Stuff I Love meme - Day 7

[dimity_blue]

Day 8: Tracing my family tree.

It's puzzling, confusing, frustratng, and addictive. The sense of achievement when you finally find a relative's birthdate or figure out another maiden name is immense.

I find myself getting very fond of my relatives and talking to them through the computer. It also extra nice that I've managed to copy a number of relatives' pictures. When my mum's parents moved back from Germany* the container which had all their photos in was dropped into the sea, so we don't have many pictures from before the early 60s.

*My Grandad worked as a civilian in the RAF after the war and he was posted to Germany. His wife and kids went with him. My mum said it was amazing. They had an indoor toilet at home.

Comments

[corvidology]

It is fascinating to learn more about the people you came from.

[swordznsorcery]

Oh the joys of pre-60s Britain, where indoor toilets were exotic delights. :D I certainly don't fancy an outdoor one in the winter. They lingered for so long though, especially in council housing!

And I agree, family history research is wonderfully absorbing. I also find it a great way to relax if I've been having a busy time. It can be terribly frustrating at times, with all those birth, marriage, and death records to hunt through. All those names. And then suddenly some thing crystallises! All that we knew about my maternal grandmother's father was a name, and possible date of birth. She never knew him. Tracing him through the records at times seemed like an impossible task, but I caught the little blighter eventually. I've become very fond of the ancestors in that branch of the family now, up to and including all the horribly high number of dead kids. I wish I knew what they looked like though!

[thisbluespirit]

t's puzzling, confusing, frustratng, and addictive. The sense of achievement when you finally find a relative's birthdate or figure out another maiden name is immense.

It is indeed! I'm so glad you're enjoying it.

That is very sad about your family photos, though.

[dimity_blue]

It really is!

[dimity_blue]

I love it when you get a domino effect - like you discover one or two names and suddenly identify a census entry with half a dozen unknown siblings. Like looking for 1 relative and 7 come along at once.

[dimity_blue]

It really does suck about the photos. We've got a few odd ones here and there.

Thanks! I really am!

[swordznsorcery]

The domino effect is a glorious thing. Like with my aforementioned great-grandfather. We'd been told that his surname was Maughan, but what none of us knew was that his family were (clearly illiterate) Irish migrant workers, who had followed jobs to Glasgow, and various places in the north of England. All those different accents, and them not able to write their own name! Maughan wasn't the name on his birth certificate. I found a census return that made me wonder, and with a lot of cross-checking and back-tracking, suddenly - snap! There he was, with eight siblings. I've since been able to trace him back to his great-grandparents on one side, and grandparents on the other. That's mostly due to one set of grandparents being thoughtful enough to have died in Glasgow, where death records are startlingly detailed. Irish records are frequently poor to non-existent, sadly.