..plus im a tight arse, so does anyone know of any free sites where i can poke around the cheezey ancestors?
any tips on how to search would be welcome!
Cheers0!
Who'syerdaddy?
milkman.
no, really 🙂
Ask your relatives for info?
piedi di formaggio - Member
Ask your relatives for info?
Was that an offer, oh fromage footed one?
are you my family from italy formaggi?
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Take full advantage of the 14 day free trials at ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk.
It's a subject that can grip you. I've gone from wondering who someone was in a photo my mum had for years to, today, finding his grave and giving the headstone a clean up. It can lead to lots of happy surprises as well as very sad ones. Concentrate on one area with a particular interest or you'll end up with just names and dates. I concentrated on a part of my family that had several people active in WW1.
The British Newspaper Archive is great for finding personal snippets of info.
Talk to your relatives. The websites won't tell you the stories or get the old photos out.
thanks guys,
i can find lots of surnames which match potential relatives in the right locale, but it would be good to have a handle on WHO and WHAT they were/did.
I spoken to my mum etc, but that will only take me so far.
Any websites better than others? I'd pay money to the right one, but i dont want to pay out just to turn up a load of crap (i.e scammers, con artists).
If your in Scotland then "Scolands People" is the site to use,sorry if thats no use
I spoken to my mum etc, but that will only take me so far.
try looking sideways across you family, rather than up the family tree - your/her cousins. Theres a good chance someone will have already done the family tree thing and a large swathe of it will be shared with yours. And you'll only find the sort of anecdotes that make it interesting that way.
When my dad did his family tree stuff he did from a start point of not having had a good relationship with his own dad so he lacked a direct oral history with his ancestors, but he discovered a cousin who had done brilliant family tree work, not only the lists and dates but also the stories relating to people and an understanding of the place and the times that they lived in, including finding a couple of memoirs written by people further up the tree.
Getting that sense of person and place is fascinating - I've visited the gap site where by grandad accidentally burnt down the village chipshop, next door is the house where his mother brought him up along with 8 brothers and sisters and 8 of her own younger brothers and sisters after her parents both died in the same week. After the chipshop burnt down she was sentenced to also cook the chipshop owner his supper every night for the rest of his life.
facinating stuff but my grandad would never have told my dad that, but there were 16 kids in that house so its part of all their families' stories
Think findmypast and ancestry are basically free to start using anyway, as is genesreunited. You only need to pay when you need to start accessing records.
Stick what you know in to them (maybe not using full/real names for living relatives) and they start giving hints. Chances are there's an overlap with a distant relative doing the same thing.
findmypast had a special offer about to expire, for free access to census returns - can learn quite a lot there.
try looking sideways across you family, rather than up the family tree - your/her cousins
I was lucky that just the inclusion of great grandparents was enough to start throwing up links to distant cousins. And of course they were stuck going down the trees of ancestral siblings.
When my dad did his family tree stuff he did from a start point of not having had a good relationship with his own dad so he lacked a direct oral history with his ancestors
same problem here, compounded by the fact that with such a common surname it's a royal PITA searching. We've got back to the 1500's c/o other people's research on my father's maternal tree, but my dad can't even help with details about his own father or grandfather.
I've visited the gap site where by grandad accidentally burnt down the village chipshop
ah remember that from the other thread. my old local chippy.
Ancestry is very clever but you do have to use some common sense and although people making their details public allows others to use their findings it also gives people access to maiden names which can then be scammed for credit cards etc.