RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Zakerias on Saturday 11 October 25 16:41 BST (UK)
-
Its been about 5 years since I started looking into my family tree. I've learnt a great deal and found things I never thought I would but every time I go back to my tree now I seem to go around in circles. Every direct ancestor just feels like a dead end and it's really demotivating. I feel like I've exhausted every avenue of search for some lines and just feels like I'll be stuck in limbo forever.
How do others keep motivated to carry on? And is there anything else I can do to break this stalemate?
It might be worth mentioned that I've mainly used Ancestry.com, not sure if others could give hints. I have used FindMyPast before but only for a month or so.
-
Have you done your DNA :-\
-
You need to look at original sources. There are millions of records that are not online. You mentioned Ancestry and FindMyPast. What about wills, muster rolls, manorial records, legal records, and many more? Most of these records are not indexed and are not available online.
-
"The truth is out there."
Zaph
-
Don't forget, if you have male ancestors born 1880s / 1890s then they may well have served in WW1 --- there are plenty of WW1 records on both Ancestry and Find My Past.
Keep your spirits up and take the advice in the replies to your post.
-
How far back have you gone before you feel you are hitting dead ends? Once you get back before circa 1800 it starts to get murkier, especially for ancestors with common surnames. Or the ancestors who reached the 1841 census but said "not born in county" of residence on the census, but died before the 1851 census, the first really useful census.
You can try the DNA route, and perhaps search for any poor law records as well as wills and manorial records. Also try tracing witnesses to marriages, who were often relatives but in many cases not always.
Sadly in some cases it can be almost impossible to trace back any further than what you have got. I have 3 ancestors who said "not born in county" of residence in 1841 and all died by 1851, one died just weeks before the 1851 census in late March. One of them was a Smith as well.
-
Hi Zakeriras,
I’m not sure if you’re in the UK and searching UK ancestors but if so try The British Newspaper Archive.
You can narrow it down to years and areas.
I spent many hours in lockdown trawling through old papers looking up people and addresses.
It’s such a fascinating social history and brings life to the names and dates.
I found interesting facts through intimations, adverts for home help, letters to the editor and reports of a break in.
I also found a very sad report of my husbands great grandfather who had been missing for a week in the 1930s
In today’s terms I think he was having a mental health crisis having just lost his son in a motorbike accident and was found wandering near the site.
Obviously the more unusual the name the better but it may just give you the breakthrough you need.
Good luck !
-
Do descendants of your ancestors' siblings, your in-laws' families, your cousins' family on the side on which you aren't related to them. Do friends' families.
If you are in the U.S., are there other families who were from the same place and migrated to the same place as your families? Do them.
-
All the above are very good suggestions to keep the search going.
If it's really demotivating, you can consider taking a break from it all for a few months.
It's no good hitting the same brick wall over and over again. Sometimes it's just better to turn away from this wall and do something else. You might benefit from it in the end.
In French they have this saying: "Reculer pour mieux sauter."
Taking a few steps back to be able to jump further.
One day you'll be jumping over your brick wall instead of demolishing it by hitting it day in day out.
-
It totally depends upon where you are and where you are searching.
Only a few Countries have accessible Genealogy Records anywhere near as detailed as the UK hence it can be very variable.
UK records can be pretty good going back to 1800, beyond that can be spasmodic in the results depending upon which County you are in within England and Wales. Ireland before 1860 can be very, very difficult if not impossible and Scotland, well Scotland does there own thing.
Now if you have not taken a DNA test, do so now as Ancestry is having a half price sale on until the latter part of the month.
If you want to know more about DNA then do ask.
-
Or just give your own families a rest for a while and join in working on other’s queries on here. I have found I have learned a lot that has proved useful to my own families.
You might come back to yours reinvigorated.
-
I agree it can be a frustrating business. Sometimes just one decent breakthrough will set things in motion. I hope this happens for you soon.
There is no doubt some families are more difficult than others to research.
The hard ones are often very quiet living people with common surnames and simple given names they repeat through generations and many family branches.
They never step outside the law, go bankrupt or leave a will or probate application in their name.
They are never sick or poor enough to be in an asylum or institution and are often out or at sea on census night.
They marry their deceased wife's sister and in the end are buried without headstone in cemetery unknown ;D ;D
Sue
-
How do others keep motivated to carry on? And is there anything else I can do to break this stalemate?
From the start, about 25 years ago, I figured it would be easier to go back in time and further up the tree at some point in the future when more records were available online.
So I've done what I can with the information easily available in the here and now, and each time I've got to a brick wall I've gone off to look at expanding a different branch of my tree.
My motivation is in finding new connections and the social/geographic aspects which keeps me interested, then every now and again a new dataset comes available online (the Suffolk PRs is the latest for me) which might give some answers to move up another generation or two.
Occasionally (all too rarely) researching one of the branches gives a clue for one of the main lines - for example an elderly relative staying on census night, or a surname unexpectedly being used as a given name for a child.
So if you are stuck, spend some time going back over records you've already found seeing if there are things you've missed. Account for all people in a census household, find the full names of children where you only have initials. Also, check any unidentified witnesses of marriages (although in my experience these seem more likely to be friends rather than family).
Keep digging, something will turn up.
-
I began researching back in the 1980s so I've hit many patches like you. At first I wanted to grow a tree, heading straight back into the past and was not really interested in side shoots. That's a mistake.
Once past the Victorian period it gets harder to find the evidence and I've often considered boxing everything up and putting it in the garage. But I like the research and find creating projects within family branches provides valuable insights by putting the family into a social context and revealing their own relationships. This year I created a WW2 timeline for my London family - both my paternal grandparents came from large families and I hadn't quite appreciated how close they were. I found bomb maps and tragedies, army records and war work for example - by the end I had a very different view of those many individuals who had been simply extra names on my tree. Placing people against the backdrop of what was going on is fascinating and really helps explain so much.
-
I think we all have the same problem we get so far back and can't go any further as mentioned if a ancestor has died before 1851 census and no burial record can be found its Very frustrating . Don't give up just put it to one side then go back every so often and check Again and don't follow hints on Ancestry without checking ;)
Rosie
-
I always was told when I started genealogy that genealogy gets harder the further back you go and they are usually right. Some lines can be traced back further than others, if they had money and left wills or had land.
I have a female ancestor who may or may not have wed her husband, they lived in London/Middlesex. She supposedly married in about 1811, her last child was born before civil reg began, she said "not born in county" (Middlesex) in 1841 census and died in Feb 1851, just 6 weeks before the 1851 census. Yet her husband has been traced, and he died in 1831 and was from Dorset originally. She is an example of someone who I think will be impossible to find her birth surname and parents. I guess one day autosomal DNA testing may be my only hope.
-
Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY
-
https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/Ancestry-Accounts-after-Cancellation
-
Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY
Suggest you spend £40 buying Roots Magic from S&N Genealogy Supplies in the UK.
Once downloaded and installed, Create a new project selecting Download from an online tree.
Navigate to Ancestry and let the software download all the tree, not just a Gedcom but all the media, images etc in reality an exact duplicate of your Ancestry Tree.
Create a new project and repeat for each tree that you have on Ancestry.
I have done this for years and it is my Backup method should we decide to cease using Ancestry.
Thereafter you can Tree Share between Roots Magic and Ancestry where Roots Magic justbdownloads the changes that have been made within Ancestry.
-
Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY
You don't need to subscribe to view or edit your own trees! I always cancel my subscription over summer/whilst I'm travelling, and have no issues accessing my trees during those times.
-
i have both Ancestry and Find My Past subs. I appreciate these are expensive but work well in conjunction with each other. I do not drive so I call this my "petrol money".
Do you do all the branches of your tree - often the most interesting are the side branches and they also help you discover more about your direct line. It will give you clues especially on the Census, and they will tell you that person's relationship to the Head. Ahah...you will go!
Go beyond Ancestry: newspapers, archives, land titles, FREE BMD and FREE REG, Family Search, Google Books. These are all sources that I have used. Getting some BMD certificates, divorce papers, wills etc.
-
I find missing people sometimes. Set yourself a challenge.
-
Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY
I currently have a subscription to FindMyPast but not Ancestry and I have no trouble accessing my trees there, I just can't see the record's images attached to the trees. The trees are private too!
So do cancel your sub if you no longer do record searches, you will still have access to your tree! If you might want to see the records at some point make sure you download the images to local storage before cancelling your subscription!!
-
I have traced many of my "side groups", with interest, over the years, Nova 67. Thank you, Comberton, not sure I quite understand what you can / cannot do if you resign. Biggles 50, it certainly does sound quite complicated to me!
Thank you all for your guidance and advice.
TY
-
As said, any Irish genealogy can be pretty hard after the early to mid 1800s. England is lucky in comparison. Pre famine migration to the UK from Ireland was always steady, one of my ancestors sisters wed a man of likely Irish descent in 1805 in Westminster, his surname was Carroll. I know Westminster did have quite a large Irish and French Huguenot descent population at the time, and also quite a few Scottish and German families.
Some counties have beneficiary indexes for wills for certain periods, such as Essex 1674-1857 beneficiaries index, but beneficiaries who had a different surname to the testator. These may help find previously unknown relatives.
-
I would echo the suggestion on the newspaper archives - fascinating snippets right back to the 19th century on all kinds of family members. I was also interested to trace back both paternal and maternal lines at every stage, and also trace back down at least to the cousins for every level ancestor. That's a lot to keep busy with, and many areas to pick at later.
I can suggest it may be worth researching topics as well, or locations relevant to an ancestor. That will give more flavour to their experiences, if not throwing up little bits for that ancestor unexpectedly.
Also get hold of relevant books for that, it was already mentioned about offline records but even pulling out others research that's not online can be useful.
The Internet Archive has older (out of copyright) books - I've found letters by my ancestor John O'Hart, teacher and genealogist, who I am researching, published in old family histories etc. Appreciate that's not the usual experience but even so there's a lot of topics/local history there.