Tracing family tree stuff - any experiences?

[OrangeHopper]

I tried this last year. Joined Ancestry for about £8 a month. This, among other things, gives you access to the birth/deaths registers and the 1800s census records which are the most useful. Something people don't realise, unless you've done this yourself, is that birth and death records can not been seen online. You can only see a record of a death that gives you the identity of the certificate that you then have to pay to get a copy of. Don't pay through the search service you are using, go direct to the government service, it is about half the cost per certificate. The search engines can be very frustrating and it is often very difficult to find the exact match for your ancestor so you can't always be confident when getting the certificate reference. Just hope you have very uncommon family names.

I also recommend you use a family tree tool to record all of your findings. It can get out of hand very quickly and a graphical presentation is a boon. I used MacFamilyTree.

Good luck in your searches. The only thing I found illuminating was the size of families and the infant mortalities.

[MarillionFan]

My sister is well in to this type of stuff. Did her degree in it a while back and does it for other people

She's just done one side of our family(the other is a mystery) and traced it back to King James VI so far which is a bit of a shock as we are supposed to be descended from Robert Blake on the other side.

Not sure if being descended from Royalty or Scottish stock is the worst yet.

[EternalOptimist]

Not sure if being descended from Royalty or Scottish stock is the worst yet.

I suspect your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries

[OwlHoot]

I was somewhat disappointed that none of the Cornish branch were ever hanged for piracy or wrecking.

In all the hundreds of years the law was in effect, no one was ever convicted of the felony of "setting ocean lights" (putting lanterns on dangerous shore rocks at night, to imitate a lighthouse and try and lure ships ito running aground so they could be looted).

So either your Cornish ancestors were very crafty, or it was never really done.

[Zippy]

In all the hundreds of years the law was in effect, no one was ever convicted of the felony of "setting ocean lights" (putting lanterns on dangerous shore rocks at night, to imitate a lighthouse and try and lure ships ito running aground so they could be looted).

So either your Cornish ancestors were very crafty, or it was never really done.

This was a rather good read

[OwlHoot]

This was a rather good read

Sounds good - I may order that, although I don't have time to read much fiction these days.

(Last one I read was The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. When I mentioned that in one of those "What I've been reading this week" threads, someone said it was a big anticlimax, and although I enjoyed reading it that turned out to be all too true. Apart from anything else, she missed a greast opportunity for a sequel. Still I wouldn't be surprised if it is made into a film.)

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Back to 1700s on both sides. No-one of any note at all. No non-English people either (I mention this because people keep saying stuff like "ah well everyone's got a bit of Irish in their family" etc). That has changed however as her indoors is Irish.

Edit: frogot to mention the big break on my Dad's side came from a bloke on Genes Reunited. This led me to locate (and arrange for the repair of) my great grandparent's gravestone.

[MarillionFan]

I recommend these

Great gift ideas | From You To Me Gift Journals and Cards

If you are starting to look at family trees or gathering family information.

Only £11.95 or £9.95 from my Ebay site.

[OwlHoot]

I wouldn't mind getting all my DNA sequenced.

I wonder how big the ZIP file would be. Well not to worry, I have several 2 Tbyte disks.