- Location
- Glasgow
In my family it seems that after a close relative dies we discover we are not blood relations 
I don't really wanna know more
I don't really wanna know more
Ancestry / family research
- Thread starter Flying_Monkey
- Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
summerdays
Cycling in the sun
- Location
- Bristol
Of course! His name is more common, and luckily fewer alternative spellings but no no marriage, even trying to search all Ireland!
Garry A
Calibrating.....
- Location
- Grangemouth
Got as far back as 1870's then it got a bit strange. Insanity, alcoholism and people running away to live with dwarfs in the woods
I wish I was making it up.
I wish I was making it up.
Aperitif
Meme bar
- Location
- ...I don't have much idea - really.
My Mum worked in shops. Her elder brother was a nice guy. her younger brother worked on the railways. Unlucky for him, it was the Burma-Siam etc.
My Dad was an engineer - at Northolt, Heathrow and built bits of spaceships, valves and all sorts of stuff. His sister married an Irishman...and then it got complicated.
My 'Uncle Lel' wore a trilby and camelhair coat and used to always give me ten bob when he came for Sunday lunch. He wasn't really an uncle, but he was nice
My elder sister is a teacher and does ok. She married a Moroccan and his family history is bigger than all the sand in any given shovelful
My younger sister doesn't realise she is a diamond. Family tree would be like a Salix Contorta in full flow...One daughter married an Irishman and...
My history is waiting in the wings...but nothing significant to excite...so far, except a very successful son
PS I'm related to Donald Trump
My Dad was an engineer - at Northolt, Heathrow and built bits of spaceships, valves and all sorts of stuff. His sister married an Irishman...and then it got complicated.
My 'Uncle Lel' wore a trilby and camelhair coat and used to always give me ten bob when he came for Sunday lunch. He wasn't really an uncle, but he was nice
My elder sister is a teacher and does ok. She married a Moroccan and his family history is bigger than all the sand in any given shovelful
My younger sister doesn't realise she is a diamond. Family tree would be like a Salix Contorta in full flow...One daughter married an Irishman and...
My history is waiting in the wings...but nothing significant to excite...so far, except a very successful son
PS I'm related to Donald Trump
classic33
Leg End Member
1901 Census?
summerdays
Cycling in the sun
- Location
- Bristol
1901 doesn't give marriage details such as number of years married (they would have married about 1878, and she was born about 1858). But I have that detail (first found that one when you had to go to the old PRONI and have that little slip of paper you showed each time!) Can't find most of her siblings in 1901 ... again that could be the surname spelling issues, and they may have all be working in different locations rather than living together, potentially could of been attending hiring fairs?
classic33
Leg End Member
Farming? Tithe books?
I won't do any research in case I find that I'm related to @Marmion or, even worse, @threebikesmcginty
Pro Tour Punditry
Guru
I'm not sure any research dating as far back as your birth is reliable
summerdays
Cycling in the sun
- Location
- Bristol
I've followed the tithe books for the areas where I know there is a connection but I just don't know which townland or not even certain of a parish she is from!
classic33
Leg End Member
Tried
https://www.johngrenham.com/surnames/
Will take you to parish level, Map is slightly out in places though
summerdays
Cycling in the sun
- Location
- Bristol
That was interesting and produced the right area ... I didn't zoom at that point, then it locked down behind a pay barrier.... might pay another day but sleep calls!
RedRider
Pulling through
- Location
- Location Embrocation
A few years back I volunteered in a residential care home for formerly homeless people living with serious, enduring mental health problems. We set up a local and family history project. It mainly involved going for coffees and walking the coarse of the old River Fleet and such like but a couple of the old boys got into tracing their family histories.
We were lucky to be within walking distance of the Royal Society of Genealogists and the London Metropolitan Archives and used their free resources and lovely, helpful staff to go on journeys through BMD's, censuses (sp?) and old newspaper articles. It made me appreciate that genealogy can be a way to tell stories about ourselves and put our lives into some kind of context or perspective.
Remarkably, one of the guys followed his paternal lines and found records back to the 18th century with everyone living within five square miles. The earliest trace was a wealthy stockbroker who lies in a magnificent tomb with obelisk in Abney Park Cemetary which we visited.
On his death he left a wife and kids but the family became destitute following a stockmarket crash. We found a newspaper article about her drowned in the Regents Canal, a suicide. She was clutching a penny with a note left on the bank and kids in the workhouse. This was an emotional experience for the guy who'd had a tough upbringing himself and could relate to her desperation. We got his CPN involved who helped him think about how these things can run in families and how perhaps he wasn't the 'black sheep' he'd always thought himself.
We even came upon a picture of a Victorian ancestor who founded a school in Islington. There was a definite family resemblance even down to the same long, white beard.
The cherry on the cake was that following the research we put together a booklet with the tree, photos and a narrative. The guy felt confident enough to get back in touch with an estranged sister to show her the fruits of his work.
It was a brilliant and therapeutic experience, not least for me (I ultimately changed careers to work in mental health on the back of it).
My own traceable family history appears pretty mundane in comparison. On my mother's side we've been in Liverpool for at least five generations with the menfolk often sailors (my great great grandfather was on a ship in San Francisco Bay when the great earthquake hit) or making a living on the river and with my dad it disappears sharpish in Ireland amongst fishermen. I've an uncommon surname shared by a 17th century pirate surgeon though. His adventures in the Caribbean were published but whilst I suspect there's some shared ancestry I've no proof.
We were lucky to be within walking distance of the Royal Society of Genealogists and the London Metropolitan Archives and used their free resources and lovely, helpful staff to go on journeys through BMD's, censuses (sp?) and old newspaper articles. It made me appreciate that genealogy can be a way to tell stories about ourselves and put our lives into some kind of context or perspective.
Remarkably, one of the guys followed his paternal lines and found records back to the 18th century with everyone living within five square miles. The earliest trace was a wealthy stockbroker who lies in a magnificent tomb with obelisk in Abney Park Cemetary which we visited.
On his death he left a wife and kids but the family became destitute following a stockmarket crash. We found a newspaper article about her drowned in the Regents Canal, a suicide. She was clutching a penny with a note left on the bank and kids in the workhouse. This was an emotional experience for the guy who'd had a tough upbringing himself and could relate to her desperation. We got his CPN involved who helped him think about how these things can run in families and how perhaps he wasn't the 'black sheep' he'd always thought himself.
We even came upon a picture of a Victorian ancestor who founded a school in Islington. There was a definite family resemblance even down to the same long, white beard.
The cherry on the cake was that following the research we put together a booklet with the tree, photos and a narrative. The guy felt confident enough to get back in touch with an estranged sister to show her the fruits of his work.
It was a brilliant and therapeutic experience, not least for me (I ultimately changed careers to work in mental health on the back of it).
My own traceable family history appears pretty mundane in comparison. On my mother's side we've been in Liverpool for at least five generations with the menfolk often sailors (my great great grandfather was on a ship in San Francisco Bay when the great earthquake hit) or making a living on the river and with my dad it disappears sharpish in Ireland amongst fishermen. I've an uncommon surname shared by a 17th century pirate surgeon though. His adventures in the Caribbean were published but whilst I suspect there's some shared ancestry I've no proof.
slowmotion
Quite dreadful
- Location
- lost somewhere
Personally, I don't understand why it matters what my forebears got up to. I'm spectacularly incurious about them. My wife's side of the family is completely the opposite. Her grandfather was blown to pieces on The Somme when her father was still just a foetus , and it seems to have made the entire side of her family strangely obsessed by previous generations, and all their knick-knacks. I just don't get it. That's not a criticism, BTW.
Reynard
Guru
- Location
- Cambridgeshire, UK
Well, my great great grandfather on my mum's side owned a factory making paint. He ended up being boiled alive in a vat of paint. No 'elf and safety in those days - he was inspecting a batch, lost his footing and fell into the vat. My grandfather on mum's side was a sergeant in the Belgian army in WW1 - he was a machine gunner who singlehandedly took out a German position, acting on a tip-off from a French officer and without telling his own CO... In WW2, he was an agent in the Belgian resistance. My grandmother was a midwife and her family ran a haberdashery and tailoring business. Mum was a military nurse and then worked for years on the District.
My grandfather on my dad's side was on good enough terms with Lenin to holiday with him before the outbreak of WW1. I have photos to prove it, and while I have some good theories - they were probably serving time together in the same Siberian gulag - no one in the family felt free to elucidate. He fought in Pilsudski's Legions against the Russians in WW1, working his way up from rifleman to Captain. When the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed, all the soldiers were absorbed into the German army. However, he refused to swear allegiance to the Kaiser and spent the last year and a half of the war in the stockade. He fought with distinction in the Polish-Bolshevik war and was decorated multiple times for valour, remaining in the Polish army till 1933, retiring at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Then he went into politics and became a regional governor, serving in Poznan and then in Vilnius (which was then part of Poland). At the outbreak of WW2, he was tasked with getting the wife and daughters of Marshal Pilsudski out of Poland. He got them to the UK via Latvia, Sweden and Holland. He, however, ended up in France just ahead of the German invasion, and managed to get himself, my grandmother, dad and uncle to Liverpool via La Rochelle, and thence to Scotland.
There was a lot of stuff that I didn't know - dad never spoke about it much - but after he died and I was clearing out his things, I found a trunk and three suitcases full of grandad's wartime papers that hadn't been touched since they'd been packed away in the late 40s. I'm still working my way through them as they're in Polish and my Polish isn't brilliant, but it's just fascinating...
I also have a great uncle who was murdered in the Katyn massacre and another one who was murdered in Dachau...
My grandfather on my dad's side was on good enough terms with Lenin to holiday with him before the outbreak of WW1. I have photos to prove it, and while I have some good theories - they were probably serving time together in the same Siberian gulag - no one in the family felt free to elucidate. He fought in Pilsudski's Legions against the Russians in WW1, working his way up from rifleman to Captain. When the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed, all the soldiers were absorbed into the German army. However, he refused to swear allegiance to the Kaiser and spent the last year and a half of the war in the stockade. He fought with distinction in the Polish-Bolshevik war and was decorated multiple times for valour, remaining in the Polish army till 1933, retiring at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Then he went into politics and became a regional governor, serving in Poznan and then in Vilnius (which was then part of Poland). At the outbreak of WW2, he was tasked with getting the wife and daughters of Marshal Pilsudski out of Poland. He got them to the UK via Latvia, Sweden and Holland. He, however, ended up in France just ahead of the German invasion, and managed to get himself, my grandmother, dad and uncle to Liverpool via La Rochelle, and thence to Scotland.
There was a lot of stuff that I didn't know - dad never spoke about it much - but after he died and I was clearing out his things, I found a trunk and three suitcases full of grandad's wartime papers that hadn't been touched since they'd been packed away in the late 40s. I'm still working my way through them as they're in Polish and my Polish isn't brilliant, but it's just fascinating...
I also have a great uncle who was murdered in the Katyn massacre and another one who was murdered in Dachau...
