Genealogy Chat

I guess you've all said it time and again, we must record what we can find for the future generations. Anyone who starts from scratch in say 2020 will have an enormous problem without our generation to ask and the last available census the 1911. Its that 100 years gap thats so hard to bridge.
I have been amazed by friends and family members who just say "so what, I don't care" we are on this earth for a very short span and yet our influence may be felt for many years, they should know where the knowledge came from.
There are some wonderful surprises out there, you never know what tomorrow will bring.
Forward the old fogeys !
Stan

when i started my tree 3 years ago, the first thing i did was write down what i and my husband could remember about our families. i got back to my great grandfather, my husband to his grandfather...just 6 a4 pages .( not much but better than nothing)...i used to beg my parents to write down what they could remember , but they never did, so a lot has been lost. a great shame.

One of the best threads that I have read recently on GR.

Like David, I didn't know my paternal grandparents, so I had to send away for my late parents marriage cert to give me a starting point in my research. I only discovered this year that my father had a brother which I never knew about !

I have made backups of my tree and my eldest son also keeps a copy on his computor. Someday, when time permits, I will try to write something of my life for future generations

About 5 years ago, my cousin sent me the first 10 pages of his life story.

He lived for the first 25 years of his life nextdoor to nan and granddad, so he knew more stories than I did.

Some 18 months later he sent me a copy of the completed life story. This included family photo`s that I had never seen. It ran to some 200 pages that he had printed and it was kept together with one of those spring plastic coils.

Only 5 were printed and and I was greatly moved that he had sent me a copy. This was "his" story, but my father and some of the antics he used to get up to were described. This document had to be protected in a more substantial way, so I have had it leather bound and gold tooled. It was quite expensive to have bound but worth every penny. I am now trying to have my memories recorded in a similar way. I have only got to page 20 at the moment, but I found that if I sat at the computer for too long I got memory block.

I suppose in a way it is trying to make myself immortal as I do not want to be just a name to my descendants.

I haven't written anything down myself but my great aunt (who is 89 in february) recently sent me a few pages of writing on her childhood. it was such good reading and i am begging her to write more down as she stopped on the 5th page!

I think you're right Mike i know i certainly wouldn't want to end up as just a name on a tree.

good luck all.
Leanne.

Hello again friends

It looks as if we have become the story tellers of our generation!
Good luck to you all.

Mike

The other thing I did was to note down the names of godparents in christening records (and witnesses in marriage records) - my 4xgreat grandad (as the eldest son in his family) turned out to have been godfather to a large number of his nephews and nieces, so I've included that in his notes because I'm guessing that he must have either had a bit of authority in the family (being the eldest) or he had become a sort of "head of the family" figure.

It just adds something to fill in the 10 year gaps between census records (for those distant ancestors, anyway).

I have been doing the same for my family.
I was brought up in a childrens home, foster home and lived finally with my Mum when I was 14.
You didnt ask questions in those days and if you did , I doubt if you would get the whole truth.
Now the true circumstances are emerging.
With the fact, not many people have their children christened any more and dont get married, its important that details are written down.
My mother when she was cremated didnt want to go in a churchyard, she wanted her ashes thrown out to sea. So thats what I did, I at the time couldnt afford a memorial of any kind.
So I have mentioned it in my "book"
My two children have not been christened , personal choice. they could decide what religion thay wished to follow later on in life..
Unfortunately my youngest son has a very dysfunctional family, he has half siblings all over the place born from Essex to Pontefract and a gap of nearly 35 years from the eldest to the youngest, and you wouldnt connect the 4 wives, you would have to know the history.
With the family set up's today, I think its even more important to know what your family background is.
I tell my children what I have found, but they are at an age where it goes in one ear and out the other.
But I know they do take some things in, as they will question me about a friend who has the surname of one of my familes and ask if we may be related!.
I dont have a huge family tree, but I am concentrating on how the families lived, what they went through.
I have discovered on my gypsy side that a few of the families have come from a seedier area of Kensington that was known as Notting Dale (Notting hill gate today) also known as the Potteries and the Piggories, and from what I have googled its surprising I have any relatives at all.
The average childs life span in this area and at that time was 11 yrs 3 months.It was the worse area in the whole of London.
Conditions wee horrendous.
How many of you had a tin bath hanging up in the Scullery? Pulled it out on a friday?
Crumpets and thick sliced unevenly cut toast cooked on a coal fire with a old fashioned toasting fork?
The generation today wouldnt have a clue, and with the price of electric our electronic age could steadily come to a halt and a lot of people will have to learn how things were done in the "old" days.

Oh how right you are David!

In 1972ish my uncle gave me a rough copy of my family tree.
Being young - I put it to one side and 'forgot' about it!

In 2005 I became a grandmother - and suddenly it all became important!

My uncle and all that generation are now gone - but thankfully I kept the piece of paper with the tree on!

It has proved to be a fantastic starting point and I've gone back many more generations.

Visiting the places they lived & worked - an amazing journey.

So - even if your children aren't interested now -
they will be one day!

Perhaps one day I'll get around to writing a book too!

Best wishes everyone
Christine

Asking parents and grandparents about their parents,grandparents would have prevented the brick walls we all seem to encounter and cant be solved.

For instance grandmother on the 1891 census as nursechild and in 1901 is a lodger with the same family.

Her birth cert has her parents married but no sign of marriage or them on any census. Or deaths either in the correct area

I've started to do that, too. I note down things that are on certificates and things (not BMDs, ones for ballet and swimming etc) and keep them on my family tree programme.

I've also got a word processing file where I write down bits of memories as they come back to me - hopefully one day it'll work its way into some kind of chronological order but for now I write down little things like memories from school, or holidays, or stories my parents have told me about my relatives.

I'm leaving the organising for later but it's handy to note things down as I remember. (Don't think it'd make 180 pages yet, though!)

HI MIKE

I myself have writen everything done as i have been researching for over 5 years
my family is large and hard to research as my mothers maiden name and my fathers last name are one in the same WOOD although 2 different lines from different parts of england therefore i not only have to find the relative i have to work out which side it belongs to.
I am in my 40s and i have a large family and only realized when my daughter came home from her first week at high school and told me she had to do a family tree for school so i sat and wrote down all i knew after asking grandparents who i thank were alive at the time and she wrote out the family tree in tree form like on genes and she won 3 gold stars as all the other kids only put parents and grandparents no siblings or anything my daughters tree had over 300 relatives on so i agree if you can get info off relatives do so now as if you dont you will say if only i had asked when they were alive
keep up the good work and i hope your grandchildren carry it on for you for there grandchildren

kind regards paula

Mike,

I think that this is a lovely idea. I am 30 years old and trying to piece everything together and it has been along road (and still is).
Something ready made will be good for the grandchildren and one day I hope this is what I will have.
Recently I have been given a family bible over 150 years old and it had not been loved which is really sad. But for future generations I am having it restored.
Good Luck and I dont think more information is too much it will give them a better idea about who they are.
Caroline

How many of us have wished we had asked our parents/grandparents about their life and times.Like deciding to back up your files the day after your computer fries it is generally too late.
Becoming a grandad about the same time I started digging into family history started me thinking.The thinking led me to jot down my 60 odd years of memories of my life,childhood,schooldays,courtship, jobs,marriage, family etc etc.My daughter knocked it into shape and put it on disc for me and suggested I print it privately.This I did and had ten copies done of what turned into an A5 book of 180 plus pages!.
Now I hope they will survive for my grandsons to perhaps read one day and get some idea of my life in the last bit of the twentieth century and realise I was not always old!
My family history is being written a bit at a time now and I add bits of new info as it surfaces.Just to encourage myself I print off pages now and again and put them in a binder to look at as the printed word.
The tricky bit will be trying to decide when to call a halt to research and get it into print for the descendants!

Mike S