Genealogy Chat

familysearch.org is free and has 150million plus parish records of birth/christening marr. and death. I've used that to get back to the 1700s. In many cases it states parents name on christenings so helping you go back a generation (especially if the name isn't common!). If you're lucky you'll find an ancestral file where somebodys built a virtual tree - and in one case i got back to the 1600s. Also google 'one world tree'. ancestry.co.uk (£70 a year) has them and for one branch i added 50+ people that go back as far as the mid 1500s!!! ps. Add everyone you can and their birth town to aid other genesreunited people in searching - in many cases somebody's researched some of your tree for you.

Hm! And checked it all out, I hope, with original Parish Records at CRO's. I have done all my own research back to 1598 at CRO's and found not just trees, but so many interesting old docs on the way, from 1699 Marriage Licences to Bailiffs Documents and Settlement Certs, Gamekeepers Certs and Grooms attached to the big Manor Houses as well as Manorial Docs, Poachers and Convicts, 1655 Commonwealth Marriage which was beatifully written into an old 1538 Parchment Book, Hearth Taxes, Window Taxes, Court Rolls and so many other interesting things, much more interesting to me than a long list of names that somebody else has already found, half of which will probably be incorrect and barking up someone else's tree. Janet

Another thing to bear in mind is that the information on the IGI is not 100% correct - some entries have been tallied up to the wrong person, baptism years guessed at, incorrect spellings etc. It is also incomplete. So you may think a certain baptism or marriage entry doesn't exist, when in fact it does. It's good to use as a starting point (and we're all very grateful that the LDS have allowed us access to this website) but it's always wise to double-check the info wherever possible. I also echo the comments above - much more interesting getting stuck into all those old documents and registers and discovering things for yourself and building up a bigger picture of your ancestors than just names and dates (although names and dates do help and we'd be lost without them LOL).

(GROAN) I have just answered YET ANOTHER hot match query, for the same ancestor, the sibling of my ancestor, born in 1700. Nine people on this Site claim to be descended from this sibling. Eight of them have taken the information from another member. Had any of those nine members even taken a glance at the Parish Register, rather than stupid One World Trees, they would immediately have seen what I saw years ago - this sibling died aged 4!!!! I don't know who they are descended from - but it certainly ain't her. And, curiously, none of them can come up with a marriage date for her, although they all know WHO she married - they got it from another member on here! Don't waste your time trying to make someone else's research fit - get down the Records Office and do your own. OC

One line of my family came from Cartmel (Cumbria, but at that time in Lancashire). I bought a set of transcribed parish registers from the Lancashire Parish Registers Society. I've just had an afternoon at a microfiche viewer in the library looking at parish baptisms, marriages and deaths. Guess what, half the folk that I've had 'donated' to me by reliable sources couldn't be found, though I have been able to confirm/correct about 10 events so far. J