Genealogy Chat

Just make sure you get an invite to every family funeral......and dont forget to take a pen n paper! Gerri ;-)

I've heard quite a few tales of old dragons!

I managed to find some extra bits about my wife's family. Went to interrogate m-in-law (aged 95) who then filled in all sorts of blanks including 'they died in WW1', and 'she was an old dragon'. As a result her side of the tree has blossomed from a short thin twig into a reasonably rounded branch. Spent Sunday afternoon adding names to old photos.

I left asking for info until it was almost too late. But it is strange how family 'stories' tend to have the stuffing knocked out of them when you start on this hobby. So the story goes......G.Granddad was a 'rich' Russian/Danish guy who left home after a row with his dad. He ended up in Dundalk, Ireland and married. She had.... a I am whispering now as it was kept quite by the family.....an illigitimate, black baby, shhhhhhhh. But G Granddad accepted it as his own. WELL, that turned out to be aload of bunkum, he was a German who married a girl from the London slums, we are talking about 1860 when the East End of London was an awfull place to live. I am sure the 'story' told round the fire during the early 1900s and into the 1950s took the place of any TV Whodunit. Kathlyn

I've had the same result Michael, had some gems of information from an elderly uncle that I wasn't expecting. A tip for you. Open the box to post your main message, write the tip, highlight and copy, delete it. Write 'see below'....post Click reply, paste and post again......hey presto, nobody holding their breath for your post.

I agree Michael (I'm breathing OK now!) - the number of time my rels have said - 'no I dont know' and then hours of expensive searching and digging later and - oh I remember them !!!!!!aaarggh! jenx

Toooooo late. I AM the oldest person in the family now!!! LOL Victoria

I agree that is so true - and you need to keep listening at all times for snippets. Something came on the television the other day about tanks in the Somme. My father casually said 'your grandpa P was on the tanks and your grandpa D mended tanks - don't think it was the same regiment though.' He then said 'of course your grandpa P had been in Ireland before that'. I hadn't even thought about either of them serving in WW1! Barbara

Michael I agree family do tent to 'remember' things when you mension something. I've been doing my tree for about 12yrs (I started young as thats more than half a life time), and my dad in perticular keeps dropping bits of info into conversations. He did it again last night when my mam and I were talking about a will and a mistake in the name of one of the son in laws. Dad suddenly piped up, 'oh that could be thaty he joined the army young and gave a faulse name' now if he'd mentioned that before I would not have repeatedly tried to find this guy on the censuses.

Bear with me, I can't type that fast. This may be old hat to a lot of you, but to those comparatively new, read on... What every book on FH research tells you is that your first port of call should be living relatives. What not all of them tell you is that it doesn't end there - they can, and probably will, provide lots more info later on. When you've found something out about their branch of the family, tell them, and often doing so will rekindle some old memories and they'll be able to tell you a lot more. I've done this with my dad, grandma and great-aunt and all of them have given me info they probably wouldn't have done without prompting, but which I wouldn't have been able to obtain from any other source.

I'm going a bit red around the gills.............

shall we hold our breath a little longer then? xx

See below...