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Thats fine- you have a good old nose. You never know what you might find out. Regards Irene

Hate the fact that when i read the boards i feel like a peeping tom, and should not be listening to other peoples convocation's But cant stop myself

Sorry for the pun Gwynne but I bet you could have mudered your Auntie!!!! sorry but I know how you feel. I sent my Uncle loads of info on the family and he said nothing there I did not know and I could have told you. I felt like mudering him that day after the cost of about £70 on certificates. Good Luck with your research. Irene

I can relate to that, Margaret. Mum had died before I started 'doing' her family and my aunts and uncle said they didn't really know anything. One aunt wrote down all that she could remember (she said) so it gave me some areas of Wales to look in. She said some branches came from Somerset and Bristol, originally. A lot of what she wrote was close enough to put me on the trail but she said she knew 'nothing' about one particular name. I trawled back through census a film at a time until I got a birthplace in Somerset. Years later I found the family in Over Stowey where they were not very well thought of by the vicar who mentioned them in his diaries. Following the female line I found a first cousin of my ancestor was hanged for murder. It was quite a famous case in its time (1789) so I was able to collect quite a lot of information. I decided not to mention it to my elderly aunts unless they asked how I was getting on. A year ago we were visiting my only remaining aunt and she asked if I was still researching the family. I said I was and she replied, 'My Uncle Tom was doing that for years but he stopped when he found the murderer and burnt all the papers.' I counted to 10 and asked why she hadn't mentioned it before, or why her sister hadn't when she wrote about the family and she said they thought I wouldn't want to know about that, it wasn't very nice. Further questioning proved she knew where he lived and around what time he was hanged. Gwynne

Clare Thats another one. Older relatives saying 'Oh I already knew that'. When you have already asked them and they knew nothing and then spent loads of cash to find out. Another one is: My father in law swears blind that his gran was 93 when she died. I have her birth cert, marriage cert and death cert. They all prove she was 90. He was only 13 when she died and his own father was the informant, but she 'definately died when she was 93' Grrrrrrrrrrrr Margaret

My current pet hate is watching grown men sobbing on 'Who do you think you are?' because they have discovered that their widowed great-grandma was a pauper and had had her poor relief stopped when she had an illegitimate child etc etc. I wont say that I haven't shed the odd tear when I've opened the death certificates of 3 month old babies who have died with their mothers from T.B... but this current trend of prolonged sobbing on prime time T.V. seems false. Keren

i hate that i get addicted to reading threads when they are nothing to do with me!!! Love this one!! and buying certificates to find they are the wrong person :)

Hi everyone My pet hate is members of my family who don't appear to have died yet, despite being born in 1850!! (I've spent about 10 hours trawling through the registers on ancestry, quarter by quarter and year by year with no luck so far - and that's only for 2 people) Also my gt gt gt grandfather wasn't born, although I do have a copy of his marriage certificate!! Perhaps he was beamed down from another planet - it could explain a lot. Great thread, thanks for starting it! Louise :>)

Mine is: Have you reached Adam & Eve yet? Every flippin time the family mention it GRRRRRR

hey Lysianne! what a pretty name (is it pronounced lissie-anne?) like you my name is quite unusual (unless you are looking for a sewing machine via google!) and I have to answer to Bernadette, Bernice and (my pet hate) Bernie but my real name is BERNETTE! Hope future researchers appreciate my mother's choice! sorry to hi jack thread... my pet hate is seeing vast quantities of photos and other memorabilia being sold or thrown out by uncaring owners. ARGHHH I wish I had just a tiny amount of original documents to fill out my tree netti x

Hi Well, looking on the bright side, you've all made me find a reason to be cheerful for bearing the loathsome name of Lysianne - hopefully, any genealogically minded descendants will find it useful. I knew it had to have some advantage somewhere to offset strangers pronouncing it Licey Anne... Lysianne

I've always had enormous sympathy for fellow researchers with White, Brown, Smith, Green Walker etc in their tree. I need bucket loads now for myself .... just started a new branch .... and a Green married a Walker :-( .... Walkers mothers maiden name was ..... Smith ......... I just knew my luck couldn't hold ....... :-( Elaine ;-) Desperately need Sue Smith now ... with her Walker clan ... I need to pinch some names ... just to bulk the tree a little bit ;-)

My biggest pet hate is that all my Smiths seem to marry women who have Smith as their maiden names, added to this they are all called Elizabeth or Ann!!!!! NOT HELPFUL!!!!!

Well done Daniel Barry - I love it. Irene

All the freeloaders who want others to find their relations on sites for which payment has to be made......and won't even fork out for a cert. Reg

My pet hate: People who post question after question after question on the message boards, get other people to do the research and then claim to have 'investigated' and 'researched' their family tree!. Also, along the UK being smaller than the USA line, try being in Australia where everyone else in the world presumes we all speak like Paul Hogan and have kangaroos as pets! Yeah right!!! Lewella

Oh and cousins or friends who say, ' I wouldn't mind doing my family tree, can you help me?' When you tell then it costs money they suddenly lose interest. They want it presented in front of them in a couple of days. 'Well isnt everything on the Internet now? It must be really easy.' NOT!!! Oooops didnt mean to hog the thread, sorry. Margaret

Also hate the queries that come from, usually the USA, (apologies to those in the USA but it does happen) asking for whoever born in UK. It must be the same one as mine was born in the UK too. Yes, it may be a much smaller country than the USA but we dont all know each other personally. Margaret

Tina I had a similar thing on my marriage cert. I had to give my grandads address because I thought I lived in the parish I wanted to marry in, but then found out that I was the wrong side of the road. The Parish Boundary ran down the centre of the street. Grandad agreed to let me use his address. Even the vicar knew I didnt live there. The trouble was, the vicar left before I married and the temporary vicar decided to check up on things. He knocked at my grandads door and asked him if I lived there. Grandad said, I may be old but I'm not senile. Do you think I dont know who lives with me? Of course she lives here. Good old grandad R.I.P. Margaret

Thought we could all relate to this, plus enjoy a good giggle from it (sorry about taking up so much space!): Source: Author Unknown It is New Year's Eve 1852 and Henry HYDENWELL sits at his desk by candlelight. He dips his quill pen in ink and begins to writes his New Year's resolutions. 1. No man is truly well-educated unless he learns to spell his name in at least three different ways within the same document. I resolve to give the appearance of being extremely well-educated in the coming year. 2. I resolve to see to it that all of my children will have the same names that my ancestors have used for six generations in a row. 3. My age is no one's business but my own. I hereby resolve to never list the same age or birth year twice on any document. 4. I resolve to have each of my children baptised in a different church - either in a different faith or in a different parish. Every third child will not be baptised at all or will be baptised by an itinerant minister who keeps no records. 5. I resolve to move to a new town, new county, or new state at least once every 10 years -- just before those pesky enumerators come around asking silly questions. 6. I will make every attempt to reside in counties and towns where no vital records are maintained or where the courthouse burns down every few years. 7. I resolve to join an obscure religious cult that does not believe in record keeping or in participating in military service. 8. When the tax collector comes to my door, I'll loan him my pen, which has been dipped in rapidly fading blue ink. 9. I resolve that if my beloved wife Mary should die, I will marry another Mary. 10. I resolve not to make a will. Who needs to spend money on a lawyer? 11. I will live in a house without a number on a very long road which goes through three enumeration districts on at least two rolls of microfilm.