RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Guy Etchells on Wednesday 16 December 15 20:10 GMT (UK)
-
I have been thinking occasionally of the thread What else is there left to find on our ancestors? And wonder how many people us grave registers as a clue to confirming relationships or even confirming husbands in earlier generations.
Take for instance a collateral line branching from my Etchells lineage.
The couple Richard Etchells & Elizabeth Taylor had 6 children 4 boys and 2 girls, the boys were relatively easy to trace due to them keeping the same name but the girls were more difficult due to them having relatively common names and changing their surnames on marriage.
I knew that Elizabeth had died in 1904 and Richard on 21 Feb. 1905 on looking at their burial plot records I discovered that as I suspected they were buried in the same plot in Philips Park Cemetery, Manchester, plot c 1465.
The grave plot register shows 5 burials in this plot.
Elizabeth Etchells (bur. 20/10/1904), Richard Etchells (bur. 24/02/1905), my ancestor and his wife but also Elizabeth Hayes (bur. 27/09/1906), Alice Hayes (bur. 26/06/1922 ), James Hayes (bur. 19/11/1923).
Could Alice Hayes be one of their girls Alice Etchells.
A quick check on the GRO marriage index confirmed this could be a possibility as an Alice Etchells married a James Hayes in 1899 and what is more a child Elizabeth Hayes was born in the same district in 1901 possibly the Elizabeth Hayes in the same plot.
A check on the GRO index confirmed the possibility that this could be the case as an Elizabeth Hayes aged 5 died in the same district in the 3rd quarter of 1906.
The 1901 census does not contain a lot of information though it does show a James Hayes and Alice Hayes in the correct district as man and wife with no children and the 1911 shows by then they had a further 3 children and one deceased child, further confirmation of the above suppositions.
All the above (with the exception of the census material) is freely available online at the present time, but it is all supposition until money is spent on buying certificates and in the case of this grave register buying credits from Manchester Council and census credits (or a subscription to a site that hosts the census) to access further details of each of the individuals or taking a trip to view the register locally.
This is just one instance of how often unused alternative sources (plot registers) may help prove relationships.
Cheers
Guy
-
While I don't go out of my way to utilize them as much as someone else would , what I have found on the odd occasion is that extra piece that links 2 people.
I had one census record which named the family and a ''servant''. It wasn't until I spotted a headstone/register where the servant was buried in the same plot , that further digging showed a relationship. Nephew. Which gave me another twig to follow
It also helps in the smaller type cemeteries family units are buried , if not next to , nearby.
-
Years ago we had visitors from Australia come to us looking for their ancestors. Using church records (communicants roll, pew lists, graveyard map, etc.) and school records we were able to connect their ancestor to the place they had lived, to the correct family and thence to living relatives.
-
Grave registers are great if you know where to find them... I've found some by accident when googling names of relatives, but apart from that they're a resource I've really underused. Like you say Guy, you can uncover several members of the same family in one go. It saves buying lots of death certificates which may not be the right ones.
I use newspaper obituaries to confirm deaths I'm unsure of... I'm sure lots of researchers have neglected the newspaper archives. Often the list of mourners will uncover marriages of daughters. Once you work out which search terms to put in (not easy!) and if there are newspapers from the part of the country you're interested in, a lot of loose ends can be tied up. By piecing together the death index, probate records, burials, electoral rolls and newspaper archives, I've managed to find out when the majority of my relatives died. And now we've to the 1939 register too!
-
Newspapers are my first alternative. We are lucky here to have a free to search facility with Trove. I also subscribed to one particular site because of its newspaper archives.
Newspapers and especially Obits have given me the next step so many times , as well as adding interesting stories. :)
-
I have used some cemetery records, but find they are highly variable in quality, location and availability. Some charge (exorbitantly) for the info. Some are held onsite, some digital, some old paper, some in municipal offices, some in someone's home.
At one cemetery in Ontario, I was advised by the fellow living on an adjoining property that I should contact so-and-so, who would come over and open the records for me. This would not take long, I was assured, as he lived down the street.
Said keeper arrived, walking slowly and seemingly in pain, and opened up his little office/hut, where all the burial records were still kept, going back to the beginning in mid-19thC although the earliest ones had never been kept. They were the only copies, so, if that little hut burned down on Hallowe'en, well, too bad.
He found most of what I was looking for, but one grave remained problematic as it was not clear how many people were buried there and one person we wanted was missing.
No problem. He got out his dowsing rod and we all trooped over to the grave in question. Problem solved.
He says he often uses his dowsing rod when it is not clear where precisely a new grave should be dug in order not to disturb the existing ones. He finds this very reliable, but says it doesn't work for everyone. It's a gift, he told us - one we were grateful for!.
-
Our cemetery here in Oswesty shropshire has put its burials online and I have found quite a few people I have been wondering about, confirming relationships and throwing up a couple more mysteries too but we all love more mysteries even though we sometimes moan about them.
-
Newspapers can be a goldmine of information.
Marriages - I have found several family members marriages reported, usually between the 2 wars. The reports often give a list of the wedding gifts and the names of those who gave them. Careful checking can find marriages or confirm names of siblings.
Deaths - again lists of mourners.
Checking just prior to and after the 1st WW, I found that seven of my Knapp family had served. One poor chap was invalided three times, once his tobacco tin deflecting the shrapnel...this kind of information is gold dust :D
-
I agree with Guy; burial/grave registers can often provide extra information not found on headstones. I virtually created a family tree from the Balaklava, South Australia, burial register.
-
If you can do, if you live near to them or can arrange a weekend away or week away or so to go to a county or more where ancestors lived, ie to go to the RO, then a good thing to do is visit some villages where ancestors lived in that county then tour the churchyard or local cemetery and look at every name on every legible headstone, and note down any family names or even names of spouses of ancestor siblings, cousins etc, ones not directly related but you know who they married. If it is a town or city cemetery then best to ask around for burial registers.
The amount of times I have been to an ancestral village churchyard or cemetery and looked at every grave for family names has paid dividends.
-
I looked out for family gravestones gravestones while passing through Suffolk a few years back. Not only confirmed when a few people died, but it grave me an idea of their wealth and standing in the village - they had quite large and elaborate gravestones, and quite prominently placed.
-
I looked out for family gravestones gravestones while passing through Suffolk a few years back. Not only confirmed when a few people died, but it grave me an idea of their wealth and standing in the village - they had quite large and elaborate gravestones, and quite prominently placed.
I have wanted to go to Foulness, Essex to look at graves there, but I think only the MOD and residents can get there.
I have ancestors from Hacheston and Bredfield, Suffolk and they were millers and they all had headstones, large ones, ditto for my Walder's of Sussex who were farmers and wheelwrights.
-
I'm jealous of all of you who can go to these little (and not so) places to look at headstones, memorials, and even the county RO's. But that is the challenge of researching your family history from afar.
One of my great grandfathers actually wrote a poem that is on the headstone of his wife here in Australia. Priceless.....
-
I'm jealous of all of you who can go to these little (and not so) places to look at headstones, memorials, and even the county RO's. But that is the challenge of researching your family history from afar.
One of my great grandfathers actually wrote a poem that is on the headstone of his wife here in Australia. Priceless.....
That was one of the reasons I started making my transcriptions and photos of tombstones available on line.
Back in 2001 just after I first uploaded my Staincross pages I received a heart
warming message from a lady who lived less than 10 miles from Staincross
but had never been able to visit her parent's grave due to disability,
the Staincross site allowed her the chance to view her parent's grave
for the first time.
Imaging therefore the potential worldwide.
I also made the following challenge to Family History Societies
> A quick plug for my latest website of the burial ground of St John the
> Evangelist Church, Staincross, and a challenge
>
> http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~framland/stcr/stjsc1.htm
>
> The site contains photos of the tombstones, transcripts of the
> inscriptions and the complete interlinked burial register for the
> church.
>
> The site was started at the end of January and I visited about one
> morning a week (weather allowing) I transcribed the inscriptions in the
> evening from the photos and checked the printouts of the transcripts on
> my next visit.
>
> The burial register database was given to me by the vicar, The Revd Jim
> Butterworth, (grateful thanks for this) which I split alphabetically and
>
> added in links to the relevant photos.
>
> In all the site has taken about 14-20 days of work to produce. It is not
> perfect by any means [some days I was so cold the camera shook :-))] but
> does show what can be achieved with little
> effort.
>
> Now the challenge,
>
> I challenge each and every Family History Society in the country to
> produce a similar type of free site for an burial ground in your area of
> interest within the next six months.
> I often hear how important FHS are to the family historian but see
> various degrees of proof of this, can you meet the challenge and make me
> eat my words? :-))
>
> Cheers
> Guy
My original challenge was made on 1/4/2001 on the Genbrit/Socgen mailing
list but also appeared on other lists and newsletters (ROOTSWEB REVIEW:
RootsWeb's Genealogy News Vol. 4, No. 14, 4 April 2001) as well as
Family History Monthly, July 2001 number 70 page 29 and Family Tree
Magazine July 2001 volume 17, number 9, page 40).
Cheers
Guy
-
I was touring Scotland a couple of years ago and contacted the Records Office in Dundee before hand for any information on the graves of my family. They provided a map of the cemetary and a list of the owners of the lairs and those interned. I found a name on one of the stones which I found to be an uncle I had no idea existed who had never been mentioned and was born outside the areas I had been researching.
-
So how many took up your challenge, Guy? I don't recall seeing any such sites in my internet travels.
-
I'm immensely grateful to people who transcribe gravestones... sorry to say I'm taking the easy option and transcribing parish registers from my computer, rather than getting out in the cold and photographing gravestones!
Coombs - I'd wondered about going to Foulness too, mainly because it looks like a fascinating place and I can't imagine anyone living there. And there's some amazing wildlife there.
From Wikipedia:
"The island's visitor centre is opened to the public on the first Sunday in summer months, but permission must be sought to visit. Until 2007, members of the public could visit the island's pub by telephoning ahead; if they had not done so, access would be denied."
-
yes, I have used burials to search for my family too. Now we have the very helpful https://www.deceasedonline.com/
I have found most of my Newark burials here, including a great uncle that was "missing" he was buried with his dad. There is also the http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi
This one you do have to be careful with, as some are user submitted and I have found some facts are not correct.
My kids were used to outings to graveyards..sometimes incorporated into the annual family holiday :D
-
If you can do, if you live near to them or can arrange a weekend away or week away or so to go to a county or more where ancestors lived, ie to go to the RO, then a good thing to do is visit some villages where ancestors lived in that county then tour the churchyard or local cemetery and look at every name on every legible headstone ..
That is always worth doing, but so often gravestones are illegible or - worse - tumbled over. Some parish churches have compiled graveyard registers, and some (even better) put them online. One in Suffolk gave us a copy of a spreadsheet.
An ancestor of mine came from a long line of Tydemans in Earl Stonham. The graveyard was scattered with Edmunds, none of them one I could identify with. Family habits can be difficult.
-
If you can do, if you live near to them or can arrange a weekend away or week away or so to go to a county or more where ancestors lived, ie to go to the RO, then a good thing to do is visit some villages where ancestors lived in that county then tour the churchyard or local cemetery and look at every name on every legible headstone ..
That is always worth doing, but so often gravestones are illegible or - worse - tumbled over. Some parish churches have compiled graveyard registers, and some (even better) put them online. One in Suffolk gave us a copy of a spreadsheet.
An ancestor of mine came from a long line of Tydemans in Earl Stonham. The graveyard was scattered with Edmunds, none of them one I could identify with. Family habits can be difficult.
What I love is how a lot of the Suffolk churchyards are right in the middle of the countryside in very peaceful churchyards, well away from crowds, noise and traffic. Yes I have seen graves that are covered in moss and ones that have eroded away, and even some toppled over. You never know if the weathered ones may be some of the ones you are after.
-
Yes I have seen graves that are covered in moss and ones that have eroded away, and even some toppled over. You never know if the weathered ones may be some of the ones you are after.
The best material for gravestones is north Welsh slate. I have searched an Anglesey graveyard - unsuccessfully - but many of the Victorian stones looked freshly minted.
-
I read that Cumbria has good stone which hardly weathers.
Another good source is noting down names of war memorials or rolls of honours in churches.
-
So how many took up your challenge, Guy? I don't recall seeing any such sites in my internet travels.
Unfortunately very few.
Roy Stockdill replied saying "I am saddened to hear you say that your suggestion met with little
> response from family history societies. In their defence, I might
> point out that most societies already do a good deal of work in
> indexing censuses and other projects, etc, and have been doing so for
> many years. And of course the problem is the eternal one of finding
> bodies to carry out these projects! We are all volunteers,
> after all. However, you have a good point, undoubtedly.
>
> I will be attending the six-monthly General Meeting of the Federation
> of Family History Societies at Colchester at the end of this month
> and I would seek your permission to read out your message at the
> meeting as part of my report in my capacity as FFHS Projects
> Director. May I? I feel societies should be made aware of such
> feelings."
Which of course is all true but what they seemed to not understand that by giving just one page of photos and transcriptions they could attract distant and overseas members to their website who in turn may purchase the printed transcriptions they all produced at the time.
I.E. the online page would act as a loss leader for more sales.
A point not lost on Janice Wood the Projects Coordinator for the City of York and District Family History
Society who stated "...However, I do take your point, Guy, that the Society could produce just one
of these publications on the internet, which would, of course, be of benefit
to anyone researching in that particular area, but this could also serve as
an 'advertisement' to show what is available from the Society. I will bring
this matter up at our next Committee meeting."
I do not know how many now have online transcriptions (and/or photos of M.Is.) available but it may be worthwhile visting the website of FHS in your area of interest just in case they have something availble on or off line
Cheers
Guy
PS Even the thought of getting 700 extra views (which was not bad at that time) on their website in 3 days which is what my page generated did nothing to enthuse the FHS
-
I've only found a handful of ancestors with an actual headstone but if you are lucky enough to know where your ancestors are buried AND if the local authority have detailed records then they can be a fantastic source (esp when so many children died young). Local authorities vary hugely in their helpfulness and / or charges though.
I've found many church burials in online records but not explored any church grave records to see if anyone else is buried in the same grave.
Sadly, as with most of the headstones, I've found very few 'family' deaths in the newspapers until more recent times.
-
Which of course is all true but what they seemed to not understand that by giving just one page of photos and transcriptions they could attract distant and overseas members to their website who in turn may purchase the printed transcriptions they all produced at the time.
I.E. the online page would act as a loss leader for more sales.
A point not lost on Janice Wood the Projects Coordinator for the City of York and District Family History
Society who stated "...However, I do take your point, Guy, that the Society could produce just one
of these publications on the internet, which would, of course, be of benefit
to anyone researching in that particular area, but this could also serve as
an 'advertisement' to show what is available from the Society. I will bring
this matter up at our next Committee meeting."
I do not know how many now have online transcriptions (and/or photos of M.Is.) available but it may be worthwhile visting the website of FHS in your area of interest just in case they have something availble on or off line
Cheers
Guy
PS Even the thought of getting 700 extra views (which was not bad at that time) on their website in 3 days which is what my page generated did nothing to enthuse the FHS
That was my first thought too; it comes down to money, or loss of it. I understand that these societies are not businesses, and rely on income from memberships and sale of transcripts, etc., but I agree with you Guy that just one graveyard or cemetery transcribed, photographed and put online for free would be more beneficial than not.
-
My kids were used to outings to graveyards..sometimes incorporated into the annual family holiday :D
I can relate to that, Larkspur. A day spent looking for the grave of one set of my great grandparents in a rather large suburban cemetery was rewarded with lunch at McDonalds when my kids were younger. One of them even asked when we were doing it again. ;)
-
I've had great luck just this week with Find A Grave for somebody who died in the USA, I hadn't been able to find the marriage to his second wife but on the transcription it gave the former name of his wife as well as the married name in that American manner. ;) So that will come in very handy.
I've had a bit of luck with online resources such as Toxteth Park Cemetery in Liverpool finding 4 family members in the one grave and years ago I got an MI from Cheshire FHS which although quite convoluted to work out at first was a real find and tied up many relationships. The unusual thing about this one is that all the people in the grave are females, that's also now on Find A Grave (not added by me).
-
I have had some wonderful results from wills. My great x6 grandfather James Garnham is a case in point. I had traced back to my great x4 grandfather Ambrose Frost, I had his baptism so I knew his mother's name was Sarah. A distant relative who posts here gave me her maiden name as Garnham, and various other details which I was having difficulty verifying for myself. But a random internet search for "Ambrose Frost" took me to a now-defunct site with what purported to be a transcript of the will of James Garnham, the maternal grandfather of Ambrose Frost. I went to Bury St Edmunds to see the will for myself - and the bequest was everything a family historian could ever hope for!! "I also give to my grandson Ambrose Frost the son of my daughter Sarah the wife of William Frost the sum of five pounds to be paid to him on his attaining the age of twenty one years".
You can't get a much clearer statement of the family relationship than that!!
I have quite a few ancestors who were licensed victuallers, and I have found the annual justices' recognisances a valuable source of information as to when they moved from one public house to another.
The register of apprenticeships has given me a couple of useful leads, too.
I've found evidence of a number of bankruptcies amongst my Victiorian ancestors in the London Gazette. This is now fully digitized and will show up in the results of a search against the name of your bankrupt ancestor. Not much use if it's John Smith that you're looking for; but Edward Martindale is another matter ... and the fact of the bankruptcy helps to explain all sorts of things. Sudden disappearance from one location only to reappear in another, using a different name, for example.
The Old Bailey records are also online, and make for very interesting reading. Transcripts of every trial, including the evidence given, is there and searchable. Witnesses' names, addresses and occupations are all faithfully recorded. I had an ancestor with a distinctive name (Robert Packman) who was a City of London policeman in the Victorian era. A search against his name yielded a directory of the 60 odd trials in which he gave evidence; from which a very clear picture of his career emerges.
As the National Newspaper Library is digitizing its collection, it is worth doing random internet searches against the names of your more obscure ancestors from time to time. Interesting reports come up. Now I know just why the family had photographs of my great great grandmother Emma Hardwick, but knew absolutely nothing about her husband (judicial separation in 1907; luridly reported in the local newspaper of the time, along with the sorry tale of his subsequent conviction for breaking into my great grandfather's house, where she was living after the separation, and stealing her money and smashing her sewing machine).
The Great Fire of Potton in 1783 has left us with a quasi-census of the town, in the form of the accounts of the trustees of the relief fund which can be consulted at the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service. It lists all the claimants, the amount of their loss, whether or not their claim was accepted and in which class, and the amount of the relief paid to them (16s. in the £ in the case of Class 1 claimants, which is pretty good relief).
Still searching, still finding interesting little odds and sods all over the place ...
-
We are told to talk to those we know before they pass on.
Alternatively you can do as I did today - I went to a funeral in the hope of talking to my dads cousin some more . Unfortunately he is now confined to a nursing home , as well as his sister , whose husbands funeral it was .
While I didn't get the information I wanted, I added some more anecdotes to my collection of other families.
It is an alternative source :)
-
We are told to talk to those we know before they pass on.
Alternatively you can do as I did today - I went to a funeral in the hope of talking to my dads cousin some more . Unfortunately he is now confined to a nursing home , as well as his sister , whose husbands funeral it was .
While I didn't get the information I wanted, I added some more anecdotes to my collection of other families.
It is an alternative source :)
I did speak to my 87 year old mother over the Christmas holidays and she was able to fill in a few details and also confirm that what I have found is correct as she remembers a lot of the extended family, I took my laptop to show her.
We also discussed how her father was a fireman in Liverpool in WW2 (which I already knew but I thought he was just a volunteer), he was in the thick of it with the massive bombings in the city and she was evacuated with her brother to North Wales (which I have always known) but I didn't know that the children of firemen sometimes slept in the fire station when the blitzing was really bad, she said she loved to do that and a fireman cook/chef would make a big tin tray of syrup sponge pudding which they also loved, as treats like this were very rare due to rationing of course.
Also that her father had an accident falling off the back of the fire engine as this was in the days when they all hung on the outside and clanged the bell, she said they used to wear heavy brass helmets and now I understand why my grand-dad was so particular about his appearance with a knife crease in his trousers and highly polished shoes as I believe it was run on military lines.
Of course this didn't help to smash any of my brickwalls but it was an interesting insight into grand-dad who was the strong, silent type. 8)
-
We are told to talk to those we know before they pass on.
Alternatively you can do as I did today - I went to a funeral in the hope of talking to my dads cousin some more . Unfortunately he is now confined to a nursing home , as well as his sister , whose husbands funeral it was .
While I didn't get the information I wanted, I added some more anecdotes to my collection of other families.
It is an alternative source :)
Being the youngest son of the youngest son of 10, funerals are where I have met most of my family!
-
This topic is great ....... and to hear ideas utilized by others introduces other methods I had never thought about.
I would like to add something that I use that could be useful to others and that I have benefited from.
Most of my research is is and around London and Middlesex and I knew that my direct line of ancestors lived in *Leg Alley* but was unable to pinpoint it.
Being an insignificant alley ..... and there were loads of them it was darned nigh impossible so I thought outside the box and used the Old Bailey site;
https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/forms/formMain.jsp
and my entering ' Leg Alley' into the Old Bailey' search engine it came up with dozens of instances which pinpointed the alley as being between Long Acre and Little Hart Street which enabled me to find a map which shows how very close it was to Covent Garden where a number of my ancestors were employed.
Joe
-
Dudley borough council's website has a good search facility for finding graves
http://www2.dudley.gov.uk/burial_records/regenq.asp (http://www2.dudley.gov.uk/burial_records/regenq.asp)
It won't tell you who's related to who which you can get from looking at a gravestone, but you can see if more than one person was buried in the same grave and make your own deductions
If anyone else knows of similar search facilities, please share!
-
Of course this didn't help to smash any of my brickwalls but it was an interesting insight into grand-dad who was the strong, silent type. 8)
Smashing brickwalls may be satisfying - but for me, the greatest interest in family history lies not just in finding out WHO my ancestors were, but in finding out as much as I can about them and the lives they led.
For me, the sort of information you obtained there would be absolute gold dust - worth far more than a brick wall or two brought tumbling down :)
-
Dudley borough council's website has a good search facility for finding graves
http://www2.dudley.gov.uk/burial_records/regenq.asp (http://www2.dudley.gov.uk/burial_records/regenq.asp)
It won't tell you who's related to who which you can get from looking at a gravestone, but you can see if more than one person was buried in the same grave and make your own deductions
If anyone else knows of similar search facilities, please share!
This is the site I use I've not found a lot of people, but every little find is a gem. This is for Liverpool.
http://www.toxtethparkcemetery.co.uk/
-
Smashing brickwalls may be satisfying - but for me, the greatest interest in family history lies not just in finding out WHO my ancestors were, but in finding out as much as I can about them and the lives they led.
For me, the sort of information you obtained there would be absolute gold dust - worth far more than a brick wall or two brought tumbling down
The difficulty comes in deciding how to record this 'non-data' for posterity to enjoy. Will you write a short story?
-
My family history narrative is recorded in a series of Word documents, Andrew, one for each generation starting at Generation A (my parents) and working backwards through generation B (my grandparents), generation C (my great grandparents) and so forth.
Each grandparent has a unique identifier code (A1 is my father; A2 is my mother; B1 is my paternal grandfather; B2 is my paternal grandmother; B3 is my maternal grandfather; B4 is my maternal grandmother; and so on through the generations).
In the narrative for each generation, there is a separate heading for each of the ancestors I have been able to identify, beneath which I record all of the information I have been able to gather about them, all footnoted with source references.
I have no difficulty including what you call "non-data". Typically, I will introduce this with "According to family tradition, ..." and I will then footnote that with details of who told it to me, and when. If possible, I will look for some hard information to corroborate it. E.g. my Great Great Grandfather Joseph Oakey was, according to family tradition, a delivery driver (horse-drawn vehicles) who died when he fell from the box seat and was crushed by the wheels of his own cart. I have been able to find a record of the inquest into his death in June 1896 which corroborates this in all material particulars (save that it was a van, not a cart ...). Other family tradition is not so easily corroborated, but it still deserves its place in the narrative and is still included for what it is worth, footnoted accordingly.
Hearsay evidence is still evidence, not "non-data"; and provided it is recognized for what it is and treated with appropriate care as befits hearsay evidence, I see no reason why it should not be included in the narrative.
-
Hearsay evidence is still evidence, not "non-data"; and provided it is recognized for what it is and treated with appropriate care as befits hearsay evidence, I see no reason why it should not be included in the narrative.
Neither do I. By 'non-data' I meant something that can't be plotted on a timeline, or otherwise quantified. Often the only confirmation one can get is from a newspaper archive or suchlike, if the event had been newsworthy. Family hearsay has the inherent snag that it can suffer from Chinese whispers if it is more than first-hand.
It was said that my gt-grandfather Liversidge (or Luersdge as the 1891 enumerator seemed to have written) had met his early death in some way connected with the Penmon lifeboat, while his death certificate says typhoid. However there is a press report that he had been rescued while fishing from an islet off Penmon when the tide rose - I guess this may be the source of the hearsay, but who knows?
-
Ahhh ... there you have it. I don't try to plot things on a timeline. I just write a free-text narrative. I try to adopt a common framework so far as possible (not least because this makes cross-referencing corrections that much easier); but beyond this the structure is very fluid, and can be adapted as necessary to allow whatever information I come upon to be incorporated.
-
Where possible, I record family stories and hearsay in the notes of an individual on my family tree. An example is my uncle Eric, who according to family legend dropped dead one day at my auntie's dinner table. I was perplexed by this, as they also said he died of sleeping sickness, from the tsetse fly. On viewing his death certificate, he died of pulmonary TB, at an infectious diseases hospital. When I asked around the family a bit more, apparently it was someone else who died at the dinner table.
I recorded the family tale in his notes, and amended it when I discovered the truth. I left in the story of the tsetse fly, as the symptoms are almost identical to TB apparently. Whether it was actually a fly bite, or perhaps a doctor had mentioned the similarities, we will never know. That is why I recorded the tale.
-
Dudley borough council's website has a good search facility for finding graves
http://www2.dudley.gov.uk/burial_records/regenq.asp (http://www2.dudley.gov.uk/burial_records/regenq.asp)
It won't tell you who's related to who which you can get from looking at a gravestone, but you can see if more than one person was buried in the same grave and make your own deductions
If anyone else knows of similar search facilities, please share!
This is the site I use I've not found a lot of people, but every little find is a gem. This is for Liverpool.
http://www.toxtethparkcemetery.co.uk/
I just found a "new" site for Liverpool, well it's new for me anyway and I've had great success today in finding one particular missing lot, 5 all in the same grave with a baby I didn't know about.....
http://www.liverpoolcemetery.co.uk/
-
Just found this which somebody mentioned in another thread
http://www.sheffieldindexers.com/SheffieldIndexersSiteMap_Index.html (http://www.sheffieldindexers.com/SheffieldIndexersSiteMap_Index.html)
-
A fantastic alternative source for those with South Australian ancestors is the database of the Adelaide Hospital records. Not only do you get an age, some medical info, but often the ship they came to SA on. A very valuable resource.
-
A really interesting thread.
Thanks to all contributors.
Lots of avenues to follow up.
:D
-
Sometimes you can find unexpected ideas in odd places.
One of the sites I go to is Archive.org and look up old books. Now while this might not help me I am sure it is an alternative for others who seemingly had someone disappear.
I found ''Register of Change of Names During the War by Deed Poll'' - a list of people noted in the London Gazette ( newspaper) who for some reason or other ( usually long term Germanic names to English) have changed names
I have also downloaded a few Hearth tax books - 1 from Leicester and another from Suffolk. Hopefully find a name that links 1 to another.
-
I too have used Archive.org on several occasions. Some great alternative sources, as David has mentioned.
-
Sometimes you can find unexpected ideas in odd places.
One of the sites I go to is Archive.org and look up old books.
I have also downloaded a few Hearth tax books - 1 from Leicester and another from Suffolk. Hopefully find a name that links 1 to another.
Great idea David. :)
I got all excited and immediately went to make a search. Sadly there are only three hearth tax records listed which won't help me..... Suffolk and Leicester, (as you said,) and also Pembrokeshire.
Still a great idea though.
-
I found ''Register of Change of Names During the War by Deed Poll'' - a list of people noted in the London Gazette ( newspaper) who for some reason or other ( usually long term Germanic names to English) have changed names
That's a useful one - I've lost track of a couple of families around war time and suspect they wanted to hide their German-ness!