Genealogy Chat

When I was growing up, my past didnt seem important. Now a pensioner, it's too late because those who knew the answers, are no longer with us. As a frequent visitor to this sight, it appears many are in the same boat and I can only urge the 'Seniors' to encourage their offsprings to develope an interest as I have done with mine.

Alan

I was lucky as when my Brother got into this my Nan was still alive....My 2 are to young to get into this at the mo but i do hope that 1 of them will as they have a fascinating heritage

Julie

I,m a pensioner too and when I was growing up "children were to be seen and not heard" was the maxim. MY dads mum used to pay us a "state" visit every three years or so and we could only say "hello grandma" and that was it , she barely even acknowledged that!!
You just didnt ask personal questions then of the older generation.
How I wish it had been different cos my dads father,who was lost at sea in 1911 when dad was barely 4, turns out to have been German, altho he anglicised his name and told porkies that he was English ,to join the British Army in 1898 aged 17. The family didnt take naturalization and are only on the 1891and 1901 census as born Germany but no further info
I wish i could have asked questions when i was growing up.Grandma died in the 1960,s and you still wouldn't ask anything personal then.

Shirley

HOW I wish I had asked questions when I had grandparents still living, and when all of my Dad's uncles & aunts were alive (13 of them), and goodness knows who else. They all died died during the 1960's and 70's.

But I have to agree with some of the comments from the above threads regarding the older generations.....you just didn't ask questions of a personal nature. I know if I had started asking any of my Dad's side (v. Victorian types) then I wouldn't have got far before being known as an impertinent little madam!! My Dad's mother wouldn't even talk to him about his estranged father as 'he didn't need to know' apparently!!!!! SO I wouldn't have stood a hope in hell.
My Mum's mother would have answered me anything I'm sure, as she was a completely different type, and I kick myself that I didn't take the opportunity, but family history didn't interest me much then.

I have a zillion questions I could ask any one of them right now, given the chance.

Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing.

K

I have had an interest in my past for many years but was estranged from the family and so had no opportunity to ask..with help from wonderful people on here I am making progress on the tree...I have a few older photos on my wall and my grandchildren can tell anyone who asks who the people are and what ever it is I was able to remember about them...I hope I have not got a defective memory!!! and also about current family members..so hopefully the problem will not occur for the next generation ..I know some of my very young visitors have gone home to thier families and mentioned the " dead people" and so the discussion starts and information is shared. Wonderful.

Know the feeling, i must have spent over 9 months trying to document my Dads 12 year career in the Royal Navy 1937 to 1948 what ships he was on where did he serve etc etc., if i had asked him he would have told me in hours, but when he was alive, i wasnt doing family history, so the question never arose. I am amazed at the things i found out about him.How i wish i could show him what i have done.Its still not yet complete

George

When they got together, my mum and grandmother used to chatter endlessly about the 'old days'. Why didn't I just LISTEN??????

Because Cynthia -they would have shut up ,'not for little ears' -don't beat yourself-!!

I was fairly lucky. When my mum was alive, she relished in telling me all the "family scandal" and when there's a bit of scandal involved, you tend to listen.......not that it seems very scandalous by todays standards, but when I started this, I already knew that both my maternal and paternal grandparents were not married.....at least not to the the right other grandparent. Saved me alot of trouble searching for marriages I was never going to find.

I agree, if I had asked my grandmother anything like this I would probably have had a clip round the ear. LOL Most of what I do know has been from my now dearly departed mum who would reminisce.
It is fortunately very different today and I do try to involve the younger generation, but they will have all my notes when their turn comes, hopefully not TOO soon :)

What a nice thread this is. I am enjoying all the stories, and hope plenty more peeps will add to it. Thanks Alan, for putting it up.
K

it all sound's so sad,
i only started researching my family history four years ago,but even then it was too late for most of the info i would loved to have had,a lot of the family died 1980/to present,.
gwen xx

Sue C...your reply made me smile...I was pulled aside and told one couple in the tree were not married and could I pretend they were if anyone asked! The request came from a grandchild of the couple. none of those involved are with us still funny how some people are eh?

My Mum, her parents and sisters left Dublin when Mum was aged 12 but luckily I knew my Irish Grandparents but didn't see them that often as they lived in London and we lived down in Wiltshire.

I never heard Mum talk about any of her aunts and uncles only an aunt Alice who lived in the USA.

Like most of us older 'uns I never asked Mum who this aunt Alice was when she was alive.

When my son was at junior school and Mum was still alive then, they were asked to do a family tree so he asked my Mum the names of her parents...well I knew Grandpop's name but hadn't a clue what Gran was called but she told my son that her name was Emily Brady. Well I never knew that!
Mum had no idea who her grandparents were so the Irish side of my son's family tree for school ended there.

I reminded Mum about her Aunt Alice who lived in the USA when I was small. After some thought she said that she was sure that Alice was her Dad's sister.

I already knew the names of my Dad's parents but he had no idea of his grandparents names either! He could remember a couple of aunties but didn't know which side of his family they belonged too!

Dad was the youngest of 8 children so most of his relatives where pretty ancient when he was growing up!

So my son went off to school with a very sparse family tree!

I started tracing my family tree nearly 5 years ago and that was all the information I had to start off with.

With both parents now gone and just one aunt left on the Irish side it has certainly been a hard slog finding out Irish information.

Dad's side was quite easy to trace, just one or two hiccups..but they have been resolved and I've got back to the 1600's and 1730's.

I know its been said before...do ask ANY living relatives for any info..no matter how insignificant it seems.

I asked my cousin, the daughter of my Irish Mum's only surviving sister if she knew of any Irish relatives.
She wasn't sure..but she had her Mum's address book at home and gave me some names, addresses and phone numbers out of there. She said that they were relatives, but didn't know if they were our Mum's or her Dad's.

I was quickly on the case and found 3 of my Mum's relatives...descendants of my Irish Gran's sisters!

One lived in the USA so I wrote to her and she sent back copies of all her family's BDM's PLUS the death certificate of Gran's Father and Grandfather. She also knew Gran's mother's name and also told me that my Gran and hers were from a BIG family...of about 20 children, but not all survived.

When the 1911 Dublin census came out I was overjoyed to find my Gt Grandparents on there with my Gran aged 16 and a brother. Looking at the original hand written copy, Gt Grandfather had signed his name Michael Patrick Brady and Bridget his wife was from Roscommon. It also stated that 18 children born alive but only 8 living.

Phone calls to the other 2 in my Aunts address book also revealed a whole lot of information and wonderful photos. It turns out that I had met one of Mum's cousins when I was about 12 and we were staying with her eldest sister up in London for the week. At the time I had no idea who this 'Birdie' was and never thought to ask Mum either!!

I now have a vast amount of pictures all framed of some of my Grandparents' brothers and sisters on both sides of the family. Some relatives found on here and some on Ancestry....including the granddaughters of my Mum's Aunt Alice in the USA!

It's been a journey and a half...but well worth the effort especially when to see the family likeness in your own children!

My mother married outside of her religion and became an instant 'leper' to her parents. A few years later the wound began to heal and I was taken to 'The Grand House' only to being totally ignored and never to return or see my maternal grandparents again. Fortunatley another family member has researched this side..........I dont think I would have the heart to.

And what are we, the present generation doing to make the next generations interested?......
My daughters would rather watch paint dry than get involved with family history, ...and yet they just sometimes remark, " Didn't a relation live in that village?2, ..if we travel certain areas of the country.

Our grandson is staying here this weekend, so today we went out to a little old village not far from here and had Sunday lunch....
The fact that a birth certificate received yesterday showed someone born yards from that pub, in 1904 was pure coincidence.....?
We've also taken him to Wales and shown him the village where his great grandmother was born. He remembers her, my Mum, and can now picture the scene when she told him about walking to the next village for bread, when her village was caught in snowdrifts.
Hopefully he will remember at least some of the family tales and so we will have handed the baton of interest on to another generation.

Gwyn

imagine how it feels when asked"mum who was your dad" Well like so many on here it was taboo to ask about those things and sadly like others it is too late now

rose

I know my mum told me my grandma never told her anything of substance when she was growing up - I hate to think how many secrets Grandma took with her when she died.

She actually got married about five weeks before my mum arrived (having divorced someone else after walking out on him with another man! - my mum's half-brothers went to live with Grandma's sister and she barely knew them growing up) but when questioned by my mum, Grandma "couldn't remember" her wedding date and "didn't know" how many years she'd been married.

My other grandmother, "Gran" (never Granny - "it made her feel old"), on the other hand, told me many snippets. Some I now know to be untrue but they may have been told incorrectly to my gran on purpose - for instance, she thought her grandad died in Canada (actually Lancaster Lunatic Asylum) and that her mother was born in Canada too (actually Bootle, but she didn't like Liverpudlians, I'm told). She did remember all the names but one of her aunties (actually her great-aunties, but maybe I phrased the question the wrong way - I was only about 13 at the time).

I actually remember my grandad starting telling me all the family history years ago, unfortunatly I was young, and it was new years eve and I had better things to do!

I do remember a lot of family stories, I was lucky enough to know all 4 of my grandparents, and one of my Great-Grandparents (step-gt-grandma) and their memories took me back to the late 1880s, (gt grandma lived to be 99 1/2) and she was an amazing lady, thru her Iearnt all about my gt-grandad and amazingly his 1st wife, my grandads birth mother ('grandma' brought him up most of his life after his mother died very young)

LOL I did fall foul of the 'false story' tho, my Nana deliberatly didnt tell me something for 3 years that kept me from finding her Parents marriage, she says she didnt know when her parents married, although when I finaly found the marriage (her mother used a family nickname not her real name!) , and went thru the hell of figuring out how to tell my 89 year old Nana her parents married weeks before her eldest brother was born she suddenly produced the ORIGINAL 1903 marriage cert! (lol after 3 years of searching for it I was NOT amused to find she had had it all along!)

I am finding now when I find out things I run them past my mum or dad (depending on whos side it was) and see what they remember, Mum was a product of the 'not in front of the children' upbringing so she only knows certain things of her family, but she does actually remembers much more than she thinks when i prompt her.

Dad on the other hand drives me nuts!
I find things out, run them past him and then I get............. ohh yes I remember that.......... and then he will tell me things he thinks I already know, but he has never told me
I have just given hom a notepad & pen & told him to jot down anything he remembers - my Nana was one of about 11 siblings, surname smith lol, who scattered all over the country working on the railways............ anyone want to find me a Charlie, Ada, Lily, Fred or Thomas Smith, DOB only aprox & place of residence unknown!
LOL Amendment to this, dads just decided to give me Thomas's last known address, right down to the house number & street name ! grrrrrrrrrrr

lol good job I love him!

Gail

I suppose I was lucky.We visited my maternal gran once a week and I was the only grandchild,and gran was the lovely cuddly kind,so different from my dad's mum who was Victorian and distant.
My mother's mum used to tell me stories about when she was young(and she was one of 13 and when her father died,her mother married a man with 12!!)
I used to listen sitting in the firelight and it seemed magical talking about the orchestra they had.Can't imagine how they fitted all those people in the small terraced house,but some of the big family were married and away I suppose by the time the last ones appeared.
I always knew her mother ,my g.gran came from Cornwall and gran told me that her mother lived in Looe and during the Napoleonic wars,one time the soldiers were away when they were being attacked and all the women put on red shawls and sat on the coast to make the French think the soldiers were waiting for them.
since I've been doing my history,I believe that it wasn't my g.gran who did that,but my g.g.gran who was born in Looe.Some stories can be romanticised by the telling,but I ,being an only child visited lots of my mother's aunts and uncles,as people lived nearer to each other then and it was your"duty" to visit.Must say we had lots of sing songs round the piano,and the jug kept going to the off licence to be filled.Even during the war we still visited and had a lot of laughter and I still know loads of old songs and with all the verses that were sung.
That maternal side,one line back to 1650,but father's side I am not doing too well,early 1800's.
My gran's father was Irish and I am stuck with that as it is Tipperary,and I did have some wrong info from the Heritage Centre in Tipperary that I visited a few years ago.
My daughter is quite interested and son..to an extent.I have found quite a few 2nd cousins from Genes and because I had listened when I was young have been able to pass some of the stories on to them,even about their own grandfathers and grandmothers.I also identified a lot of pictures(for which I was grateful to receive)of the Victorian family as I'd known a lot of them through all the visits.
So everyone,talk to your offspring and keep the interest going!!

Brenda x