Genealogy

[morqthana]

Anybody here into it?

 

[Mottie]

There’s more than a few on this forum that have the exact same genes. Amazing coincidence!

On a serious note, I’m not but my mum was. She passed away last year and has a whole drawer full of notes and stuff about relatives of ours that we have all over the world. It’s one of the things my sister and I have not disposed of but it’s going to be saved in case our children or grandchildren ever want to take it up.

 

[blup]

The best starting point is family knowledge. Plus there is always (usually) someone in the extended family who has done a lot of research. I got back to Oliver Cromwell that way but bear in mind there are dozens of potential lines when you are that far back.

 

[Justin Passing]

My late wife was. Qualified in everything going, ran conferences on DNA in genealogy, etc.
She had thousands of books I'll now be pitching into a skip.
Hundreds of detailed old maps, too.
She paid to have her tree drawn out on vellum by a calligrapher.
Then a few years later worked out that one of the ancestors wasn't married. Ooops.
He family feigns interest untill I tell them to come and get the big vellum tree.

I can't see the point - I mean they're all dead... Now she is too and nobody cares a jot about her ancestors.

 

[Koolpc]

I traced mine all the way back to Noah. 2 of my relatives were on the Ark.

 

[morqthana]

OK - bit of background.

I'm not looking to get into genealogy [ASIDE] why isn't it geneology? [/ASIDE], or research my family tree or anything.

My brother-in-law has just become a great-uncle, and my sister a great-aunt, because one of his brothers has become a grandfather.

I'm curious to know what relation this new person is to my son. Clearly no blood tie, but there's kinship of some sort, and I wondered what it was - some sort of x'th cousin y'th removed, I guess.

I was just looking to find someone who understands how these things work, or could point me at a website where I could define a chunk of family tree and have it tell me what the relationship is.

 

[pete01]

Is that right?

 

[Justin Passing]

or could point me at a website where I could define a chunk of family tree and have it tell me what the relationship is.

just google it

 

[ericmark]

My wife has researched my family tree, GENCOM from the Mormons is good, but the program we used would not work with latter versions of windows, and so we only have paper records now, we had a good start, we were given a tree done in around 1950 my cousins were on it but not me, so we were just adding to an existing tree.

Working out how people lived is interesting, the census tells you if farmer etc. And graveyards can help, beloved son of etc. But once you hit someone famous, then it expands, as there are a lot more records.

So once we got back to Sir Charles Mark Palmer the first baron who built the ship yard in Jarrow, and was considered a major cause of the Jarrow marches, although in real terms the ship yard by then was owned by the goverment, so little he could have done about it. But it was his brother George we are desended from, so baronetship will never come my way. However I live in mid Wales, and the records are in the North East, and London with even some members in New Zealand so to trace it becomes harder and harder, also the Holts with Liverpool blue funnel line, and main man there died I think in Bala mid Wales, and when one reads about ones ancestors one begins to wonder what when on, my great great granddad a Morgan came it seems from South Wales and took himself a wife as he made his way upto North Wales from the Midlands, seems a bit odd, and one wonders how he came to meet her.

And as to living relitives, we found an Owen we were related to, and when we went to visit he called himself Owens, so we quired the added S and it seems his birth certificate said Owen and his marrage certificate said Owens, his wife asked are we really married then?

Cousins marrying can cause one to run around in circles, thinking you have made an error.

But the Welsh did not have Sir names, it was simply son of or app, Scotish Mac, so the big question, where did the Jones come from? So many in Wales, but no J in the Welsh language, so did they all work for an Englishman called John?

 

[morqthana]

According to Wikipedia, when English was made the official language of Wales in the C16, ap Dafydd, ap Gwilym, and ap Siôn were anglicized as Davies, Williams, and Jones.

 

[Odds]

My late wife was. Qualified in everything going, ran conferences on DNA in genealogy, etc.
She had thousands of books I'll now be pitching into a skip.
Hundreds of detailed old maps, too.
She paid to have her tree drawn out on vellum by a calligrapher.
Then a few years later worked out that one of the ancestors wasn't married. Ooops.
He family feigns interest untill I tell them to come and get the big vellum tree.

I can't see the point - I mean they're all dead... Now she is too and nobody cares a jot about her ancestors.

you can store your records online @MyHeritage.com or keep the vellum at your local historical society, regional library, or even a university collection if that important, it is. Somebody, somewhere in some time in the future may care to know, not necessarily from your immediate family, since these records are cross referenced for folk you've never heard of.

 

[Justin Passing]

She lodged the trees she was working on, several places, so people could find suspected links. Her dna too. Her sister (estranged from me for being a grasping cow) took the stuff I found with their family name on, while asking about her Will.

 

[morqthana]

She had thousands of books I'll now be pitching into a skip.
Hundreds of detailed old maps, too.

I hope you didn't - there might have been people who would have liked at least some of them

u3a - Genealogy

u3a is a UK-wide movement of locally-run groups providing a wide range of opportunities to come together to learn for fun exploring new ideas skills & interests

www.u3a.org.uk

 

[blup]

There is always someone local who will carry out family research for you (at a cost). The internet and subscription services can help a lot but local knowledge and experience can often cut corners or unblock dead ends.