Hi Guys

Just starting to do my family tree.

I have gone back as far as my great great granmother.  I have names and ages etc from the 1901 census but feel i need a hellping hand and pointed in the right direction.  Has anyone doine this before.  Is it possible just to contact the local registery office and give them names and approx year of birth and ask them for copy birth certs/marrage certs etc or would that be too easy :-) Can anyone point me in the right direction this is getting too addictive now lol

Hi
I've been doing mine for a couple of years now(i'm back to my 10th GGrand parents in the 1500's) and you are right it is addictive.If you want to order certificates you can do it the way you said but it is more expensive and you don't always get the right cert as sometimes there can be a few 'joe bloggs' born around same place same time. You can order birth certs online from www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ (hope it is ok to post this link?) . Do you know the area, vol, & page of each cert you need? if not then it would be worth you looking at 1837.com or joining Ancestry. co.uk (or .com if in another country) on these sites you can look up the details u know and get the references this also makes it about £4.00 cheaper for each cert when ordering. It is also worth joining a roots web mailing list for the area's you are interested in (e.g. Bedfordshire) as you can post  on there for help with info you need on particular people or for census look-ups ect. Happy to help again if you have any more questions or need anymore pointers. Good luck with growing your tree but be careful because it soon can become a forest & very time consuming!!, but also very interesting.
Patricia

Hi, yes, it can get very addictive !  I got into it when I realised it was more than just names and dates - finding out about how and where your ancestors lived can be really fascinating.
As well as the census info I've found 1837.com a really useful site.  Also you may want to join Genes Reunited (www.genesreunited.co.uk) - there are loads of really helpful and knowledgeable people on there.
Best of luck with your Tree - you never know who you might discover lurking behind some of the branches :)

My OH is a member of the Society of Genealogists so a great deal of time is spent constructing our various family trees. I'm fairly unrewarding (as are most Irish people!) since our records went up in smoke back in the 1920's. However, the branch of my family that emigrated to Australia have been easy to track since Australia was way ahead in the way they indexed family records - including details of military service etc.

Things have got a deal easier over here though since the release of the various censuses and I'd seriously recommend a subscription to ancestry.com as well as the 1837 site mentioned in another post. Various English counties have got exceedingly good records online too. The Mormon site (family search.org) has long been an excellent source of information too.

Most of the work you need to do involves discounting ancestors rather than discovering them since you'd be amazed at how often the same forenames and surnames occur in the same generation - in my OH's case two brothers both called their children by the same forenames. Be somewhat wary about just how far back you can take your family with any accuracy though because you only have to do some quite simple maths to realise just how many potential ancestors you clock up by going back a few generations. Ultimately, we never make assumptions and would always opt to have an accurate tree that goes back to the 18th century rather than an assumptive one that goes back to the Domesday Book.

Good luck to you though. It's dangerously addictive, mind! :D

You can find some very interesting skeletons in cupboards. I have, for example, a gt.uncle who witnessed a bomb explosion in the Houses of Parliament in the 1880s and a married cousin of my father who was enticed into an embarassing liaison with a woman (1920s) - photographed and then blackmailed :D :D All reported in The Times, so very interesting reading. Putting the flesh onto skeletons :D :D

Daisy

It's marvellous when you can learn about the people behind the names - what they wore, what they did. I've been copying my gt-gt-gt grandfather's leters and diary and it's been fascinating. The stupid thing was that when I read about his death I cried! I felt bereaved for a man who I was well aware had died a century ago. :rolleyes:

What is fascinating about all these rattling skeletons is the realisation that people behaved no differently in those days. It's just that they did everything on the quiet!

Take my great-grandfather in Australia for instance. He was married with three children but throughout his marriage kept another household just over the state line in New South Wales. He had two children from this relationship (my grandfather being the youngest of them) and was clearly happy to leave things as they were. Until his first wife died giving birth to his fourth legitimate child, that is, when he promptly married the mistress and brought her back to Victoria so she could bring up all 6 children. Talk about romantic! Not!