Family Historians - ancestry.com

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by Red-Taff., Sep 16, 2020.

  1. Red

    Red-Taff. Well-Known Member

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    any subscribers who would do me a look up?
     
  2. Cho

    Chopwell Red Active Member

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    Yes! How can I help?
     
  3. Red

    Red-Taff. Well-Known Member

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    Thanks - you have pm
     
  4. sadbrewer

    sadbrewer Well-Known Member

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    If you don't get any joy from Ancestry let me know...I use another site.
     
  5. Trickster Two Six

    Trickster Two Six Well-Known Member

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    Are these sites any good ? I don’t enough about my family history past grandparents. ?
     
  6. Abruzzo Red

    Abruzzo Red Well-Known Member

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    I have always wanted to research and draw up a family tree for my parents, but I don’t know enough about the whole process or which is the best site.
     
  7. red

    red24/7 Well-Known Member

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    I did ours,got back to 1700s on my dads side,no kings or queens(leave it),about best was a flour mill supervisor called Miles,his dad was called Miles too,as my wife said”you done well,you gone back miles and miles”,very good love grrrrrr
     
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  8. red

    red24/7 Well-Known Member

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    Anyone wanting to do one,the 1921 census will be available soon and help loads,also on ancestry they did a sort of census in 1939 and that is available now and helps too
     
  9. sadbrewer

    sadbrewer Well-Known Member

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    I've written a genealogy guide for newbies, unfortunately it's stuck in a broken down PC.
    This is a very condensed version.
    To get anywhere you need to pay subscription fees.

    The main two I use are Ancestry at £13.99 per month and Findmypast...which is a bit cheaper, but better in some ways for UK genealogy.
    They both have pluses and minuses, but to be honest you need both.

    Before you start, ask family for everything they know, write it down and draw out the draft tree on paper. Try and copy any photos they have.
    Once you have surnames for married couples, use Freebmd.org (free as the name suggests) input the names and it will give you all their children (born after 1911 but before 1983)
    Pay for a month on one and cancel the subscription straight away or they will automatically rebill you at the month end.
    Do as much as you can in the month and then try a month on the other.

    If you hit brick walls, try mis-spelling names as they often change over time...bear in mind that in Victorian times people were mostly illiterate, so the name written would be the Curate's take on your ancestors pronunciation...e.g. my Grandmother was called Jewsbury...in the records it comes up as Joesbury, Jewsbery, Jewsbury, Goosberry, Dewsbury, Dewsberry etc.

    Don't trust birthdates shown in census records, they are often out by several years....Birth, Marriage and Death certs are far more reliable.
    Don't order Birth or death certs through the genealogy sites as they stick a hefty premium on...order them to come as Pdf's from the GRO at £7.00.

    Write everything down on your paper tree...and transfer it to a publisher type program on the PC, I use Coreldraw,....start off with A4 page setup, when it starts to get full save it and copy the info to a new file with A3 setup....and so on.

    If you do the above, you'll really get somewhere in just two months subs...for free sites Freebmd is great, Wikitree sometimes pays off and try Google...you never know what you'll find....if your ancestors are from West York's, Macolm Bull's Calderdale Companion is good.

    As Red24/7 says...no Kings or Queens, but I've found thieves, prostitutes, wife deserters...all sorts of things, through Findmypast's Newspaper Archive I young my GG Grandfather was amongst a gang of Irish labourers that attacked a man with sticks embedded with nails....apparently my ancestor was a bit more Queensberry rules, he only battered the poor sod with a brass candlestick!!

    Word of warning it can be addictive and before you know it you'll be paying full year subscriptions
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2020
  10. Donny Red

    Donny Red Well-Known Member

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    image0.jpeg As a Christmas present one of my sons bought me an Ancestry UK tracing kit. I believe
    they charge a one off fee around £80 for same. From memory, there was a small test
    tube contained within the box, with a small bung to seal it off.

    There was a line near the top of the tube and basically what I had to do, was fill the
    tube with my saliva up to the mark on the glass and send the tube back to Ancestry UK.

    As part of the process, I had to deposit my email address and soon after I began to
    get contact from people claiming that they were related to me. They ranged from folks in the U.K.
    as well as some in the USA. I already knew that my late Mums youngest brother had
    gone to work as a Public Health Inspector at a large colliery in Zimbabwe in the late 60's, so it came
    as no surprise, when a female claiming to be his daughter (re- my cousin) made contact.

    She told me that her brother David had gone to live in the States and was a very successful
    Film producer. Not long after I was given that information, he got in touch. Very modestly he
    was telling me about some of the projects he had been involved in viz : Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Dancing with
    Wolves and many many more.

    The contacts have slowed down now, but they were quite interesting when they first started. Ancestry
    have been in touch and offered me a subscription service, but as my youngest son is heavily involved
    in charting our family tree on both mine and my wife's side, it's an offer that I have declined. For my birthday on
    the 9th September, my youngest lad presented me with an album showing photographs of my relatives from
    various generations down the years. One particular snap took my eye. It shows five generations re- my paternal Great
    Grandfather, my paternal Grandfather, my Father, myself ( on the very day I got married) and the youngest son who
    is involved in building the family tree. Fascinating stuff, as I had not seen any of the photos, save for my own before.
     
  11. Trickster Two Six

    Trickster Two Six Well-Known Member

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    Thank you so much for your insight, my mam had made a start for us knowing that she was coming to the end and I’ve often thought of carrying it on but didn't really know how. I don’t know very much about my family beyond grandparents so thanks for this very helpful.
     
  12. ade

    ade Well-Known Member

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    I started doing mine the old way back in 90/91. I knew my grandad came from money even though he himself never made much. His middle name was the surname Blonk, as was his mother's. I could get that far back from census and registers, but I thought the Blonk name might prove useful. So I went to the archives in Sheffield and found various different trees and documents for the Blonk family who were scissorsmiths and had the street and bridge named after them in Sheffield. Long story short I managed to link all the trees together and with grandad. The tree goes back to around 1580-1600 as the earliest reference I can find is a couple of listings in the history of the master cutler's in 1623 which mentions a father and son as being members - the son being the earliest one I could find on the trees in the archives. If you can latch on to something like this then you can go way back. One thing to look out for though is different spellings as it wasn't standardised back then, I saw Blonk spelt variously as Blonck, Blonke, Blaunke, Blaunche etc.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2020
  13. sadbrewer

    sadbrewer Well-Known Member

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    Just to follow it up....Ancestry v Findmypast.

    Ancestry can be awesome at times as it's been established longer, although it leans heavily towards US subscribers and throws up connections to people of the same name that you're searching for in US records which can be a pain.
    It has an excellent feature that allows you too look at the trees of other people who you share ancestors with...from that it has a 'hints' system that allows you effectively to copy and paste their work into yours....if someone else is researching your line it can be a very fast way of building a tree, the snag is that often they are wrong, sometimes badly wrong so you need to double check everything they've done.
    Findmypast is years behind with this facility but they are trying to catch up.
    The DNA side can be great, I sent my test off and 6 weeks later the results dropped into my inbox showing I had 199 cousins of varying degrees ( it stands at 350 now) all over the world using the site...from that you can look at their results and tree to find the shared ancestor....not always much use as often people have very little detail in the tree or are obsessives who might have added 80 or 90 thousand very distant people. If the info comes up first,second or third cousin you're really in with shout of making the connection....4th cousin and beyond can often be a waste of time. We did find that my Mum's Grandfather had sired another child to a girlfriend, when the descendents results popped up very closely related in my results....again, Findmypast is playing catch up.
    Just a word of warning, Ancestry's tv ad gives the impression you buy the test and everything is sorted, that is not the case...you need to put the research in to make sense of it.
    Findmypast is UK based and is simply better for purely UK results...more reliable on census and BMD returns, it also has the edge on UK WW1 and before military records...Ancestry does have other useful military bits but they make you pay extra through a sister site called Fold 3 which is annoying.
    If you opt for Findmypast take the subscription that allows access to The British Newspaper Archive...this is one real score for FMP...I found much crucial info in the papers that doesn't come up in the usual records...A cousin in Australia ( who I found through genealogical hard work) sent me a 1908 photo of a family wedding, only a few people were named and no other clues...FMP's Newspapers carried a report that told us where it was held...who hosted it, the Best man and Matron of Honour,...plus many other guests...wedding presents...description of the dresses etc...wonderful stuff you could find nowhere else.
    On my Mum's side the family came from Ireland in 1845, census and BMD returns only tell us where they lived and what they did in a ten yearly snapshot...fortunately they were a rough lot and we can track them through newspaper court reports where they smashed up, burgled, stole and committed all manner of offences for the next 50 years.
     
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  14. sadbrewer

    sadbrewer Well-Known Member

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    There is of course a Blonk St in Sheffield still today.
     
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  15. Trickster Two Six

    Trickster Two Six Well-Known Member

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    Really big help thank you, think I’ll have a look at the varIous sites this weekend, I know very little about my family beyond my grandparents and I’d love to find out more.
     
  16. sadbrewer

    sadbrewer Well-Known Member

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    Three things I forgot to mention....find out who keeps the shoebox with the family BMD certificates in, that will be a great help, also as a new customer to the genealogy sites they often offer a free trial period that gives you chance to get an idea of things...the final thing is to keep an open mind, you may well find things that don't fit the family narrative, just accept genealogy is warts 'n' all.
    If you need any assistance send me a PM.
     
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  17. ade

    ade Well-Known Member

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  18. Young Nudger

    Young Nudger Well-Known Member

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    Yep - I was bought one of those DNA kits for a present.
    Most matches were Lough Conn in Mayo and a large percentage Spanish.
    Mi grandad always said his relatives were from the Spanish Armada that went aground on the coast of Mayo.
     
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  19. Donny Red

    Donny Red Well-Known Member

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    Yep I had some contacts in Ireland as well. On my maternal side, my Grandfather was an Irish navvy, born and raised in Behola Co Mayo. He came to England and settled in Askern near Doncaster first of all, where he led the gang responsible for laying the roadways in the pits that were springing up in the Yorkshire coalfield. He was a giant of a bloke I'm told and at varying times moved round the Donny area to work in the various pits. I believe,he worked on the infrastructure at
    Rossington, Bentley, Yorkshire Main ( Armthorpe), Thorne and Hatfield Main. Always remember my
    Mother saying if he had hung on to a third of what he had earned he'd have been a rich man, but he
    gambled on the horses and boozed quite a bit . Recall some of the lads who worked for him saying, that once the job had finished, it was party time and big Pat Mullany was a very generous man.
    "He would have had us drinking out of buckets and paying for them if he could have done. "He was a
    larger than life character apparently.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2020
  20. tomaiba

    tomaiba Well-Known Member

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    I did all mine through the Mormon church and it was kind of amazing. It all got messed up at one point because my great-great grandfather had multiple wives (Utah in the 1800s lol) but the most interesting thing was that this man was from my dads side and he immigrated from the place where my mom ended up staying in the UK. All came full circle.
     
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