Family Historian User Group

HELP! I am desperate for some assistance!

A relative living in Australia has asked me to try and help trace relatives of her father as unfortunately she knows very little about her uncles and aunts and the families that they would presumably have had. Her father talked very little about his family and as far as she knows she never met any of them and he seemed to have little contact with them! She doesn't even know he had little contact with them, as he was a "closed book"! - from all accounts he was not a very pleasant father either - but this isn't the place to go into that!

Another problem is that she doesn't have contact with her brothers and sisters although I have offered to try contacting them via Facebook without letting on that I am acting for her - I am still awaiting for her response to that suggestion!

I have established who the parents were of her father from obtaining his birth and marriage certificates. From this I have then established who his brothers and sisters were - well potentially - as I have not yet obtained the birth certificates for these other relatives. However, I think they are her aunts and uncles because the details I have found show that these potential aunts and uncles had parents with the same surnames as his birth details. However, that's about as far as I have got.

I have tried sending off for some marriage certificates of some potential partners of the uncles, but these have all so far been incorrect so I have been reluctant to apply for anymore in case I am barking up the wrong tree with my research endeavours!

She would also like me to try and trace the cousins that resulted from any family of these aunts and uncles.

I am just hoping some members with a little more experience had any thoughts about the way I was conducting my research and to see if other members had any ideas/ suggestions as to how they would conduct their research if posed with this sort of problem.

I would really appreciate any views other members have on my approach so far???

Thank you

For Australia, much depends on the State you are researching but there are quite a few sources on FindMyPast and Ancestry. Also you could try:

Newspaper Searches at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home and http://www.ryersonindex.org Results will obviously depend on how (un)usual the surnames are that you are looking for.

Similarly, you could try: http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/NameSear ... hForm.aspx if you haven't already.

Mervyn

You said your relative is in Australia but you didn't say where you are, or in which country her uncles and cousins might be. Could you let us know which country's records you are researching, as the resources will be different in various countries.

Thank you to all for those suggestions. I will follow them up.

Sorry I didn't give more specific details but here are the facts as far as I know them.

The name I am researching is quite a common name in the Birmingham area. The surname is Parker and my research so far has centered around Victor George Parker who was born 9 May 1921 at 9 Back 26, Bristol Street, Birmingham. He married a Diamond Dorothy Thelma Karr (formerly Field) on 11 April 1947 and she is my aunt, so hence the family connection. Victor was shown as a Jeweller (journeyman) on his marriage certificate and I know that he had a business in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham known as V & F Parker (51 Vyse Street) which still trades. Apparently another Parker (unconnected) formed a partnership with my uncle and although this is still a family firm and the current owner (the partner's son) knew my uncle, when I contacted him he did not seem to have much information - maybe I asked the wrong questions! It is a long time ago now and the son is in his 70's! I know that my uncle's father was a Henry Parker who on the marriage certificate is described as a Postman and was deceased at the date of my uncle's marriage.

Henry Parker I have traced on the 1911 census living at back 23, Hadley St, Birmingham and was a Carter (General) was married to a Gertrude (nee Langley) and they had, from checking on Freebmd, children as follows:- Gertrude bn c.1910, died c.1913 aged 2, Beatrice M. bn c. 1913, Walter H. bn c.1913, Marian bn c.1914, Gladys bn c.1916, James E. bn c.1917, John W. bn c.1919, Victor George (my uncle) bn 9 May 1921, and lastly, Frederick R. bn c.1924. All born in Birmingham.

My Cousin (the one for whom I am doing the research) believes her Uncle was a Major in WW2 and was in Italy during the War. He later was a building surveyor (although she doesn't know if he was qualified) and he later had the jewellery business (a partnership from all accounts). He was by all accounts a bit of a Del Boy sort of character and no one ever really seemed to know where his money came from!

My cousin's family lived in the Handsworth/ Handsworth Wood area of Birmingham and had 4 children - Jacqueline D. (my cousin) bn c.1948, Shirley A. bn c.1950, Anthony V. bn c1952 and lastly, Michael A. V. bn c. 1959.

The family all emigrated to Australia in the 1960's.

If anyone has any further suggestions or knows of the people I am researching, I'd really appreciate any help that can be given.

I’m afraid I can’t add any information about the family. When you say ‘the family all emigrated to Australia in the 1960s’ I assume you mean just your cousin and her parents and siblings. I take it her uncles/aunts and their descendants are likely to be still in the UK?

I don’t think the electoral registers for Birmingham are available online but there are some UK Phone books covering the period 1880 -1984 searchable on Ancestry: http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1025
Knowing the names and middle initials of the uncles you may be able to find some potential entries for them in Birmingham phone books up to the 1980s, but that may not help much.
Also you could try some UK City and county Directories, in case any of them were listed as tradesmen:
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1547

There is also the 1939 list in Findmypast but that will not include anyone potentially still living, and would only tell you where they were back in 1939.

I think your best bet might be to keep trying to identify marriages of the uncles/aunts, but I appreciate that could get quite costly if you order a lot of certificates that turn out to be wrong.

Another (equally costly) approach might be to try to identify the deaths of some of the uncles and order the death certificates to find out who was the informant who registered the death, and what their address was. It is often a son or daughter who registers a death, and that would take you forward a generation.

By the way the address you gave for Victor George Parker’s birth (9 Back 26 Bristol Street) shows that he was born in one of the hundreds of tiny ‘Back to Back’ houses, built round courtyards, which were very common in Birmingham and other large cities. No. 26 would have been facing the street and no. 9 would have been the one behind it. The ones on the back were cheaper to rent because they faced inwards to the (often rather unsanitary) courtyard. The National Trust has preserved and restored the last remaining block of back-to-back houses in Birmingham and you can book guided tours. Information can be found here: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/birming ... k-to-backs

Birmingham electoral rolls are available online, but they are behind a pay wall (either subscription or pay-as-you-go). They can be found here:

http://www.midlandshistoricaldata.org/

They have the following rolls for Birmingham:

North Warwickshire Poll Book , 1832
North Warwickshire Poll Book , 1832
North Warwickshire Poll Book, 1835
North Warwickshire Poll Book, 1835
North Warwickshire Electoral Register, 1836
North Warwickshire Electoral Register, 1836
North Warwickshire Poll Book, 1837
North Warwickshire Poll Book, 1837
Burgess Roll, 1838
Burgess Roll, 1839
Birmingham Burgess Roll (1868)
Electoral Register, 1912/13
Electoral Register, 1918 - 1939 (Absent voters list)
Electoral Register, 1920 (Spring)
Electoral Register, 1922 (Autumn)
Electoral Register, 1925 (Spring)
Electoral Register, 1927 (Autumn)
Electoral Register, 1930/1
Electoral Register, 1935/6
Electoral Register, 1939/40
Electoral Register, 1945/46
Electoral Register, 1947/48
Electoral Register, 1950/51
Electoral Register, 1952
Electoral Register, 1955
Electoral Register, 1957
Electoral Register, 1960
Electoral Register, 1962
Electoral Register, 1965

Have you thought about probate records? Those on Ancestry go up to the 1960s and the beta FindaWill government website, while cumbersome to use, comes much more recent and is free to search.
You can buy a will on line and have it delivered by email. Its not quick and it costs £10 but it could potentialy help a lot. I'm thinking someone in the jewellery business might have left a will.
Anne

Thank you to mjashby, LornaCraig, Peter Collier & AnneEast a really big thank you. I am overwhelmed by the response I received! I will follow those all up as I think they will all be a big help!

To the previous answers I'd like to add a link to the British Library's Guide on tracing living people:

http://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media ... people.pdf

Some of the resources within have already been mentioned, and some of the links may be obsolete. For me the guide's real value is in its descriptions of the records such as electoral registers, and the search strategies.