Genealogy Chat

Nudge

Hi

There are some very good points made in this thread.

I am a combination of many things when it comes to my family tree. I have a small tree where I know that everything is certain, this is accompanied by my family history and these are the ancestors that I feel I know.
Then I have my wider tree this is where I record siblings and so forth that I may never get the certificates to prove. This is also the place where I make note of my maybes and most likelies until I can prove my theories.
I also have two further trees that record the occurances of a couple of the more unusual names in my tree in the immediate areas that I am concerned with so should I ever find the link between my tree and them I will not have to go back over ground that I covered years before.

Finally I have my tree on here. This is a selection of the proven along with some of the theories all there because they will hopefully let me link with other researchers interested in the same lines.

I have been a 'victim' of a name collector by proxy. I was contacted by someone with a very tenous link to my family and declined to let them see my tree however some time later they contacted a genuine relative of mine who had been given access to my tree who in turn passed the information on. I know this because I appeared in the first persons tree. The ironic thing is that the genuine relative closed their tree to me after I pointed out some inaccuracies, mainly that they were missing a sibling of my father's, so even if the 'name collector' is geniune in their desire to know more they are getting flawed information.

For my part when I do get information from other researchers I like to check it myself just in case, I've made fundemental errors in the past and so I'd like any flaws in my research to be my own and not anyone elses.

Sarah

Hi everyone
Been reading through this thread, very interesting.
I've only been doing my tree for 8 months but I got a good match with a distant cousin who was related to my grandmothers family which gave me a very good start. we were able to exchange stories from our grandmothers and she has photos of my g aunts and my nan.
The Medway cityark is a good site if your're looking for relies in Noth Kent. I found lots dating from the late 1800s. My family moved to the medway area from Canterbury and Maidstone. Many were ag labs so they moved to where the work was I s'pose. Its a pity other places havent got something like cityark. I live in Hertfordshire so making a trip to Canterbury etc is difficult to fit round work and family

Yvonne x

Nothing wrong with that at all Jackie.

If someone shows me a new branch for my tree I tend to be a bit sceptical until I've done what checking I can. I've seen rather a lot of online trees which are works of fiction so I like to find out a bit about the person who created the tree and where they found their information.

More and more information is coming online but still many areas of the UK are not well recorded on the Internet. If someone has been able to get to a Records Office and discovered a document that relates to my ancestors, and is happy to share, then I am happy to be shown that information. Life is probably going to be far too short to visit all relevant Records Offices to research every bit of my tree or go over every detail with a fine tooth comb.

I have a second cousin who has concentrated on one part of our shared ancestry. That bit has become her particular interest and she shares her findings. I know she is thorough and there is no point in doing it all again myself.

Having said all that, I do remember best the parts of the tree which I have spent time and effort on researching myself and there are some ancestors who seem more real to me than others.

I get really very interested in the lives of some ancestors and find out as much about their jobs, where they lived and what sort of lives they lived. Even if they lived a very long time ago, and I know I share them with many thousands of other descendants, it still gives me a little shiver down my spine to think if they hadn't lived I wouldn't be here.

Last week one of my contacts visited a chapel and sent me a photo of a tomb of one of my ancestors (one of my 10x greats). He and his 3rd wife (I am descended from the 2nd) are shown as effigies lying with a monkey at their feet. The chapel guide explained that the monkey commemorates a pet one which woke the family when there was a house fire and saved their lives.
I like finding out snippets like that and it all makes people even from long ago come to life.

Sue

I too research well on the people in my tree, it makes them alive in my mind. I do find out lots, mostly about the direct persons, but if i come across a bunch of siblings to a Gt Gt Gt someone i do add them in and try and find their marrages and children. I put in their husbands, but i may not look at this husband in the same way, he is actually nothing to do with me is he? His line back is completly seperate. Everyone looks at their research differently and if they wish just the main trunk then who is to say thats wrong, again if someone wants the branches and the sprits then that too is ok. My tree is only young, many have helped me on here and i too have had the great fortune to find someone who has done a lot of work, all on my main line back to 1545! Am i wrong to note it and add it in when i am 100% sure its correct. I added it and am now busy looking for the graves and records of these people to have in my file to pass on to my children and theirs.
Whats so wrong with that. I have also shared certificates and pictures with others that are linked.

Jackie

Nudging up because it is of a similar theme to the Tree Bandits thread

n

It's spelt CityArk by the way - funny, clunky site but will save you a fortune if you have Medway/Gravesend rellies.

J

City Arc is the archives site for the Medway area in Kent. It is very useful for all sorts of records.

Sue - This is such an interesting read. It really is a breath of fresh air - Well done everyone who's contributed.

:o)

H

Hi, i had some one open their tree to me a while back and i was hugely concerned that his tree was excessively large.....so i asked him why he had so many people....people that seemed to have no link. He replied honestly that he had made some mistakes in believing peoples research rather than backing it up with his own and had added thousands of people until recently when he realised it could not be right. I actually felt sorry for him because having helped my sister in law yesterday i have seen how some people get so over excited about finding their famillies that they dont think logically about links. i had to hand my sister in law a pen and tell her to write it rather than add people so i could fix it once she had left. I think i ask alot of people but thats not saying i want people to research for me but usually a hand to point me in the right direction as i am fairly new to this. I have less than 300 people in my tree and it has taken many many hours of search and alot of hard work as well as some incredible people being willing to point me to the right path and in some instances have a quick browse through for me too. I think it just shows that some people are misguided not name collectors.
Lou x

Excuse me for being a bit slow but what is City arc?

nudge

Hot Matches do seem a bit random. I think they focus on particular names.

I tend to get abour 4 new pages of Hot Matches at a time and sometimes a few are useful but a lot are for very early ancestors. I'm hardly likely to contact someone who only shares William the Conqueror LOL, and recently most of my matches have been for him or for John of Gaunt.

I did put in a few new names found on my husband's tree this past week and some of those popped up yesterday so that was encouraging.

Sue

Thanks Karen

I try and nudge it up any time someone comes on with a comment about large trees!

Not that I think it's a great idea to have a huge one on GR since the Hot Matches alone would get overwhelming and huge ones are usually so complicated and interweaving.

I do think though that working out the family group around a particular ancestor can often lead to unexpected discoveries. People did tend to marry within their own social group and often to relations of some sort. Spotting a familiar surname marrying a cousin can sometimes help unravel mysteries.

Sue
x

What a fantastic thread, Sue, with oodles of interesting points and tips.
I must bookmark it.
Some great reading here.

Many thanks.

K

n

Kathlyn

I don't know if you have worked this one out, it took me some time for the penny to drop but.... When you see the old book pictures, particularly engravings, treat what you see with caution. Remove the political element if there is one -eg rich people treating the lower classes badly. Have a look at your ancestors occupations, if it was, say, scavenger then they were poor and mostly likely living in disgusting conditions. What I came to realise was that tradespeople often lived over the shop, literally. I found several ancestors living in a street illustrated by Gustav Dore, the place looked a Hell hole, the ancestor's wills indicated that the were not megga rich but certainly not poor. Also consider the religious element, some areas had people of a specific creed who might not have been really poor.

Another indicator about how poor they were might be a studio photograph, if they were destitute would they have gone to a studio, I know that it was the in thing to have done but if they had the choice of eating for a few days or having a photo taken, what would they have done?

If they had their own grave rather than a common burial then that could also be a good indicator, many eastenders would save for years for their own plot and headstone, if they had a something a bit more special than a stone with a bit of carving then they might also not have been very poor. Also the position of the grave in the cemetery can be important - the first 2 rows in from the path cost more, corner plots were especially desirable.

To me that kind of information is important, that makes family history interesting, I don't feel any great interest in discovering shed loads of relatives no matter how distant, I have concentrated on those who have gone before. What I have also found astonishing is that there are clear family traits spread throughout history - occupations which are not ag lab or servants. I looked at what interested me in life and found that it is reflected back over the years.

LOL Flo

Well I just checked my ancestor list........my most recent aristocrat would be (as far as I know) one of my 9x great grandfathers. That generation contains 2048 9x greats so I expect the other 2047 were doing the chores!!! Or maybe 2046 allowing for the fact that his wife would have been a Countess after marrying him!

Looking further back.......I have my most recent royal as Edward III. I know I've got him several times over because I'm descended from more than one of his children but he's just one of my 17x greats and there are 524288 of them. Most of them unknown and never likely to be known.

So unless you happen to be Prince William or Harry (and even they have a lot of very ordinary people on their trees) anyone with a royal or noble link on GR is likely to have it very very diluted.

The maths in genealogy means that it is more than likely that everyone has royalty of some sort or another in their tree. The trick is being able to prove it and sadly most people are unlikely to find evidence of it. To prove it and link into loads of ready made medieval royal genealogies you have to find an ancestor from a well documented aristocratic family who was alive after parish registers began.

The great thing about this hobby is realising how closely we are all related and what mongrels we all are.

Sue
x

Hi All,

I love this hobby! the idea that you can find out where you came from and see how the generations follow certain patterns is fascinating.

I like finding what was going on in society etc at a certain time in a certain area and exploring all the avenues of how this could have affected my ancestors. i love to discover the dircect line but i am alse veryinterested and quite guilty of going off on a tangent. i love to see cousins,aunts,uncles grandparents and where they were all living in relation to each other.

i am not a name collector as such but when i find an ancestor/relative i like to put them on my tree. i think this comes from only having a small amount of family i regularly see.i find others histories just as interedting as my own and could spend hours reading the boards.

i use the tree on genes to help verify all my info. i put the person on this tree first then when they are confirmed with certs,censi etc they go on my paper copy which i feel is far more beneficial. so i have many possibles on here that still need investigating fully.

a great thread, thanks,
Leanne.