My wife and I decided it was time to delve into our family trees to see what we could find out about our ancestors. This hobby is perfect for rainy days sat with your laptop and starting with what you know right now. We subscribed to Ancestry.co.uk with the basic subscription. My own family had been researched quite thoroughly by my sister, with help from my brother and father, back when there was nothing online, in the 1980-90’s. It meant lots of travelling and letter writing. It was my wife who knew almost nothing about her family, and she had left it a bit late to ask her parents and relatives.
The big problem she had was her family surname, Hill. It might as well have been Smith! On top of that it was common practice to use the same Christian names on the male side. Too many were called Edward with no middle name. So, we were forced to use dates, but that can become quite confusing.
As one started to put names into the program, hints started to show, brought up by what the program possibly already knew of these people from other relations that had already delved into their own family tree, close or possibly distant relatives of my wife. These names started to jog my wife’s memory of hearing of those relatives when she was young. More investigating brought up locations that she could relate to. Again, it was not helped by the fact that her family did not move from South London or even Lewisham. It was quite easy to go down blind alleys or down the wrong branch of someone else’s tree. So, we had to keep double-checking, or using ‘Maybe’ when asked to confirm the record. The program then kept that record in the background.
Other people’s family trees with similar names and relationships would appear. These, one could open up and see what they had put in their tree. The program allows one to compare trees and then use or discard them as one’s knowledge grew. The more connections one makes on one’s tree, the more hints are created by the program. Slowly but surely, the tree grows and the further back one gets into finding one’s ancestors.
Censuses are a great way of finding out who lived with who and where and what they did to earn money. Ancestry does bring up a choice based on the names in your tree, so you have to be careful not to pick on the wrong ones. As you agree to records, so the tree is filled in by the program for you. You can discover birth and death dates, where they are buried, which is more common as you go further back. You may find out what they did in the wars, although this is proving very tricky with such common names in my wife’s family.
Last Christmas (2023) I gave my wife a DNA test with Ancestry which was easy to do and took about six weeks to come back with results. Ancestry then opens up another section of their program with all the details of what it found for us to investigate. It creates ‘Thrulines’ which are coloured green, and these could be potential cousins or other relatives. We are new to this so are still finding out what it has discovered. We have got back to my wife’s second great-grandparents so far, with potential third great-grandparents to investigate. The program shows a map of the world showing where the family has gone to; amusingly it shows them absolutely fixed to South London!
It never ceases to amaze us how many children people had back in the 1800’s. In both our families there are strings of ten children. It makes one wonder how they could afford to do that. Very few lived short lives, but many living ‘three score plus ten’ or longer.
With my own family tree, I am back to my fifth great-grandparents in the early 1700’s. But our family name is so rare it makes it much easier to be sure of the records one is investigating. Our family moved around the world and the basic subscription does not enable one to look at those foreign records without getting the full subscription. This opens up everything Ancestry has to offer, which is very interesting. I have found that my favourite aunt and uncle went to the USA, Ceylon and to Australia. One can find the manifests for the ships they sailed on in 1934, going out and coming back. They are all gone now, but as a child one does not think of asking them, even though I vaguely remember them saying something about going abroad. And as for what they did in the wars seems to have been an unmentionable back then.
We decided to join the Family History Interest Group in our u3a to see how others got on with overcoming their obstacles along the way. It is fascinating what others find in their family history, which spurs you on to continue searching your own ancestors.
I hope this gives you an idea of the fun and frustration of delving into one’s ancestors. Dig out your old family photo albums and start working out who is who and what they did. Write names on the back of photos so your future relatives know who are in the photos. You never know what you might dig up. Happy hunting!
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