RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: skymoo on Saturday 01 December 07 08:19 GMT (UK)
-
I was just wondering how everyone else chose which branch of their family to concentrate on. At the moment I have traced all the 'easy' bits from online and now have four areas I am really interested in three of which are born outside England and causing me real problems. The fourth is the obvious choice for me to work on and is the branch of my family that are from the area where I live (I moved to Norfolk from London 6 years ago and find I have rellies from just down the road ;D ) I can easily get to Norwich Family History centre and am planning that now. But those brick walls are just SO tempting that I keep coming back to them in the hope of breaking through.
The reason I ask is that my dad was tracing his tree until his death earlier this year. On looking through all his papers I could see big gaps where, due to his illness, he had stayed online and kept to the records available. With just a little bit more work on my part after his death I found his G Grandfather was born in Canada! Seems such a shame now that what I consider an exciting find he never knew about :( The rest of his family are firmly placed in West Ham and Woolwich with the earlier years in Kent.
Are you like me and really want to find out the stuff thats hard to find, or like my dad and go for what you can find relatively easily if you know what direction to head in?
-
First, let me welcome you to Rootschat. You have come to the right place for help on anything genealogical. Great people happy to help.
Now, to your question: I didn't know we had to choose. ::) I can't. but you are right, finding the hard things is especially wonderful. But sometimes, it's that starting with the easy that gives you somewhere to go. I am presently working on all branches of my family. I work a little on each, move on from one to another when I hit brickwalls. It helps give me a fresh eye when I come back to it. I like to fill in gaps for siblings (work sideways) and learn what I can about life during my ancestors times.
I couldn't agree more about brickwalls. They are the ones I have become the most fascinated with also. Post some on Rootschat, maybe you'll get some answers. ;)
Kath
-
I just tend to find a line and do as much as i can on it. I'm doing 80 lines at the moment. Get bored with one line or strike a dead end, then i go back to another after a break and it's often then i strike gold :-)
Cheers
Sarndra
www.sarndra.com
-
At first I just looked for the one name until I realised I had to go back to find the wives. I did all back to 1837 and then went on the trail. I do the main name first and then the wives and their wives etc ususally in alphabetic order or take the latest wife's family back as far as possible. It is your choice really.
I am now on my third time around for my mothers side. I estimate it will take me a couple of years. Then I will start again on my fathers side but I definately have a dead end with his in 1812 in London. He could have come from anywhere.
You do whatever takes your fancy really.
Sylviaann
-
Sylviaann is right - you do what takes your fancy! :D I don't rule anything out or in, and sometimes I find a really interesting family that is not in my direct line, and pursue it. Sometimes going sideways gives you clues about your main line, too! :P I don't think I'll ever finish! Anyway, it's too much fun to finish.
MarieC
-
I spent months tracing the ancestors of my husband's aunt's husband - initially because his surname was the same as my husband's great grandmother's sister's husband - and I thought they may be related - I quickly found that they weren't but became quite fascinated with the family - despite them being very distant inlaws!
My husband thinks I'm weird :-\ :-\
Trish
-
I'm researching as much of my and my husband's families as possible.
Sometimes there are dead ends; brick walls that might never be cracked. Those depress me but I have to focus on the lines that I can follow.
Sometimes it depends on what is available online. For example, my Beaumonts (from Gillingham, Kent) are well-documented in the parish records that are online for free at the Medway Ancestors site. I spent a huge amount of time there, building a good tree almost from scratch. In that family, I was able to trace siblings, their spouses, and their children, quite a ways. Oh, joy. :)
I recently found my great-grandparents on a ship's list in 1906 on Ancestry, of all places. I had no idea they had arrived first in Philadelphia and then somehow made their way to Canada from there! That ship isn't even listed on the (Canadian) ArchiviaNet site. My grandfather was born in Canada in 1914, so I thought his parents had probably arrived circa 1913.
That lovely discovery led to more discoveries and set me off again on that particular line.
For my birthday, my husband gave me money so I could order some certificates, which will help prove some relationships for a few lines, and will get me going on those families.
It's never-ending, really. The great thing about researching more than one family is that you're never stuck with nothing to do. There are always new sites to search or new query letters to write or more certificates to send away for.
I'm sort of the family historian on both my and my husband's trees. I have made binders for my aunts and a cousin. Now I am making more for both sides of the family on different family groups. This takes a lot of time, printing, thought and money. It helps me organize what I've got and is a good motivator.
skymoo, I can relate to your sadness about not being able to share your discovery with your Dad. I started researching my mother's tree after she died. Her sister had already done some good work and I was able to take it back and learn quite a bit more. I still wish I could tell her about everything that I'm finding. I do get a lot of happiness from sharing the info with her sisters and her cousin.
Good luck on any research you undertake! You are fortunate to live in one of your key areas of research! I can't say that for any of my lines.
Regards,
Josephine
-
I've been at this for 30 years. :o
I go as the mood takes me. Sometimes I find something that makes me follow one line, then something else diverts me to another.
But whatever you do, make sure you record where your info came from. You'll kick yourself otherwise as you have to retrace your steps years later!
Good luck! ;)
meles
-
I've been fortunate to have made so many wonderful discoveries on my Bayley line that I haven't had the strength of personally to pull myself away from it. :-\
-
I flit from one family to amother.
At present I am concentrating on my Harwood Family.
But I thought there would be so many of them.
And through the census of Blackburn and Darwen
(Lancashire) I am finding very few.
At the moment I am looking into whether my Ancestor was
married three times, because the only man with the
correct forename shows three spouse names on
the different census.
The marriages work now for the grisly bit deaths.
Jinks
-
Im glad to see Im not the only one flitting around ;D Im looking forward to going to Norwich and seeing if I can find some old records there, but every now and thne I find myself drawn to someone. The last one I went on a tangent with I couldnt find a birth of, then when I looked properly at the census realised there was a previous marriage for her mother which I had totally overlooked ::)
I have all records kept on a laptop and want to give my mother a christmas present of all the things I have found about her family on a cd :) It could become a regular thing every year!
I have posted on roots about one brick wall and have a way through it and Im really excited now. I didnt realise when my dad was researching his line quite how addictive this stuff is ;D
My kids have a vision of (if anyone has seen it) the Black family tree in Harry Potter painted on a wall but I dont think I will go that far!
-
I too have felt drawn to certain people in my tree. the two with the biggest pull are both gg grandmothers of mine. One I think I have found out all I will on her short, sad life, but the other has some missing years that I am on a mission to fill in. In those years, her mother dies, her father remairries, her two siblings die and she somehow ends up living with some of her mother's relatives over 400 miles away. And interestingly, her uncle (who married into the family) really loved her as a daughter, but her blood relatives were awful, trying to steal money and land from her.
Kath
-
I've almost completed all my lines to my gt gt grandparents. At the moment I am involved with the cousins of one of my gt gt grandmothers because I have got their wills. The First one left the money to 3 nieces all called Mary and has turned into the mystery of the 3 Mary's because I haven't yet worked out which siblings of the will writer they are descended from. I'm really enjoying the change of direction. :) :) :)
-
I've found that circumstances tend to dictate which lines you'll follow. For example, I have two branches that end in Ireland and I have absolutely no hope that I'll be able to advance them any further given the state of Irish records before the 1840s. My gran was illegitimate, so that's her father's branch out of the question. One branch comes from India so that's them out of the picture too. Location plays a big role. I need to access the records office at Lewes in the future but it's a long distance from where I live so that's on the back burner. Another branch is called Jones and came from London?! I have phases of trying to trace them and then give up for a bit as it's almost impossible. Illegitimacy causes huge problems. One branch ends in 1797 with a baseborn child called William Morse. I can go no further with him. Incomplete records are a nightmare. Kingscote in Gloucestershire has a page missing from the parish register in the 1770s and the BTs for the same period don't give parents' names for baptisms. After a while you're left with a fragmentary tree with only some branches capable of being explored further. Then there's the question of getting the stage where you're just adding names and branches. I don't feel personally that a branch on the periphery of my tree is as interesting to me as one that's closer to the main trunk!