The web has made the quest to find our ancestors so much easier to do. As more and more data finds its way onto the Internet many more lines of enquiry are opened up to us. But, with this, is the danger of information overload. The new family historian may become frozen in the headlights as the genealogical data juggernaut races on towards them.

Here is some free advice about how to organize your family tree search so that in the long run you save yourself time and quite possibly money. The video also proposes that it is that it is well worth continuing to learn as much as you can about this fascinating subject of Family History by taking courses or reading around the subject. As I have read recently, the best family historian is one that thinks of themselves as an advanced beginner. That is, they are always open to learning more skills. The more skilled you get, the better you will be able to find those elusive ancestors! For beginners advice have a look at my new site here:
http://www.NoseyGenealogist.com

From YouTube…

Genealogy has captured the imagination of a good many of us and as it has the number of websites serving us with databases, or transcriptions, seems to have multiplied like topsy. Sometimes we may not know where to turn and this is especially so if we are starting out. When I first ventured on-line to research my forebears I found some ancestors easy to find on sites like ancestry.co.uk etc. while others seemed to insist on remaining hidden. I hit some brick walls and, where this happened, I put those particular ancestor lines to one side to concentrate on the easy ones to find.

This eventually began to frustrate me. The solution was to learn the tips and tricks that seasoned family history researchers used and so I enrolled on some e-courses. The trouble was that work or other pressure on time would mean that I couldn’t keep up and that I really needed to be able to learn at my own pace when I had a minute or two to do so.

Else Churchill, of the Society of Genealogists, writing in Your Family Tree Magazine, Issue 77, May 2009 says that “The best family historians are those who make an effort to learn about the resources they use and the context in which the records were created.” So I make every effort to continue to learn about this subject that so fascinates me.

Now I will not claim to be any where close to being an “expert”. I am someone who has moved along the line from being an absolute beginner, having picked up some skill sets along the way. I heard recently that some experts consider themselves to be simply “advanced beginners”. This is supposed to reflect the fact that we can all continue to learn more about our subject.

As we gain knowledge, it is also great to be able to share it with others who are just starting out. I have been planning for some time to make available my own simple guide to Beginning Family History on the Internet and to supplement it with some audio podcasts and screen capture help videos. It is now ready for publication as a download resource package. This means that it is distributed in three compressed (or .zip) files from a page within my new website at any time of the day or night. Once you have downloaded it to your computer you can read the pdf manual at your own convenience and listen to the podcasts or watch the video whenever suits you.

Take a look at this link below for what it contains:

http://www.noseygenealogist.com/familyhistorian/index.html

‘Beginning Family History Research: Tracing Your Ancestors on the Web

My paternal line in Dartmouth, Devon, UK has always been a bit frustrating once the census records ran out (1841 being the earliest on line) and I had to start looking at parish records and so on. I had worked out that my three times great-grandfather was called John Thorn and from the information given in the census collections I knew that he had been born in about 1795. His wife and my three time great-grandmother, Elizabeth, was born in about 1799 or 1800.

I don’t have the luxury of living near Dartmouth, or even visiting the area that much, so I am somewhat hampered in researching these ancestors in their own locality. I had decided that a trip to the Devon Record Office, in Exeter, was probably going to be necessary. As my family have migrated away from Devon, however, while relations that still lived in the county when I was a child have since died, most of my UK breaks take me much further north to the East Midlands.

A recent trip to London gave me the opportunity to go to The Society of Genealogists in Goswell Road, EC1. As a member I am well aware that they had a good collection of Parish Records on microfiche on the lower floor and also some transcripts in one of the other reading rooms, on the middle floor.  Unfortunately for me, on this visit, there was nothing in the microfiche collections of parish records for Dartmouth. There was, however in the Middle Library, a selection of Devon Family History Society booklets of the marriages of some of the churches in the town, including St. Saviour’s Dartmouth.

Perusing this book for any likely Thornes, or Thorns, I noted down that on the 13th day of April 1817 a John Thorn married an Elizabeth Sissell.

When I returned home with this tentative lead, I hit the Internet. I was looking for any evidence that may indicate if this was the marriage of my ancestors. I went to the website of The Dartmouth Archives,  www.dartmouth-history.org.uk and found that this voluntary organisation dedicated to the research and recording of the town’s history, had a very comprehensive family history section. Included were transcribed baptisms, burials, marriages and census records. I discovered that I could find the very same details, as I had seen in London, on this really useful niche site. The page I had found began in 1586 and ran to 1850!

There again was the marriage of John to Elizabeth and this time I noticed that the witness were given as John Adams and Sunass (sic) Sissell. I assumed that this last person was a member of the bride’s family and perhaps was her father, but the name Sunass caused me concern.

I am, after doing this family history thing for a few years now, aware that names can be transcribed incorrectly. They will have been written down as the transcriber had seen it and not changed by them to conveniently fit in with what they would consider to be correct. I also wondered if both the first name and the second had been written down not by the person in question, as they may well have been illiterate. When you come to do your own research you should bear in mind this point. The minister may have interpreted the name as he had heard it spoken to him and so in this case “Sissell” could possibly been “Cecil” or something else entirely. As for Sunass? I hadn’t got a clue what that could have been!

While I was on the page of weddings I did a search to see if I could find any other Sissells, the result was a disappointing zero, especially as Elizabeth was born in Dartmouth according to all the census data. Thorns gave me a handful of results, but I have yet to work out any relationships with these names. There were no early enough christening records for John and Elizabeth on the Dartmouth Archives website, but I opened another browser and navigated to the Latter Day Saints (LDS) website or FamilySearch.org and here I did a search for Elizabeth’s christening.

This gave me a lead to a baptism that took place in one of the other churches, St Petrox, in Dartmouth on the 16 of September 1878. The daughter of James and Sarah Sissill was one Elizabeth Gardener Sissill - and here you should note the spelling has changed to Sissil with an “i” and not an “e”. This made me wonder if the witness to Elizabeth’s marriage could have been her father “James” and this has been interpreted as “Sunnas” because a flowing “J” for James had looked like an “S” and the other letters had been misread as well, the “a” as a “u” and the “m” as double “n”.

Now, while still on the LDS site I did a search for James Sissill. The only promising result was for a marriage of a James to a Sarah Gardiner 17 April 1780, not in Devon, but at St Nicholas’ in Gloucester. This time the surname: Sissill was spelt S-y-s-a-l and Gardener was G-a-r-d-i-n-e-r!

So what I am emphasising here is to be wary of names and the way they were spelt. Before more general levels of literacy among the public became the norm, our ancestors relied heavily on a clergyman writing down their names as they sounded. A further search of the LDS site for Sysal or Sissill has not given me James’s baptisim details and so I don’t know where he came from or, indeed, where he died.

I closed the browser open at FamilySearch.org and returned to the Dartmouth Archives site and did a search of the burial indexes that they have uploaded for us to view. In the St. Saviour’s internment area at the Long Cross extension, north of the town, I found Elizabeth Gardner Thorn, a 69 year old widow buried on 25 July 1868 in plot 59 in a walled grave (re-opened) . Also in 59 was John Branton Thorn, a boatman who was 73 years of age when buried on the 15 September 1866.

In the next plot, number 60, I find Henry Thomas Thorne and his wife Ellen who are my two times great-grandparents and who both died in 1908. Can I assume John and Henry to be father and son? More work is required, but at least I now have a lead.

This is all down to finding that the town of Dartmouth has an active family history website and then using the indexes in conjunction with other Internet resources, such as the LDS site. I can now take the names and details further by looking for death certificates for John Branton Thorn and his wife Elizabeth Gardener Thorn, as they died after civil registration of deaths took place in 1837 and trying to get to see more parish records with a physical visit to the Devon Record Office.

The first lesson is that you should always look to see what other research may have been done for the area your ancestors came from and which has been published on the Internet. If you find a family history society, or local interest group with a website, can any of their publications or website pages help you with your quest?

Secondly, be aware of the misspelling of names and keep your mind open to possibilities. In my case I need to think of other spellings for the Sissells or names that may have sounded like Sissell in order that I may trace this line back further.

Nick Thorne

When I talk to new family historians starting out in family history about how I try to carry out my own research I often quote the advice I have been given by the professionals that have taught me the tricks and tips of doing good family history research. Now I do not consider myself to be a Genealogical Guru, simply someone who has gained a little experience over the years and am happy to pass it on here.

One of the principles is to think logically about a person’s time-line. When they were born will obviously dictate approximately when they could have got married and when you should expect them to have died. Not many people are going to be getting married in their hundredth year and they are unlikely to get married aged 6, so beware of entries that have the same name as your ancestor but are just plain wrong.

Another thing that I am aware of, and will happily tell others to do, is to listen to family stories and then step back and try to corroborate them by going and finding the hard evidence to back them up.

This weekend I have got myself stuck in a hole and wasting time digging it deeper and deeper! What was it I was doing wrong and how did I finally get out of it? I was trying to find the details of an ancestor’s death so that I could purchase a death certificate from the GRO site.

I am fairly wedded to www.ancestry.co.uk for most of my research. I like what they have on offer and I have become use to the way the site works. I also have a subscription to other sites such as www.thegenealogist.co.uk which I find good for many searches and I also like www.findmypast.com.

The research was sparked off by reading some “thoughts” put down on paper by a person before he died and passed on to his children, the next generation to read. I had been shown this family history because, as a cousin, I had an ancestor in common with them and I wanted to enter this forbear into my family tree as well. The handwritten notes indicated that our ancestor had died aged 66 and from this I was able to work out that as they were born in 1865 then this computed to them dying in 1930.

I went on to ancestry.co.uk and searched by name for the ancestor in all four quarters of 1930 but to no avail. I then broadened my research for ten years either side and spent hours looking for them without any luck. I then thought I’d try misspellings of the ancestor’s name as this, I thought, is surely why they are missing. Result: Nothing!

Eventually, after much wasted time, I thought about using one of the other websites that offers Birth marriage and death details, something I should have done early on. And what did I find? There he was, on the other BMD site spelt correctly and dying in the district where I expected him too, but aged 70 not 66 and in the year 1935 not 1930!

The lessons for me to relearn and hopefully for you to benefit from are as follows:

• Remember that all websites are fallible and omissions happen
• Family stories can sometimes be wrong as humans are not blessed with 100 percent recall and we can get things wrong, as it would seem this relative did in his writings for his children!

I’ve had people who have researched a line way back into the misty pasts, contact me with fascinating documents showing links to Scottish and European Royalty. People who are more closely related as “cousins” several times removed and even people who, coming further up to date, are the present occupants of the building where, back in the 1970’s, my parent’s once had a boat built. I consider this latter information to fall into my own family history as it concerned a chapter in both my parent’s and my own life even if only 30 odd years have passed and in this time the boatyard has gone out of business and the yacht has been sold on twice.

It is all part of the exciting possibility to draw like minded people together that Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention provides. So I recommend that once you have some family history facts that you have checked, or if you have some questions that you need answering, a simple web presence will do wonders for you. It doesn’t mean that you will gain hundreds of contacts over night. But I’ve found that over time, however, I’ve had some interesting contacts that I would never have had otherwise.

I love the world wide web!

With the 1911 we are able to see the household filled out in our ancestor’s own hand. Or in the case of my great-great-grandfather’s household in Paignton Devon, in my great-aunt’s hand.

It would seem that, in the Thorne household, Great-Aunty Winnie was chosen by the family to fill out the official form, rather than it being done by her Father, the head of the household. I am speculating a bit here, but I wonder if this decision may have been taken on the grounds that her employment made her ideal, in the eyes of the family, to complete the document to the authorities satisfaction. She would be more used to official documents than her parents and her brothers as Eveline Winifred Thorne, 18, has listed herself as a Seasonal Assistant in the Post Office. This was the start of a career that I believe would take her on to become a Post Mistress, in time.

My Grandfather, 16, was a public librarian in 1911; which I never knew and may explain why I have loved books so much that I have spent 20 years as a partner in owning a bookshop!

The 1911 census, available at www.1911census.co.uk is a fascinating set of documents. It was taken at a time when life expectancy for women was a mere 54, as opposed to 82 today and was only 50 for men, compared with 74 nowadays! The richest 1% of the population held 70% of the nation’s wealth while today a quarter of the population account for the same share. Domestic Service was the biggest employer, followed by Agriculture and then Coal mining. More people were to be found in houses than today as lodgers and visitors swelled the occupation of homes revealing a different society to today’s.

At The National Archives the 1911 census is said to take up 2.5 kilometres of shelf space and is larger than those that went before. Its release early (98 years after it was taken instead of the usual 100years) is down to a freedom of information ruling that, as long as the sensitive data relating to mental state was blanked out until 2012, it could be published early as it is not protected by the Census Act.

I am going back to look for other branches of the family now.

I’ve posted about this before on this blog, but it is worth mentioning that when ever I get asked about where to start I always tell them to begin with the five Golden Rules.

In my recent request from my friend I told them the following:

“Start at the beginning, that is…your beginning.

“Note down your parent’s names, their dates and places of birth, when they married and where. Ask them about their youth and any organisations or religious denominations that they belonged to. Did they stay in the locality of their birth or did they move? What is, or was, their occupations?”

After that I suggested they collated the same information on both sets of grandparents. If they are still with us, I told my friend to go and talk to them about their younger lives; as family historians we are often amazed at what rich background to family history research we can gain from talking to the older generations.

If my friend’s parents and or grandparents have died, then I would have suggested they find out where they are buried, or their ashes scattered and write down the cemetery or place for those generations that follow ours will thank us for this saving on their time spent researching their family. So the 5 rules, that I have distilled from the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are magazine published back in 2007 are as follows…

1. Start with whatever facts are known and work backwards, trying to make sure that each new piece of information is checked against original records to make sure of its validity.
2. At every stage, document the evidence noting down your sources. Tip: These can be people or paperwork.
3. Keep records of what you find, even the wrong avenues you have gone down. Doing this will help you not make the same mistake at a later stage in your research.
4. Be wary of information supplied by others as it may not be correct and always do your own research to back up what you have been told. Be particularly wary of information posted online.
5. When you are up a dead end seek help from family history societies, professional organisations, forums and specialist magazines.

Good luck if, just like my friend, you are starting out. Before you go any further should I mention just how addictive Family History can become?

Nick Thorne - The Nosey Genealogist

The 1911 census is going to be made available on-line in 2009, earlier than the 100 year rule would normally have allowed. Under the Freedom of Information the government is allowing it to be released early, but with the sensitive data about mental condition blanked out. Already, as an early Christmas 2008 present, some people are being invited to test the beta version of the 1911 census site to give feedback on how it works.

The exciting thing with this census is that we will be able to see the actual return written in the handwriting of one of the household members!

I can hardly wait to get a look.

1. The handwriting can be difficult to decipher. It may vary enormously from parish to parish depending on the vicar or clerk writing it. The art of reading old handwriting is called palaeography and you may find various books available to purchase.
2. The registers are often no more than copies of the original daily memorandum book. These may have been written up once a year and so the possibility of mistakes creeping in or entries being left out becomes a real possibility.
3. Gaps in the registers or they are missing altogether.
4. Details lacking from the Parish record as there was no standard as to what should be recorded in early times.
5. Before 1733 most legal documents would be written in Latin, although surnames would not be translated into Latin.
6. Spelling of surnames may vary from the norm.
7. Children were not baptised at all, or were christened when they were older. In one of my paternal lines four or five were all baptised together on the same day!
8. Periods of non-conformity, again in my same paternal line I find several children christened in the established church and then several more in the Presbyterian chapel.
9. Illegitimacy, parentage in doubt? Make a search of the local poor law records such as Bastardy bonds.
10. A person may be mistaken and not know where they were born. The solution is to widen your search to other parishes.
11. People moved about more than many expect so be prepared to look at surrounding Parishes from the one you assume your ancestors hailed from. Following on from this is that the family may have moved into the area from a different parish. Here you should do a search of parishes on the IGI or the County Record Office for a ten mile radius. A great piece of software to help find the names of the neighbouring parishes is the Parish Locator free from this website:http://web.onetel.net.uk/~gdlawson/parfind.htm
12. The change of the calendar in 1752 may be a pitfall for you to tumble into if you are not aware of it. England and Wales adopted the Gregorian calendar in September 1752.

• 11 days were omitted - the day after 2^nd September 1752 became the 14^th September.

• The first day of the year, or Supputation of the Year became the 1^st of January.

• Prior to this in England 7 Wales, the year began on Lady Day, or the 25^th March. This would mean that the 24^th of March 1750 would be the last day of 1750 and the next day was the 25^th of March 1751, and a new year.

The Calendar Act 1750 changed this situation, so that the day after 31 December 1751 was 1 January 1752. As a consequence, 1751 was a very short year - it ran only from 25 March to 31 December.

The year had previously been broken up into quarters, still in use for some legal practices, Lady Day (25^th March), Midsummers Day (24^th June), Michaelmas Day (29^th September) and Christmas day 925^th December).

To throw even more confusion into this situation, Scotland had already changed the first day of the year to 1 January in 1600 and so 1599 was a short year there ( remember that in 1600, Scotland was a completely separate kingdom). What has to be recognised is that when King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England in 1603, the possibilities of date confusion must have been very large indeed.

Food for thought!

His parent’s Janette and Charles Crosland Hay seem to reside in various parts of Britain, mostly south of the border, until they settled in Cheltenham where their children went to school. In “Victorian Legacy”, a book published in 1998 by the Revd Stanley Rudman on the wall memorials in Christ Church Cheltenham, my great-grandfather Edward is mentioned in the write up of his parent’s memorial, along with his brothers. The Revd Rudman attempted, in his publication, to fill in the background to the families of those commemorated in the church and he mentions that Charles and Janette had 5 sons, 4 of whom were attending Cheltenham College when their mother died. For Edward Adolphe Massy Hay, Rudman says that “He became a Lieut. in 17th Regt and subsequently a tea planter in Ceylon wher he died at Kandy in 1909.”

When I had read this, in 2006, I had wondered which 17th Regiment he had joined as one of his brothers, William Wemyss Frewen Hay, had joined the 17th Bengal Native Infantry. Naturally, I had wondered if Edward had joined then as well. This shows how to beware of jumping to conclusions in family history research and to go to the source if at all possible.

I next found mention of Edward in The United Service Magazine, Published by H. Colburn, 1864 Item notes: 1864 pt.2 page 460 showing that he purchased his commission in the 17th Foot. So not the 17th Bengal NI then!

On a visit to The National Archives I spent some time looking at their copies of Hart’s Army Lists and found the 1866 edition. Flicking through the pages to the 17th Foot, The Leicestershire Regiment I found the entry that proved Ensign [2 Ed A Massy Hay, d 31 May 64.

I am yet to understand all but wonder if the “[2″ refers to the 2nd battalion but I believe the “d” may refer to him being posted to the depot in Chatham and not abroad. I excitedly went to Hart’s Army Lists 1867 and turned to the 17th Leicestershire Regt. but alas Edward was not there! Had he left the army by then? If so when had he become a Lieutenant as he is referred to in both the Revd Rudman’s publication and that other book on the Hay’s of Hopes?

Seems my research much go on into this man, as all is not clear!

I next visited the Royal Leicestershire Regimental Museum in Newarke house. I saw here an officer’s uniform that was contemporary to my great-grandfather’s time. As to be expected for the times, the regiment wore a Red coat.

As an aside; In the Hart’s Army List for 1866 the price to purchase a commission as Ensign cost £1200. Using the website Measuring Worth I found that, using the retail prices index, £1200 is worth £78,890.29 in current money. That is some investment great-grandfather Hay!