Genealogy Chat

You will need to get a few more marriage and birth certificates to make sure you are following the right line. I would assimilate everything you already have, make sure of the info first before moving backwards. Names were never solidly the same back then. Very few people would write their names - they didnt have any form filling or anything like that so a vicar or enumerator would just guess at the spelling and this can change several times. I have the same people with three different spellings of their names in baptisms, marriage and deaths. A one letter change is nothing, believe me! If you have only just started you should be getting info coming out of your ears and you will lose the track unless you start putting this down in a methodical way. You should really get a decent family tree program and then you can see at a glance what you have are real solid facts or just airy fairy might bes. Work backwards from what you know is definite and then find the right birth certs for parents, the right marriage certs for their fathers and so on backwards otherwise all your work may be meaningless.

Thanks for those tips too! I've not confirmed everything yet, but I think I've got back as far as about 1780 on one part - in most other strands though its early 1800s. I'm surrounded by bits of scribbled on paper and need to think about organising it all before I either go mad or end up throwing it out of the window!! I'm having a slight surname fog as before marriage I was a Wigfull, yet it appears this name was a spelling mistake as most of my ancestors appear to be Wigfall, but I can't pinpoint exactley where the mix up came!

It depends on what sort of dates you are talking about. On your marriage and birth/death certs you should see the occupations of some of the people and that will give you a lead on googling to see what sort of work they did and in what conditions. Then you will also have their addresses - you could try to find these and see what sort of area they lived in and so on. You may even be lucky enough to get photos of the roads etc.

Welcome, Lynsey (to the mad house!) Oooooooooh, it's SUCH a big subject!!!..........it is much easier to find info on people in your tree once you get back to adults living before 1901. Even then so much depends on who they were, where they lived, what jobs they did, etc etc etc How far back have you reached? Merry

Thanks Claire - I will give it a shot!

HI Lynsey I'm relatively new to this as well, I have found that Googleing a surname can bring up, information for example I did this last week and have found a website from my tree, I have made contact with some rellies in Nuneaton and Nova Scotia, and found out some really interesting information about my ancestors lives. Good luck in your search. Claire

Hi! I'm a beginner at all this really and now that I've got some basic names, dobs and a few birth certificates, I've reached a crashing halt after my initial excitement at finding people! I just wondered how I can go about finding any information about the actual lives of these people rather than just having their names. I just don't know how to go about it so if anyone can give me any tips or recommend a good book or anything like that, that would be brilliant! Thanks