You know you're addicted to Genealogy when ....

[coombs]

Join a local history group on Facebook for an area where your ancestors lived, and point out "Possible distant relative" to members on there or photos of former villagers/residents of the town or city suburb with a surname in your tree, it is like you almost hijack the FB group into a genealogy group instead of local history.   

[Llwyd]

A topic runs as long as this one has. It has breaks lasting several years but keeps popping up!. However, sad that several Rootschatters who have used this thread are no longer with us.
 

[coombs]

I think we have to accept that with the direct line, we likely cannot get back any further than what we have got if the line dries out in the mid 1700s. Some lines you can get back to Robert the Bruce and others you can only get back to the early 1800s. For example if you ancestor was a fisherman called James Hamilton who settled in Clacton in Essex in the mid 1700s and he happened to be originally from Kings Lynn in Norfolk, but never came under the poor law or had an apprenticeship or his immediate family never left wills, especially his parents and aunts and uncles, then how would his descendants researching him in 2024 know he was from Norfolk originally? And he named his children common names such as John and Mary and Thomas, and no Theophilius or Erasmus Hamilton etc. 

Maybe it is time to focus on the ancestors you have found, or even go sideways for a change, go far and wide.

[aghadowey]

I think we have to accept that with the direct line, we likely cannot get back any further than what we have got if the line dries out in the mid 1700s. Some lines you can get back to Robert the Bruce and others you can only get back to the early 1800s. For example if you ancestor was a fisherman called James Hamilton who settled in Clacton in Essex in the mid 1700s and he happened to be originally from Kings Lynn in Norfolk, but never came under the poor law or had an apprenticeship or his immediate family never left wills, especially his parents and aunts and uncles, then how would his descendants researching him in 2024 know he was from Norfolk originally? And he named his children common names such as John and Mary and Thomas, and no Theophilius or Erasmus Hamilton etc. 

Maybe it is time to focus on the ancestors you have found, or even go sideways for a change, go far and wide.

Did you mean to post this reply on another thread?

[coombs]

I think we have to accept that with the direct line, we likely cannot get back any further than what we have got if the line dries out in the mid 1700s. Some lines you can get back to Robert the Bruce and others you can only get back to the early 1800s. For example if you ancestor was a fisherman called James Hamilton who settled in Clacton in Essex in the mid 1700s and he happened to be originally from Kings Lynn in Norfolk, but never came under the poor law or had an apprenticeship or his immediate family never left wills, especially his parents and aunts and uncles, then how would his descendants researching him in 2024 know he was from Norfolk originally? And he named his children common names such as John and Mary and Thomas, and no Theophilius or Erasmus Hamilton etc. 

Maybe it is time to focus on the ancestors you have found, or even go sideways for a change, go far and wide.

Did you mean to post this reply on another thread?

No I meant this thread. It relates to genealogy addictions.