Tracking down family history.

[Zip]

Whats the easyest way to go about this?

Im finding it incredibly hard with My dads side and Ancestry.com doesnt help much at all and just keeps getting dead ends.
Or ages and ages of tracking and trawling through the names.
Its so bad at the moment that i cant find any mention of anyone that lives or are related to My dads family in the Area they live.
Ive even tryed searching a few immigration records and still find nothing.

I think i may have a Mystery family down here!

So can anyone recommend me places to look and Web sites to search?

Thanks

 

[mac1st3]

Facebook

found a number of american relatives from it

 

[Azagoth]

Saw it advertised on TV not long back, don't know how good it is or how much it costs though.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/

 

[~J~]

ancestry.co.uk is VERY good, if you're prepared to pay for it. (think it's about £6pcm but you need to pay for an entire year).

The other one (which I believe is now free) is genereunited (offshoot from friends reunited) which allows 'trees' that other users are creating to find a match with yours.

 

[Zip]

Saw it advertised on TV not long back, don't know how good it is or how much it costs though.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/

Thats the One ive been using.

Tis not getting me far

 

[iamdjdz]

I'll hand over to my dad:

Just been shown your request by my son. Need slightly more information. How far back in time have you got? Do you have documents relating to your father - or grandparents? A good way to progress is to look at Census returns. I have been doing my own tree for a while now and am back into the early 1700`s

It is not possible to track living relatives as access to them is frequently restricted due to confidentiality issues & laws.

If you want a more personal conversation about the topic please: (iamdjdz) - send an email to the one in my trust my trust with a phone number and I'll give you a ring when you're free.

Best Wishes, Charles.

 

[Zip]

I'll hand over to my dad:

Just been shown your request by my son. Need slightly more information. How far back in time have you got? Do you have documents relating to your father - or grandparents? A good way to progress is to look at Census returns. I have been doing my own tree for a while now and am back into the early 1700`s

It is not possible to track living relatives as access to them is frequently restricted due to confidentiality issues & laws.

If you want a more personal conversation about the topic please: (iamdjdz) - send an email to the one in my trust my trust with a phone number and I'll give you a ring when you're free.

Best Wishes, Charles.

Thanks Charles.

I Have access to Both sets of Grand Parents.
One Family was not too hard at all and most the leg work has been done apart from one little missing link.

But My other one is not going anywhere, Which is my dads side. Although they are still alive i dont get to see them to often at all,(Every couple of years)
Ill have to send an email when i have just that little bit more time. A phone call could be quite expensive due to being in Australia

Thanks for the offer

 

[mac1st3]

One Family was not too hard at all and most the leg work has been done apart from one little missing link.

Darwin's missing link? sorry, couldn't resist, glad you're making progress on this though

 

[iamdjdz]

Thanks Charles.

I Have access to Both sets of Grand Parents.
One Family was not too hard at all and most the leg work has been done apart from one little missing link.

But My other one is not going anywhere, Which is my dads side. Although they are still alive i dont get to see them to often at all,(Every couple of years)
Ill have to send an email when i have just that little bit more time. A phone call could be quite expensive due to being in Australia

Thanks for the offer

Dad's gone out for a bit but I'll show him this thread again later as he's been very interested in family history for a long time, and probably would be able to help. I forgot you were in Australia but I'm sure that wouldn't be the end of the owrld to make a call some time - If not emails will be fine, although I'm pretty sure some of the methods will be different, we have family in Australia so he can probably help you.

 

[Vixen]

As has been said, you won't get information on anyone living through sites such as ancestry. There's something like a 75 year wait before you can view birth/marriage/death records online. I don't know how the system works in Australia, but you can view the physical records in the Scotland in register house without the same delay. You'd still need to know names and dates though, otherwise you're looking at a very long search.

I'm a little confused by your posts, are you looking to go backwards or forwards with your family tree?

 

[Zip]

As has been said, you won't get information on anyone living through sites such as ancestry. There's something like a 75 year wait before you can view birth/marriage/death records online. I don't know how the system works in Australia, but you can view the physical records in the Scotland in register house without the same delay. You'd still need to know names and dates though, otherwise you're looking at a very long search.

I'm a little confused by your posts, are you looking to go backwards or forwards with your family tree?

I have been trying both.

I try to go backwards until find a dead ends,

So then i go and try go forwards, which takes longer but this way can find some missing links, Then once ive found the right person/family line i go backwards again

 

[secretspy]

I've used genes reunited previously and someone spotted a few relatives on my tree who were also on theirs so a lot of the info I now have is from them.

The website also send emails saying "so and so also has this person on their tree, are they related" etc.

I was also able to download a certificate thing (i cant think of the actual name) that showed a list of names including my great grandparents when they worked as handyman/cleaner at a house. Think I had to pay a small fee but once I downloaded it I could save it.

I've also bought a book (as it was going cheap!) on how to search your family tree online

It's called @ home with your ancestors.com. Book says it's £12.99

It contains a lot of different contacts in the back and just having a flick through it looks like it uses ancestry.co.uk but mentions other sites such as www.findmypast.com

 

[Greenlizard0]

I'd love to be able to do this, but I know I can't. None of my grand parents had proper birth certificates, so it pretty much ends with the constantly evolving stories from both of my parents. :/

 

[Energize]

Unfortunately because of the retarded census system along with the governments incompetence which resulted in the 1931 census being burnt in a fire it's a little difficult to find anyone with those websites.

 

[NickK]

My parents have been doing this. They're back into the 1800s directly through the National Archives, military archives etc. The problem is that the information available from this stops and you will have to travel to find the individuals as they're held in church records and on gravestones. The worst dead end my parents have seen is a marriage where the name is marked with an X and the maiden name isn't recorded.

My dad has traced back and has found a rare photo of his granddad's unit pulling a horse drawn gun before WW1. Having ancestry in the military makes it easier to trace and that means it's easy to state that I'm not related to Lord "Your country needs you" Kitchener.

My mum's side has three pub land lords (pubs still standing today!), church people, brewing, lawyers, farm labourers etc.

 

[Dup]

My ancestry is some French convicts getting sent to Australia. People become confused when they get a stupid northerner with a 10 character french surname answer the phone.

A distant family has almost spent their middle aged life looking up our ancestry and the surname is very distinct. It really is hard work and taked dedecation and is why people do it for a living.