Genealogy Chat

Ask for help! Few brickwalls are unique and someone else might spot an obvious solution. Or leave it and go back later. Your ancestors aren't going anywhere. With a fresh mind you might spot something you missed in previous months.

FOR ESSEX...try http(;)//essex1841(.)com ALSO essex villages(.)net .... general- try UKAncestors(.)com

Another tip is: Look through your ancestors marriage certs and death certs and look at the witnesses on the marriage certs, and the informants at deaths, as they were very often rellies of the couple. Through them, I managed to find my 4xgreat granny, but under a different name to her previous married name.

I've loosened a couple of bricks recently... firstly with a will...they can be really useful, especially childless couples. So if gggrandma or pa has a brother or sister either unmarried or married but without children, their will can be useful to find family connections. Secondly....double check all the censuses , even if you think you know all the family, its amazing who you find staying with granny or cousin bloggs etc.

Don't ignore the lodger. Some of mine have turned out to be a little more than just 'Lodgers'. I have found them marrying a family member, their surname appearing as a childs middle name, etc. Derek

Women could be widowed very, VERY young. If there are no children of the first marriage, the woman may simply use her maiden name when registering the births of her children. This makes the second marriage difficult to find. And Best Friend's great-great grandparents celebrated their son's third birthday by getting married. No wonder it took us a long time to find it. Victorian values, my foot! Couples often wait till the woman is at least pregnant before marrying.

Thank you all for the tips, will apply myself to it all in the morning as I am getting very bleary-eyed now! Alice

If Ancestry doesn't have what you're looking for... even when you've double-checked and searched for anything even remotely similar and found nothing, try again. Ancestry update quite a lot - as do freeBMD. Thinking of ancestry also... don't just look for the person you want to find... search for possible relations and find out who is staying with who at the time of the census. This is how I have traced two lines back for two more generations. Also, note births within families... notice if there is a big gap, or repeat of names. This COULD (but by no means definate)mean that the parents have re-married and this is a second family... OR it could point to whether a daughter has had a child that the parents have taken on as their own. This is the kind of stuff that has helped me find my way through, round, or over a brick wall... or it could just be that I like doing things the hard way round! lol

After recieving my 5 certs this morning and spending most of the day sorting them out i have just hit my first brick wall 100 miles an hour and it really hurt. i joined irishorigins because all the lines on both sets of rellies have now gone back to the motherland(Ireland)and i need to transfer my search there, but i don't understand it at all, i managed to get a marraige cert from army records in india but cannot make head nor tail of the irish records. is there a different website i can use? hopefully as easy as 1837online.....hope someone can cushion the next blow.. MOE!

At risk of sounding sarcstic - which i am not, i mean it literally, look round the sides and through chinks. Follow siblings and parents and hope... Try and 'think around' what you know to be fact Jess

Sometimes jotting down a timeline of events you know about in an ancestor's life can prompt an idea. Asking why/when/where/who/how can also help. But quite often, the blinking obvious is hard to see in your own problem, so posting it here will enable others to point it out! nell

thank you ladies will check them out angie

Angie This is it: http://www(.)familysearch(.)org/Eng/Search/frameset_search(.)asp Aso useful is Hugh Wallis batch numbers which links to IGI http://freepages(.)genealogy(.)rootsweb(.)com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountryEngland(.)htm#PageTitle Elly

is there a web address for igi as iv never used the igi thanks angie

A2A and UKBMD are my first, last and middle, ports of call! Revisit them regularly. Also, many people do not realise that the IGI is regularly added to - I found a missing rellie, due to a Parish Register being transcribed on there recently. AND Dont ignore the Local Studies Centres and Local Archives Centres in your area of interest - these often have stuff which doesnt 'interest' the County Records Offices, such as letters,postcards, photos, detailed records of small clubs and associations - in other words, anything which may have been found in a suitcase in someone's attic. Marjorie

Google for them regularly - especially if its an unusual name! Street directories Army records Non-conformist records.

As I have !!! Thought a thread like this may help me and others in the same situation, so If you have any ideas of more novel (or even straightforward ) places to look - please add them here.