Help!! - Newbie and very confused!!

alexbourke · Post by **alexbourke** » 01 Apr 2007 00:22

Hi to all, I am completely new to all this. Ive gathered a lot of information from family members and others are helping me gather more. Ive gathered about 170 named members and another 20 non named individuals from mine and wifes family. I have version 3.1.1 and inputted 60% so far. Ive played with the create website but I cant find how to create a pedigree table on the website! And Ive looked over this site and a few other sites and the more I look the more confused I get. Once I have ALL the infomation Ive got into the system, where is the best place to REALLY start?? Many thanks Alex. (Family BOURKE) [frown]

ID:2283

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 01 Apr 2007 09:26

The web site generation does not currently include charts directly, so you need to create the chart you want to include using the diagraming tools save it as a .png file and add it to the table of contents.

If you want to provide more interactive web site information then you can look at using more advanced web tools such at GedMill or Phpgedview to produce the sites from your FH data.

alexbourke · Post by **alexbourke** » 01 Apr 2007 11:13

Thanks Jane, that idea for the chart was spot-on. Reference: where do I REALLY start? There is links to this site and that, and knowing where to start and get bits of information is a bit confusing. Obviously I want to start and not hit brick walls everywhere I go, cos my enthusiasm for it will diminish and I dont want that to happen. Im sure there are a few newbies out there and this information would help many. So where do you think I should start on the web. Many thanks Alex. [smile]

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 01 Apr 2007 12:22

Alex do you mean in using FH or doing research in general?

On FH, I presume you have already worked through the Getting Started Guide, you can also try the [wiki]how_to:index[/wiki] in the knowledge base, which has some good recomendations for orgainsing files etc.

On the research front, I would recommend both 'Ancestral Trails' and the 'Genelogists guide to the internet' both are available from the Amazon Shop here.

alexbourke · Post by **alexbourke** » 02 Apr 2007 23:44

Thanks for the reply. In a nut shell what will these books do for me? I live in Scotland and all my ancestors live in different parts of the UK, so local research is difficult, are there good websites to look over, or are these book REALLY the best way to start. Many thanks. [smile]

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 03 Apr 2007 08:20

Ancestral Trails, details all of the most common sources for information, explaining when the sources start and what information they contain, it also details the importance of sourcing every piece of information and the correct ways to do it.

The Genealogists guide to the internet, covers hundreds of internet sites relevant to family history.

http://www.genuki.org.uk/ is not a bad place to start as it contains lots of information on a location by location basis, plus general getting started hints and tips. The reason I suggested the books is because I find it easier to sit and read them that trying to learn everything from reading the screen, after 15 years of research I am still learning new things everyday.

ireneblackburn · Post by **ireneblackburn** » 03 Apr 2007 08:51

If you just want basic help in getting started both genesreunited and national archives websites have pages telling you how to make a start, otherwise there are lots of books in your local library. They will all tell you to speak to living relatives and collect or copy as many of therir certificates/documents as possible.

Irene B

jc1641 · Post by **jc1641** » 03 Apr 2007 11:05

It really is hard to get started, but like others I would really recommend GENUKI (http://www.genuki.org.uk)

If you have ancestors all over the UK can I suggest that you start with the Scottish ones. Apart from the fact that you live in Scotland and might be able to do some local research, you'll find that Scotland's People (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk) is the UK's (the world's?) best genealogical website by a long way. It is simple and intuitive to use, holds all the Scottish BMD and Census records in one place and all images are available online (apart from the 1881 census) for £1 each, including all the pre-1855 Old Parish Records. Beacuse the indexing is so good the search facilities are incomparable. Now that I've started researching my partner's English and Welsh ancestors and am consequently using other website I now realise that Scotland's People is truly exceptional - show me a another website where Death Records are indexed (and searchable) by mother's maiden name!

When I started out about 30 months ago I just dived into Scotland's People armed only with what my relatives could tell me and loads of enthusiasm. I didn't read any books until later, although I can recommend 'Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry' by Kathleen Cory and 'Discover Your Scottish Ancestry' by Holton & Winch.

Anyway, good luck with your research!

alexbourke · Post by **alexbourke** » 04 Apr 2007 00:27

Thank you all, I really feel the enthusiasm rising. I know it is a daunting task to get started but at least there has been a few people before me for help and reference. Thank you. Here I go..... [grin] [grin]

sue120502 · Post by **sue120502** » 04 Apr 2007 12:15

I am somewhat new to this is well and I started looking stuff up on Ancestry.co.uk - pointing me to census records but I kept hitting the issue of paying. I eventually bit the bullet and subscribed for a year - costly but a small price to pay for the amount of enjoyment I've had. You can actually track your ancestors over the years.

I'm not interested (yet) in paying out any more money but am going to collect as many names and as far back as I can. When I grind to a halt I might think about going into the whole thing a bit more indepth.

I might suggest that you subscribe (or buy from W H Smiths) to Family Tree Magazine - there are lots of interesting articles in there. If you buy a copy first, you might be lucky (as I was) and be able to subscribe and get a free copy of the book 'Who do you think you are'.

Also, check out the BBC website _ http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyhistory/. I've just discovered it but haven't really looked at it yet.

Hope this helps.
Sue [smile]

David_Lewis · Post by **David_Lewis** » 04 Apr 2007 21:54

Getting started on your research and what sites to use, here's my two pennyworth.

THE starting point must be to gather as much information from as many living relatives as you can. It really is amazing how much knowledge elderly aunts and uncles and even cousins have. Dont treat any of it as fact just yet but use it to point you in the right direction.

Then start with your own birth certificate. It will tell you who your parents are. IF you have a copy all well and good but if you havent its failrly easy to get one on line but it does mean that you are going to have to start paying out some money.

IMHO The best site for finding 20th century Births is findmypast (used to be called 1831online). You'll probably need to spend a Minimum of £5 but that will i think buy you 50 units.

findmy past wont show you actual birth certificates but it will give you access to the index. You will know your own date of birth so it should be fairly easy to find entry. using the information in the index, a copy of your birth certificate can then be ordered online from http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/. One certificate costs £7.00 (unless they have recently put the price up.

Ok having got your certificate and your parents names its now time to find a marriage certificate for them ( hopefully they were married.[smile]and before you and any older siblings were born.) If you already know when they got married then again its fairly easy to find an entry in the index on findmypast. If not then its a matter of working backwards in time from the eldest child. However going back 10 years is going to cost you 40 units. 1 for each quarter of each year.

It,s also probably easier to look for the least common name so if someone was looking for my wedding it would be difficult to find as there are lots of D Lewis's However there are very few S Shouler's so making it much easier to find.

Again having found the reference numbers in the index its a simple matter of ordering again on line.

Our parents marriage certificate gives us not only their names and ages but addresses and most importantly each of their fathers names and occupation.

Now that we know how old our parents were when they got married and the date of their marriage we can work out roughly when they were born.

Now its a matter of looking for their births on Findmypast and getting their birth certificates. This should give us the names of our grandparents.

We can then find their marriage in the same way as we found our parents.

And we keep following that process untill we get to before April,1901
Things can now get easier because we now also have Census information to help us.
I personally used Ancestry.co.uk to look at census information because most of it was there online before findmypast. Ancestry also allowed you to take out a yearly subscription which allowed you to view as many census pages as you liked during the period of your subscription. Thats a great help cause it allowed you to try and find your families entries using a number of different spellings.
its quite uncanny how many times you look for information suspecting it to be in one place but eventually you find it somewhere else.

Searching is an art. Even though Lewis is a fairly common name ive found people mis transcribing it. so if your expected search doesnt bring up the right family try searching on different items I.E I knew that George Lewis was born in 1881 in Herefordshire but couldnt find him so I did a seach for all the George's born around 1881 in Herefordshire and eventually found him and the rest of the family under a different spelling of Lewis. The trick is to not put to much information in the search criteria fields and to keep trying different combinations.

Ancestry isnt cheap at £70 a year but I found it incredibly useful.

One of its less used features is the family trees section. Here again you enter search criteria for an individual and if you are lucky you may find that somebody has already produced a tree with tha person on it.

However a word of caution, Never treat somebody elses information in a tree as absolutetly true, we all make mistakes so use it as a pointer to aid your own research.

Ok using ancestry and findmy past will get you back to 1837.

From now on it gets perhaps a little harder but a little cheaper because we can now look at parish records on the Mormon site.http://www.familysearch.org/
and its FREE

Its tempting to use the search boxes on the home page but if you first click on the search tab on the top of the page and then click on the International Genealogical Index (IGI) menu item another set of seach boxes are shown which give you far greater flexibilty in searching.

Again its a matter of working backwards from people we know finding baptism or christening records, their parents names and then their marriages If you are really lucky some of your tree branches could get you back to the mid 16th century around 1550.

Now all this assumes that everything is straight forward but it is rarely so.

Some of us may have Irish ancestors that came here in the mid 19th century. Those are almost impossible to trace because of two things. Firstly many Irish records were destroyed in a fire ( cant remember the exact date ) and also many southern Irish ancestors were catholic and catholic records havent been made available to the mormons.

Ok that should give you a few pointers to get you at least started.

Its a fascinating journey and very rewarding as each new ancestor is revealed.

sue120502 · Post by **sue120502** » 04 Apr 2007 23:20

Thanks for all that David - I was extremely interested to hear about your method of finding details before 1837 - also being new to this hobby, I was wondering how folk went back further. I was going to leave that problem until I got there. Coming from a big family - on both sides - it will be a while yet, ie. it certainly takes time entering all the information into FH and linking all the documents - I've been linking each entry within each census record to it's 'owner'. I'm looking forward to printing out a report giving all the information - I think it will look more meaningful in report form.

Anyway thanks again,Sue

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