Family History Revisited
Last week when J stopped by, he was supposed to be bringing me his family history information so I could use it as a guide to setting mine up…but he forgot.
Instead, he suggested that I use the access to Ancestry web-site to start on my family tree. Wow! That was nice of him, and I didn’t realise you could put more than one on there. But, of course, it is unlimited. He could split his own family tree up into any number of them if he’d like. Plus, he’s given two other friends access, so with mine on their, he now has 4 family trees on his web-site.
He sat me down and walked me through the process so I could quickly understand that the site also gives hints and tips regarding any family member I might add. For example, for one of the sets of English great-grandparents, it gave me a tip that these people appear in someone else’s family tree. I recognised the name on that family tree, a distant cousin of my mother’s, and even found photos of my great-grandparents. Pretty cool!
J also walked me through a number of military records, since I can’t find this particular great-grandfather in the 1901 census. Therefore, it can be surmised that he wasn’t in England at the time of the census. He could have been in Scotland or Wales for some reason, but he could also have been in the military and in South Africa (the Boer War). We didn’t find records for that war and I have no clue if he was even in the military. As J said, it’s not at all important when it comes to tracing the family back, but it is interesting to try to find out why he wasn’t in that census, or if there may have been a mistake in his name.
Ultimately, I’ll be able to get back probably just one more generation and then I’ll need to try to come up with birth or marriage certificates to help me get back further. That costs money, so I won’t be able to do that at this time, but I’ll try to do what I can.
I also added some information to the tree for my dad’s side of the family. I’m mostly interested in my mom’s side at this point, since there is a family tree in the family already that covers my dad’s side from the time they arrived from German, but it’s still interesting to add the information I know. J got really excited by my dad’s information when the system threw up a hint regarding dad and the military. As I explained to J, my dad was in the Army in the ’50′s and stationed in England, where he met my mom…nothing more exciting than that. J tried to check out the hint, though, and realised he’s not paying for the international version, so can’t get any information regarding people outside the UK. He’s thinking of adding to his subscription, though, just because he’s curious.
This is an interesting, time-consuming and even frustrating project, but overall, I think it will be rewarding.
13/10/2011 at 8:57 pm
someone introduced me to that site as well as the Mormon site that has a huge geneology system in there. I will send you that link elsewhere.. I haven’t been as successful as you have..maybe I don’t know the tricks but it is indeed very cool. Surprising how many people have similar names that have nothing to do with my family! :0)