I never thought I'd get to 100!

[Lydart]

I'd much rather have ag.lab's, miners and a convict than Prince this or that as my ancestors !  MUCH more interesting !

[KathMc]

I'd much rather have ag.lab's, miners and a convict than Prince this or that as my ancestors !  MUCH more interesting !

I quite agree. And it is easy to say that as that is what I have. 

Kath

[scottcharles]

Just wanted to stop by and say well done!
What an achievement in two years!

[Windsor87]

Not including my Royal lines, I have 249 direct ancestors listed. That's not bad given that a pair of my greatx2 grandparents were first cousins. I have doublers  .

[Lydart]

Its no wonder Windsor87 has royal lines with a name like that !!

[markee]

Excellent - well done.
I'm off to count mine now!

[Springbok]

Congrats to everyone who starts with(if they are lucky) knowing who are their Grandparents.

My tree and my husband's combined have 3,613 members. These of. course are not all direct ancestors, but all are blood related and are the result from many researchers. The most trusted being those descendants who still live in the same areas and can personally look up BMD from Parish records.

Whilst the GR site can be a pain (often) that  is where I have contacted all of these wonderful people.

The earliest we have is my husbands Great(x9) Grandfather Thomas Wingrove 1560 to 1623 and his wife emma grove

I would say that the first couple of years are a) the slowest )b the most satisfying ( achievement wise) and after that  hard work /frustrating with lots of hard slog and a developing interest in the social history and just how these people lived out their lives

Spring

[Comosus]

I found my first couple of years the quickest... I started nearly 3 years ago and after a month or two, I'd got back to GGGG, and GGGG Grandparents.  The only limitation was that I didn't find out about the IGI until later, and not all the censuses were available.  Ancestry had the 1901, 1891 and 1881 but no 1871 for Yorkshire, although they had Warwickshire so I could do some of my tree at that point.  Now things are going quite slowly - pretty much every line that I'm stuck on, I'm stuck on for a reason and perhaps need to go and look at actual parish registers to get further back.

The internet just makes it far easier to do research - you don't have to commit a certain date to go and do something as you can do it whenever you like.  It makes it very difficult to do research when you need to go to a different place to research different branches, and you often need more than a day to get everything done.  Parish records are lacking online - I really hope someone (probably Ancestry) will transcribe them.  The IGI has its limitations: Marriages state if they are widowed or not, and who can write, and this information is omitted.  In the case of widowers, it's key information to get further back.  Deaths before 1837 are quite sparse, as they're not on the IGI.  The NBI is available, but the church burial records often give a cause of death, which can be very important: I found one for my GGGGGG Grandfather who apparently fell down the coal mine in 1805.  It would save a lot of hassle if some people transcribed ALL the information in parish registers - It's a lot of effort, I know, but there's no point in people constantly transcribing them and omitting information, as it just means they'll have to be transcribed all over again in the future.  FreeReg is a great idea, but people don't really have a lot of spare time on their hands.  I think it would be much better if it was lottery funded (or is it already?) so they can at least cover travelling costs for transcribers, or preferably pay them.  Anyway, sorry for going off on a tangent

Andrew