Family History after parents passed away.

[Greyone]

One of the facts that has stuck with me since my mother's death over a year ago is how little she talked about her early life and how little i know about it. My sister and I are still living in the family home and due to go our separate ways soon, so we still have all the family papers in one big metal box.

One of the things i mentioned to my counselor was the idea of looking into our family history, especially my mum's because we know the least about hers and whilst we still have the family documents in one place I've decided to scan some of them for later reference. What preys on my mind is what i may find, even the simple things. My mother's brother was a bachelor and lived and worked in Bath. So i thought i may visit, pay my respects and see if the shop he worked in still exists. or should i just have a day out to pay my respects. Its very tempting to see what is there and if the shop is whether it is still run by the descendants of the original owners.

I've just had a bit of a tearful morning thinking about this but I've calmed down now and i'm wondering how to approach the whole matter before i even start especially dealing with the emotional side of things.

Has any one done this that can offer some advice to me before i start ?

 

[marionq]

I did this over a number of years for my mother and fathers ancestors and also for my husbands family. In Scotland we have Scotland's people website and it includes a host of details from which you can work back. I have written evidence back 250 years and can trace other history back 400 years. Spent a lot of money doing it but well spent. I always did have a strong sense of self and family and that is now backed by history and understanding. I have acquired second cousins around the world and visited with some. Of course copies of all that I found went to the wider family.

 

[Toony Oony]

Hi Greyone

Delving in to Family History can be quite sad but also very enlightening and sometimes quite exciting!

The fact that you have a tin box full of papers should be a great help if you want to start piecing together your Family History. However, be prepared that there will be many times you will find yourself saying: 'If only I had asked her/him that'.

My Mum, on requesting her Mum's birth certificate, found out that she was illegitimate. Mum was so horrified that she asked me if I could find out anything ... Thinking about it, my Nan had never divulged anything about her early years - I wish I had a time machine to find out what really happened. Anyway, that was what started me off and now I have got back to 1600's on one side and French Plantagenets on the other. We have army records, a murder, and I have recently found a living distant relative in Australia. It really is fascinating.

I quite understand you wanting to go and see if places mentioned still exist, and absorbing a bit of the ambience. I have taken photos or found pictures online of relevant places and included them in my Family History.

Using a search site is very handy - my OH and I use ancestry. It is very simple to use the site and you can build your tree, add photos, add the info you have found as you go. It is around £100 pa but it gives you access to loads of records that you would otherwise have to pay for, and more importantly you can often access leads from other family historians appropriate to your own search. We decided to do the DNA testing too and that confirmed some suspicions we had, PLUS found us some more relatives.

Let me know if I can help further. But beware - you will become hooked!

 

[Soobee]

You'll need to be ready to handle the feeling "if only I'd asked about that!"

I went to my great uncle's grave in Twickenham Cemetery but couldn't find it. I later purchased the exact grave reference online, and either the headstone has gone or has been pushed over/fallen so that you can't read the writing. I searched the whole area 3 times. The annoying thing about this is knowing my dad had paid for the headstone and feeling he might have been diddled by his cousin who might not have put the money towards it when he gave it to her.

There are lots of family secrets and things you might uncover. Or it may not make sense, for example my dad never knew his dad, but the stepdad took his surname so that the children didn't look illegitimate. This would not be in the records and unless I already knew that I could not search back any further.

 

[Sam Luvit]

I've been working on the family tree for a few years, I wish I'd started earlier, but that's life

I've found a cousin & a second cousin we'd lost touch with & it's very comforting to know I can now talk to them & with mum about them.

Ancestry is very easy to use, if you're an Apple user, they have a good one (I can look it up if you are), do download it every now & then to keep your hard work safe

Invest in an arch lever file to keep things together & write notes of where you got your info from, in case it's wrong & you can backtrack to find the right person

Both sides of my dads family contained lots of people with the same names when you are tired, it's all too easy to put them on the wrong side of a family tree

The cheapest birth certificate records are probably from the .gov site, have a look around, prices vary massively.

Ask family for copies of any birth, death & marriage certs they have to save as much as you can

Most sites have people who will help if you have an interesting problem. I think they have stagnated with theirs & enjoy the challenge of helping. One such person helped me find a long lost cousin, who I was trying to find for mum. I now phone her twice a month & visit when I can. She's been a mine of information & stories!!

It's fun, it's time consuming & it's very addictive

 

[Jessbow]

Love doing genealogy, I go off at all sorts of tangents' putting meat on the bones'.

if you get the bug...... Well, it s a bit that way, curiosity gets the better of you.

Never pay more than £9.50 for a certificate, the GRO website is by far the best place to order

 

[Selinacroft]

Brilliant hobby, go for it. I did both sides of my tree in the 90s , nearly all before the internet came along so I did most of it properly from original sources. Much cheaper to do these days now so much is on line but beware of other researcher's spurious trees who haven't verified things!

 

[Lawson58]

I have been doing my family history long before Internet was even thought of and I think it is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. The most frustrating part is coming up against the inevitable brick walls and you just have to expect that archives didn't always survive and sometimes transcripts of documents can be just plain wrong.

I have discovered a whole tribe of cousins (hundreds) and met about seventy of them at a small reunion, discovered that my sister has a friend of many years who turned out to be a distant cousin, I have stood at the foot of my 4x great grandparents graves in Norfolk and was surprised to find that my grandfather who died a hundred years ago in the north of France had been to the Boer War twice, something none of us knew anything about.

Before you go racing off to any particular location that might have a connection, use Google maps and street views to check it out first. Before the Internet, I would travel to a particular address only to find that the old buildings no longer existed so a little early detective work can save you time and money and a little disappointment.

Once you start looking you will be surprised what a wealth of material is available and the hard bit is not to get sidetracked and diverted into interesting but irrelevant areas.

If you don't want to spend too much to start with, The Family History Centres of the Church of Latterday Saints offer a free service and have huge resources and are staffed by volunteers who have a good knowledge of how to access information and you can locate them on their website. Many larger libraries also have the library version of Ancestry.co.uk available.

 

[Greyone]

Thanks for the encouragement, it seems things are easier in Scotland.

 

[Greyone]

Sadness yes and not just because of what are parents and grand parents lived through but all kinds of things i know can emerge. My mother once mentioned that her mother had a still born and i'd like to find out if that was true and what effect that may have had on the family. Having said that i was always fascinated by the rare occasion when my mum talked about her bothers and parents. £100 pa seems a fair price given what you can get out of it.

Do YOU actually use the ancestry to store all your information or do you have another PC system for doing that ?

 

[Greyone]

Too late for that i'm afraid. I once said to mum that i'd been somewhere to have my tea after seeing her once and she said "Oh i haven't been down there since my mother's funeral ". That was the first time she'd mentioned that. So to be quite honest i wish i'd started whilst she was still alive. BUt as i always say , there was probably a good reason for that. Thx .

 

[Greyone]

Hi Sam

afraid i'm solid Windows not Apple , but i'll look at all that's available on the market.
So do you keep you data on line in Ancestry and download it as a backup ?

 

[Greyone]

Thanks for the warning about checking and attribution

 

[Greyone]

Thanks for the warning about checking before going i'm sure that will avoid much disappointment, although a bet even knowing that will add to the history and mystery.

Thanks for reminding me about the latter day saints. I had heard about their resources from some TV programs many years ago.

Thanks again

 

[Dazmum]

Hi Sam

afraid i'm solid Windows not Apple , but i'll look at all that's available on the market.
So do you keep you data on line in Ancestry and download it as a backup ?

There is also Find My Past, which I use as it's cheaper than Ancestry. They have a 1939 register which may prove helpful to you. You can record your family tree on it as well. You might also like to consider Genes Reunited as well, I have found members of different branches of my mum's family there that are still alive. It's a really absorbing thing to do, but as you say, you will always be thinking 'I wish I'd asked that'. Good luck with it, and you can always come back here to ask for help as so many TP members are similarly hooked!

 

[Sam Luvit]

Hi Sam

afraid i'm solid Windows not Apple , but i'll look at all that's available on the market.
So do you keep you data on line in Ancestry and download it as a backup ?

I do both . It's much easier (I find) to add, research & work the site, but I also bought bargain copy of the software & download to it every now & then, just in case anything should happen to the site

I keep all my scanned certs on the laptop, with a folder for each line of the tree, it makes it easier to find them & as I scan them as I buy, it's not such a chore

 

[Sam Luvit]

There is also Find My Past, which I use as it's cheaper than Ancestry. They have a 1939 register which may prove helpful to you. You can record your family tree on it as well. You might also like to consider Genes Reunited as well, I have found members of different branches of my mum's family there that are still alive. It's a really absorbing thing to do, but as you say, you will always be thinking 'I wish I'd asked that'. Good luck with it, and you can always come back here to ask for help as so many TP members are similarly hooked!

One if not both of those used to let you have a 24 or 48 hour access for a nominal fee, so if you can't find the record on one, you can make a list of the missing info & use the other over a weekend. A friend used to do that & she said it worked very well, but try to focus on the missing info, rather than getting sidetracked & running out of time

 

[SnowWhite]

Hi Greyone

Delving in to Family History can be quite sad but also very enlightening and sometimes quite exciting!

The fact that you have a tin box full of papers should be a great help if you want to start piecing together your Family History. However, be prepared that there will be many times you will find yourself saying: 'If only I had asked her/him that'.

My Mum, on requesting her Mum's birth certificate, found out that she was illegitimate. Mum was so horrified that she asked me if I could find out anything ... Thinking about it, my Nan had never divulged anything about her early years - I wish I had a time machine to find out what really happened. Anyway, that was what started me off and now I have got back to 1600's on one side and French Plantagenets on the other. We have army records, a murder, and I have recently found a living distant relative in Australia. It really is fascinating.

I quite understand you wanting to go and see if places mentioned still exist, and absorbing a bit of the ambience. I have taken photos or found pictures online of relevant places and included them in my Family History.

Using a search site is very handy - my OH and I use ancestry. It is very simple to use the site and you can build your tree, add photos, add the info you have found as you go. It is around £100 pa but it gives you access to loads of records that you would otherwise have to pay for, and more importantly you can often access leads from other family historians appropriate to your own search. We decided to do the DNA testing too and that confirmed some suspicions we had, PLUS found us some more relatives.

Let me know if I can help further. But beware - you will become hooked!

I am interested that you had the DNA testing as I've ordered a kit and am waiting for it to arrive. My late Dad never knew who his father was and his birth certificate is just blank. He was just told that his Dad had died in the war and accepted it. I found out maybe 20 years ago when I started looking into our family history.

I have a friend who did the DNA test as he was adopted and he has found matches in a small area of America so I'm hoping I get some matches.

 

[Lawson58]

I had my DNA done too and that gives you access to people who may be related to you and you are able to contact them through ancestry. I found a cousin who lived in the area I grew up in and we have shared some memories that have been helpful and interesting. We went to the same school but at different times, we were christened in the same church, she had a cousin who was a shoemaker and they lived at the bottom of our street.

If you love jigsaw puzzles, then this is the hobby for you.

 

[Greyone]

That sounds incredibly interesting , thank you both.