RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: KoKo on Saturday 24 September 05 19:38 BST (UK)
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Hi RootChatters,
Is there a recommended method for tracking down lost family members post the 1901 census?
I have managed to trace a few strands forward from 18th Century to the 1901 census but don't know how to bring these line to a current 2005 closure.
It is a frustrating case of " so near yet so far". ???
Your ideas and experience would be most gratefull to many novice roots chatters, myself included.
Thanks in anticipation
David
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If you know what area they all lived you could try the electoral registers. They only list the adults, but from that you can find entries of birth etc in that area.
Also you could then look at parish records for that area too.
good luck with your search
best wishes
Pauline
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Thanks Pauline,
I didn't know that the Electoral Registers were available. Can these be viewed on line? If so how and where?
Sorry to keep asking questions, but it's the only way to learn!!
Thanks
David
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I dont know if they are online anywhere. ( if so i've not found them)
You normally phone the main library in the town. Like at Doncaster theyre at the Central Library. You use the computors and reader machines to view them. I have been searching the 1930's there. Unfortunately it means a lot of travelling sometimes. Also this might sound morbid but gravestones are a good way to find information too, so look at the churchyards. From them you can get death certificates and hopefully next of kin details.
best wishes
Pauline
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Thanks Pauline,
It looks like I will be taking a few trips into the Derbyshire Dales in the weeks and months ahead. My wife will be pleased....I don't think!!!!
Thanks again
David
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take a picnic , it's best to go in summer! A shopping bribe might work too! :)
good luck and best wishes
Pauline
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Hi David and a little bit of a belated welcome to Rootschat, glad to see you are "getting into it" :)
I have found one way to take a great leap forward is to look for deaths. A death certificate can tell you who registered the death(sometimes a family member) where they lived when they died, all sorts, might even lead you to a will.
Ancestry.com have some of the Deaths from 1984-2000 indexed, as well as some to 1984 when they split the records so they are always worth checking.
Good luck
Wendi
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Thanks Wendi,
I have just joined ancestry so it will be a good test.
Cheers
David
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There's always the hard slog of 1837online. If you have, say, a 10-yr-old child in the 1901 census, you can search for marriages from 1910-1920. This works well unless the surname is common. At this point you need to order the certificate to get the other spouse's name (which also serves to confirm you've got the right marriage, through the father's name). Then, thanks to the introduction of mother's maiden names from July 1911 (or was it 1912?) it's quite easy to trrace births. Once you have a birth with the correct surname and mother's maiden name, say in 1915, you can search for marriages in 1935-45 ... and so on.
I've done a couple of generations this way.
Cheers
Tim
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I've been very lucky with a couple of lines I wanted to trace forward. I had a couple of daughters born in the late 1890's to families in Durham.
Using the superb Durham County Council site, I was able to guesstimate marriages in the 1920's and 1930's (as Timbottawa did with 1837Online). I found two possible marriages for each daughter, and because the Durham site gives you the spouses deatails, I was able to check these with my mam. She wouldn't have been a able to tell me their surnames unprompted, but given a choice of a couple, her memory was jogged. I was then able to search the Durham site for likely births in the few years after the marriage, and that way add a few extra names to my tree.
cheers
Paul
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Paul E, Timbottawa,
Thanks for the pointers guys, I had tried looking at parish records through the LDS sit which has been very good when going "backwards", but has not provided much help from circa 1880 to the present. I haven't tried 1837 on-line but will do so in the next few evenings.
The idea of looking on the local council site is a good idea, I will try the Derbyshire CC and Staffordshire CC sites and report back - why two CCs? Easy. My paternal family comes from Hartington and Sheen which are neighbouring villages, less than a mile apart but due to the intervention of geography, in different counties! Such is family history research. ;)
I will give a report back on progress with these two avenues of inquiry.
Thanks again guys
David
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Good luck, David.
As Paul says, the local BMD sites can help short-circuit the process, and I've been very lucky in that much of my family comes from Leeds, and the YorkshireBMD site has excellend coverage, especially of Leeds.
Do you know of the UKBMD site (http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/)? I just checked, and Staffordshire has some coverage into the mid-20th, you may be lucky there. By selecting Derbyshire from the "County" selection box, you get lots of options for Derbyshire, but apparently no DerbyshireBMD yet.
Cheers
Tim