Archive for Family History

Found my grandfathers ancestors

November 19, 2010 Family History Comments Off
wedding1

As you will know I have been researching both mine and Chris’s family trees. For the past few weeks I have been concentrating on Chris’s tree and managed to get one line of it back to 1625, but then started to struggle. So I decided to leave his for a while and go back to mine.

I have previously stopped mine as I have hit some brick walls and needed a break. Well this obviously did the trick because no sooner had I picked up the thread again I found ancestors I have previously missed. This could be for many reasons: new info is being added to research sites all the time so maybe the info is fresh or it might simply be because I am looking at it with fresh eyes again.

Grandparents wedding 1940

Anyway, I had previously been stuck on my grandfathers paternal side with his father. Because he has a fairly common first and last name it was difficult to pinpoint the correct parents for him. However I have now confirmed them and have started to track back and have found two more generations taking this line back to 1801. Still not quite as far as the line I have going back to 1725, but heading in the right direction. I will keep going and then will have to let me aunt know as she is very interested to know of her ancestors too.

I have yet to find anyone of major historical interest in either of our trees, but have found some interesting info. I find military history particularly interesting as the records reveal so much about the person. Several of our ancestors were in the military and it is fascinating to see that they served in places such as South Africa (Boar War), India and  Nova Scotia, Canada amongst others. Some of the military records even mention things like having a mole on the back of the neck, or a scar on the wrist – fascinating!

One family member has a citation in a document stating that she lost a leg as a child to fever – perhaps she had meningitis?

Overall this family tree stuff is so fascinating and I can’t see me ever tiring of investigating it.

Family tree gets larger

October 19, 2010 Family History Comments Off

As you will know from reading my blog I am researching my family tree. Well things have been going well and I have now managed to get my family back to 1717. My mothers side seems to come primarily from Northamptonshire (where I was born) with some of the linage going back to Northumberland. On my fathers side this is stuck primarily in Bermondsey, London and I can get them back to the early 1700′s too. I was starting to come to a bit of a brick wall at that point as records become less easily available. It doesn’t help being in Canada as I cannot just go to a local parish office and get the details. However Ancestry.co.uk have just launched some older parish records for London going back to 1520, so maybe I can get a bit more from them. There is definitely more detailed information about for London ancestors than elsewhere.

As far as Chris’s tree is concerned I have his back to 1795, but again have hit a bit of a wall. I have left it alone for a few weeks so will look at it with new eyes again soon. His mother’s side is again from Northamptonshire, like mine. In fact many of our ancestors seem to live in the same areas of town, so perhaps they knew each other. Both families also worked predominantly in the boot and shoe industry which is not surprising since Northampton was world renowned in this industry. Other parts of his family come from South Wales, Lancashire and Gloucestershire.

I find this research extremely interesting and therapeutic. It can be frustrating at times when the walls come up and you can see no way forward, but as more and more records come online this will hopefully get easier. I do wish I had started this whilst still in the UK as I think it would have made some parts of the research easier. More than anything I wish I had started this whilst my grandparents were still alive as they probably had so much information they could have shared.

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