Family History
I spent several hours each last Friday and Saturday at the Birmingham Central Library up on the 6th floor doing some family history research for both myself and for J.
On a side note, I am really happy with my friendship with him, he’s opened my eyes to lots of different things. Without him, I would never have explored beyond the lending library!
As it was, the people on the 6th floor were very helpful to a novice. I needed to look at info from the 1911 census and they had free access to it – for 3 more days, so my timing was perfect!
I was able to track down and save a lot of information regarding my English ancestors, and it seems that several family mysteries may have been solved.
Then, I looked for info on the family members J had in mind. He’s been working on his family tree for about 20 years and can go back to the mid-1700′s on some of the family lines. There were, however, about 1/2 a dozen ancestors who would have been alive in 1911 (he surmised) that I was able to find and confirm what they were doing at that time.
I also searched through loads of city directories going back to the 1700′s looking for some of these people, whom I felt like I was getting to know on a first name basis by the end of the second day!
It was really interesting saving and printing this info and getting it to J. He was thrilled with some of the stuff I found out…most of which confirmed things he already suspected.
Even better for me is that I have his help in interpreting some of the things I found regarding my own family, since he has many years of experience in dealing with the different information on previous censuses. So far, I’ve looked at the 1901 and 1891 censuses and I now feel like I know some of these people on a first name basis. It was also quite interesting to see some people listed as babies and young children in 1911 that I actually remember meeting when I was a teenager and they were quite elderly.
The free access that J has given me to one of his web-sites is really helpful, plus he’s giving me tips on organising the material…whether his way will be my way in the long run is not known at this time, but it is a good way for me to get started with organising it. I think I’m hooked!
