RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: barbaramc on Saturday 25 May 13 03:23 BST (UK)
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I have several times tried to look up info for someone. I have never done it successfully and so I am in thrall to the greater skill of my co rootschatters. Where are you all looking that you find things and how do you know you have the right info?
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Hi,
Try the familysearch.org & freebmd websites to start. You could join your local family history society (fhs) where you can learn the finer points about research. You can find your nearest fhs by going to the Federation of Family History Societies website. Also, your local library will probably have free access to the Ancestry and Find my Past websites. Start with known facts and work backwards one step at a time. When you get back to 1911 you will find the census returns invaluable which are available on the Ancestry website.
Finally, you can always post your data requests on RootsChat. This site is full of knowledgeable people who will try to help you with your research.
Victor
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Hi,
I always find freereg & freecen very helpful too.
www.freereg.org.uk
www.freecen.org.uk
Sharon
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And many people here have particular specialities.
for instance, I know a bit about teachers in Ireland, and I have a Directory of R.C. Churches in Dublin ..
so I answer those sort of questions, leaving the more general ones to other people.
And in "general" stuff, the more often you do FreeBMD, for instance, the better you get at guessing mis-spellings etc
eadaoin
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Familysearch.org, freebmd, freecen, freereg, the Discovery search engine for the National Archives (mainly for wills). That's a good start. :)
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You can also try googling the person you are looking for. Sometimes you get lucky even ordinary people with no claim to fame can be found.
With regards to being sure you have the right person,this is very difficult particularly(in England) pre 1837 for births marriages and deaths and pre 1841and after 1911 for census information.You take your best guess and shore it up with any other information you can find,but even then there are people you think belong on your tree but you are not absolutely sure, so you keep going back to them to see if there is another clue somewhere.
Liz
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You can also try googling the person you are looking for. Sometimes you get lucky even ordinary people with no claim to fame can be found.
Liz
....and when you google try adding words like 'archived', 'history', or 'known' - it can make quite a difference in the results you get.
sami
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If you are using ancestry try using wild cards * to cover any variations in spelling eg Wilf*d so Wilfred and Wilfrid will come up or just put Wil* or Wilf* The same for surnames Clark* will bring up Clarke/ Clarkson etc. You can put them at the beginning also just in case someone's fancy writing has turned an L into an S or something eg *ever will get you Lever/Sever/Dever. I use the old search on ancestry as I find it more user friendly but I do go to the individual data bases (RH side of page) because not all results in all data bases appear when using the general search. Having said that I have found using the old search on ancestry that I only get 1911 results when I use the general search (probably me doing something wrong)
On FreeBMD if looking for a marriage using the names of both bride and groom and not getting any result try using just the first name of the bride or just the name of one of the parties. This will allow for any mistransciptions due to illegible entries. Also for births after 1911 you can use the maiden name of the mother to narrow down the possibilities.
On famiysearch.org wildcards aren't necessary as it brings up its own variations.
Also The National Archives at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ It can be a bit of a maze to navigate but is worth persevering for Wills, divorces etc.
And of course just reading the threads on Rootschat where others give links to sites which they find useful.
As to whether it is the correct info sometimes it is a process of eliminating the pieces of information and trying to confirm what is left. Sometimes successful, sometimes not.
Always make a note of where and when you found/received the information and keep reference numbers such as those for the censuses.
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And when you use google to search for an ancestor, don't forget to put the name in inverted commas.
"Pinefamily" for example.
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If the family/person you're looking for weren't in the same country as your search engine's default base try changing to the relevant country. I'm in the UK so default is google.co.uk - but if I wanted to look for someone in, say. Canada I could try Google's Canadian site (google.ca) and then restrict the results to Canadian sites - click on "search tools" and then "the web" and you get the choice of the web or "pages from Canada" - selecting the individual country still produces some oddities but does narrow the choices.
Another trick that sometimes gets better results, particularly for newspaper type announcements is to reverse the names - "Smith John" rather than "John Smith".
Becoming familiar with the full range of search techniques in a search engine and using those that are relevant can reduce results from tens of thousands to a more manageable number in many cases, though nothing is going to make it easy with some names!