5 credits) - much easier and cheaper than obtaining English ones. 30 credits are £6. Scottish parish records (before 1855) were generally better kept than in E&W so you can often go back further if your ancestors were in Scotland. I benefited greatly from existing trees on Ancestry and that I have Scottish lines. My family name were only Scottish for three generations then London, and seem to have originated in Oxfordshire. My mum's dad's family were Northern Irish but I quickly hit a dead end there as the Irish destroyed their census records before they were transcribed! I also found out that one ancestor, a 'night watchman' was found dead in the Clyde under a bridge, while another was on a plane which disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1948! I only found these due to other folks' work though. All the best with your family, it is rewarding to find out about them. I wish I had a team of BBC researchers to investigate who they were though as for most, I just know their names and dates. This is the second time I typed this post as I lost my connection after hitting 'add reply' the last time!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrative Account 7 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 It's a great thing to do, but, beware! One of my elderly uncles started to research our lineage and the deeper he delved the more he found. In the end he thought he'd concentrate on my father's paternal side but of course it wasn't that simple. He started his research a while ago, when he looked up at the clock again, it was 30-40 years later... In the end he produced a proper book (and be careful of those Book of [surname]s which admittedly I haven't seen in a while: they were purely books of people with the same surname but with no detail or anything) and it was the result of 30-40 years research. And that's from a family name that isn't very rare, but neither common or even every day. It had been too early for the internet for him, he'd spent a fortune on going to Somerset House and various parish churches and things to track marriages, Christenings and deaths. Amazing bit of work though and a fascinating book. What started as a matter of passing interest turned into one that he thoroughly enjoyed, but was an almost all-consuming project! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrative Account 7 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 I'll second that - just reading this thread made me delve a bit deeper (as can be seen from my post above!), I've wasted a few more hours this evening doing this when I should have been doing other stuff - I've not even had my tea yet! Incidentally, MyHeritage.com is quite a useful site - you can download free software to plan out your tree, and search for people matches, you can garner a lot of additional info from other users this way. There's a facility to merge info from other trees but you have to pay, but if you're willing to do a bit of manual labour you can easily copy the info across to your own tree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SO191 0 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 It's true, my family from the 1781 era lived in church lane, there is a chuch there and I'm going to go to it when I'm next in the UK to look at the gravestones and if they have them the chuch records. I simply love history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strathy- + 171 Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 (edited) Really? How? I thought ancestry you could get access to birth certificates but it didn't come up with anything like that when I searched my Grandad etc. Just shows an entry on B/D/M register with a reference on it. This is a true story, there was a guy my dad went to University with and he done his family tree and found out he was related to King Robert the Bruce of Scotland. When you get to about 1849 (in Scotland anyway) there are no official records, so we found a record from the church that said my Grandfather was a Ship Master we looked into it further and found a site that listed his name and details and the name of his ship, then we found the Inverness Advertiser that listed more information it was amazing. I ended up going to his real house in Edinburgh (we never knew my family came from Edinburgh either) where the place has been turned into a restaurant. Edited October 5, 2010 by scottuk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Partridge + 235 Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 I don't know anything about my family Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone 731 Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 My Dad did his and it appears his ancestors were Irish and were smuggling weapons from Ireland over to the mainland. Vetting is getting lax these days... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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