Genealogy Chat

(see below)

As I've now managed to get several branches of my tree back into the 'pre-1837 dark ages' I'd be interested in any hints, tips and advice other people have on researching back into the 18th century - particularly when parish records don't throw up the answer. I'm getting into the swing (whenever I can get PR films delivered to my LDS centre) of finding the baptism, working back from that date to find the parent's wedding, then working back from the 16-yrs previous point to find their subsequent baptisms etc. But, where do you go next if the record you want isn't in the register, if your relative wasn't baptised, or was non-conformist, or if you don't know where they were born etc ? These are just some possible areas for peoples' advice - other members might have other areas of difficulty - do feel free to add them. I realise that once you get beyond 1837 it becomes a bit of a treasure hunt, but it would be useful to know what some of the places on the treasure map are. Cheers Simon

Simon - the few references I have to relatives pre-1800 are all from IGI or transcriptions of parish records. I attended a talk recently which said that most people [though there are a lot of exceptions] travelled a maximum of 10 miles from the parish they were born in, so a good idea if they aren't in a parish is to move out in a radius taking in other parishes till you find them, not forgetting they may have moved into another county and therefore another record office. This isn't much use if like me your rellies have names like John Matthews or William Williams and all the women are Mary, Ann or Eliza! Then it's more needles and haystacks!

Sometimes the BT's exist where parish registers have disappeared. However this usually means a trip to the actual archive office.