Find Ancestors

i hate that i get addicted to reading threads when they are nothing to do with me!!! Love this one!! and buying certificates to find they are the wrong person :)

My current pet hate is watching grown men sobbing on 'Who do you think you are?' because they have discovered that their widowed great-grandma was a pauper and had had her poor relief stopped when she had an illegitimate child etc etc. I wont say that I haven't shed the odd tear when I've opened the death certificates of 3 month old babies who have died with their mothers from T.B... but this current trend of prolonged sobbing on prime time T.V. seems false. Keren

Clare Thats another one. Older relatives saying 'Oh I already knew that'. When you have already asked them and they knew nothing and then spent loads of cash to find out. Another one is: My father in law swears blind that his gran was 93 when she died. I have her birth cert, marriage cert and death cert. They all prove she was 90. He was only 13 when she died and his own father was the informant, but she 'definately died when she was 93' Grrrrrrrrrrrr Margaret

I can relate to that, Margaret. Mum had died before I started 'doing' her family and my aunts and uncle said they didn't really know anything. One aunt wrote down all that she could remember (she said) so it gave me some areas of Wales to look in. She said some branches came from Somerset and Bristol, originally. A lot of what she wrote was close enough to put me on the trail but she said she knew 'nothing' about one particular name. I trawled back through census a film at a time until I got a birthplace in Somerset. Years later I found the family in Over Stowey where they were not very well thought of by the vicar who mentioned them in his diaries. Following the female line I found a first cousin of my ancestor was hanged for murder. It was quite a famous case in its time (1789) so I was able to collect quite a lot of information. I decided not to mention it to my elderly aunts unless they asked how I was getting on. A year ago we were visiting my only remaining aunt and she asked if I was still researching the family. I said I was and she replied, 'My Uncle Tom was doing that for years but he stopped when he found the murderer and burnt all the papers.' I counted to 10 and asked why she hadn't mentioned it before, or why her sister hadn't when she wrote about the family and she said they thought I wouldn't want to know about that, it wasn't very nice. Further questioning proved she knew where he lived and around what time he was hanged. Gwynne

Sorry for the pun Gwynne but I bet you could have mudered your Auntie!!!! sorry but I know how you feel. I sent my Uncle loads of info on the family and he said nothing there I did not know and I could have told you. I felt like mudering him that day after the cost of about £70 on certificates. Good Luck with your research. Irene

Hate the fact that when i read the boards i feel like a peeping tom, and should not be listening to other peoples convocation's But cant stop myself

Thats fine- you have a good old nose. You never know what you might find out. Regards Irene