Family Historian User Group

I am totally new to family trees etcetera and would appreciate some advice.
> I have very little information on my parents or any other relatives.
>  What little I have is:
> Mother:   Hilda Grace Stevens believed to have been born around 1906.
>   Her father or grandfather is believed to be Lord Holberry who owned
> a string of theatres and who built/opened the first theatre in
> Scotland.
> Father:   Charles Henry Stevens.   Known to have resided at 1, Farley
> (or Old Farley) Road, Selsdon, Sanderstead, Surrey on or around 1935
> - 1945.
> His father was Charles ? Stevens who originated in Waterford, Ireland.
> My own details are:   Peter Denis Stevens, born 17th March 1941 in
> Selsdon, Sanderstead (I believe)
> With my very limited knowledge (and funds) I have done my very best
> to find the details totally without success.
> I intend to purchase FH but if I can't even find my parents detail,
> even with FH I will probably get no further.   Can you, or anyone,
> point me in the right direction so that I can at least get this far?
> I am severly disabled and retired living solely upon state charity
> (pension) and so I cannot afford to pay out very much.
> Please help?
> Kind regards,
> Peter Stevens

ID:2400

I'm in the same boat -- part of the territory, I think, when one is the youngest child.

Most of the work I have done so far has been with researching my husband's family because that has been easier.

On my father's side, both grandparents were dead before I was born, and it was only recently, when talking to my brother, that I found out that we had had an uncle. I have some more information on my mother's side, but when I knew my cousins and their parents as children, I only knew them by their nicknames, so it has been hard to know whether I have identified the right family when I am looking in the records, despite the fact that she had a large number of siblings.

This may sound batty, but the thing to do first is to start with yourself. Pretend that another genealogist is researching and needs information on you -- do a mini-autobiography or timeline and record as many details about your own life as you can remember. Many books on studying your own family history have sample interview questions to help one interview one's older relatives -- pretend some younger relative is interviewing you and write down the answers you would give to those questions.

Ordering certificates can get quite expensive, I know, but even on a limited budget, I think one can justify having one's own birth certificate. There are plenty of current-day reasons one should have it - it is hardly an indulgence. So if you don't have a copy, I encourage you to get one.

From there work backwards -- if you can't get BMD certificates for your parents for whatever reason, can you find substitute sources for that information, such as obituaries, marriage or birth announcements in the newspaper, and so on?

The other thing to do is to collect more general information about the areas in which your relatives lived. If you are still in the area where your father and mother lived, then don't neglect your local library, your local historical society, any family history societies, and so on. If you can't get out and about, these groups may have a free email newsletter you can subscribe to. Here in the US, having a local library card means I can get access to some electronic collections from my home computer. The important thing is not to focus on what resources you don't have, but to identify and use the ones you do have.

The more you know about the places in which your relatives lived, the more you have the context for whatever information you may find, and it will be easier to pick up on small clues.

In my opinion, people are often in such a rush to 'grow their family tree' that they neglect the pleasures of studying the history of the times and places in which their families lived, and if a history book about the town their relatives lives in doesn't mention their relative anywhere, they consider it a waste to have read that book. I think this is a big mistake.

Even if you can't find information specific to your own family, it is useful to study the general case -- say, the history of the theatres in Scotland. Knowing more about Lord Holberry's rivals may lead you to information about Lord Holberry in a way you didn't expect.

If you have any information about your parents' friends, don't neglect them, because you may turn up unexpected information that way also. For my husband's family, we have one of the memory books from a relative's funeral, so I may be able to get clues from looking at the people who sent flowers or signed the book as attendees.

If you have any friends who are also keen on doing this kind of research, offer to help them look over their own findings -- doing research on other families in the area will be good practice for doing your own.

Try to set yourself interesting small tasks, such as locating a library or website which has newspapers from the month you were born, and enjoy learning what you can, even if it doesn't seem to make direct progress toward your goals. It is like sailing -- you can't go directly into the wind; sometimes you must tack back and forth to get where you want to go.

Good luck -- and don't forget to have fun!

Jan

Hi Peter: might your mother have been living in Cornwall when she died? There's a Hilda Grace Stevens b May 25 1907, d July-Sept 1988 in Falmouth (vol 21 p135).

Jocelyn

...and, while we're at it, a Hilda Grace Holberry was born in Croydon in 1907 - birth registered July-Sept quarter, vol 2a p 258.

I found the death details on ancestry.co.uk which costs money (but I have a subscription). The birth was on freebmd.org.uk, which is a free site - although there are gaps in the data.

Jocelyn

Hi Peter - it's me again - a slow day at work today!

Your parents were married in Croydon in Oct-Dec quarter, 1932. Reference is 2a 917.

Your own birth certificate reference is Jan-Mar quarter, Surrey Mid-E, 2a 335.

Your father is trickier as he has a less unusual name. There was a Charles Henry Stevens born Jul-Sept quarter 1908, Croydon 2a 257, which looks likely but you may not want to risk £7 on finding out! I would get the marriage certificate first, then you can check whether the ages match at least.

Good hunting!

Jocelyn

Peter,
If you get your parent's marriage cert then you should learn their father's names. They should be in the 1901 census. My local library, in England, subscribes to Ancestry.com and so library members are able to log on and use the site free. This may enable you to learn something about your parents families and so you can progress from there.
Good luck.

regards -- Peter E

If you get your parents' marriage certificate as suggested by pwe, you could then sign up for a free two week trial subscription to ancestry.co.uk, which will hopefully allow you to find your two grandfathers on the 1901 census and with reasonable luck you should be able to trace them back through earlier censuses which will hopefully find their parents and so on.

With the two week trial I think you have to give them credit card details, so it is important to remember to cancel before the free trial runs out. Can anyone confirm this and that it is straightforward to cancel? I used to have a subscription and found it was not obvious how you cancelled it, but I did manage to do it.

Another option is if you buy Family Historian 3, I think it comes with vouchers for use on Findmypast.com. The image on Amazon says it includes 50 free units for 1837online.com who renamed themselves as Findmypast.com some time ago so the image is out of date. Findmypast.com have the 1841, 1861, 1871 and 1891 censuses. Can anyone confirm if the 50 free vouchers still come with Family Historian 3 and if they are still valid with Findmypast.com?

I think some of the family history magazines occasionally come with vouchers for Findmypast.com.

When I first joined Ancestry for their 14 day free trial I went as far as the payment screen and backed out before I gave any details, immediately a little box popped up offering me 30 days free trial. I don't know if they still do this but it's worth a try.
Also, has anyone used familyhistory.com (I think they used to be Treequest), I don't know what their coverage is like but their subscription is only £37.50.

Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to say that Jan's (JMurphy) advice in the 2nd post is as good as it gets. Looking back over my own first year of floundering, then my 2nd year of starting to get the gist, Jan has eloquently and completely presented everything I needed to know and am only just now beginning to understand. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this, Jan. alywil

I would very much like to thank all of you who posted replies to my query. I have not been able to access the site for some time, but having done so today am already well on my way.
This feels not only to be a user group but feels very much more to me like a special club that I feel privilaged to belong to.
Kind regards,
Peter Stevens[wink]

alywil said:
Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to say that Jan's (JMurphy) advice in the 2nd post is as good as it gets. Looking back over my own first year of floundering, then my 2nd year of starting to get the gist, Jan has eloquently and completely presented everything I needed to know and am only just now beginning to understand. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this, Jan. alywil

Thanks very much for the kind words!

Now if I could only take my own advice, I'd be all set. [oops]

I am still working mostly on my husband's family and neglecting my own side. [oops]

I started off by getting several books on genealogy (for UK research I highly recommend Ancestral Trails and The Genealogist's Internet for anyone doing things long-distance) but no matter how many books or articles or messages you read, sometimes it just doesn't all make sense until you have waded in and looked at the actual records and thought about things for a while.

When I was a language student, my teacher expected us to have an initial 'floundering' stage -- she called it 'cleaning out your ears' because it simply takes time to get used to the sound of another language. It it crucial to review your earlier work to see if you might have made a wrong interpretation simply because you did not have very much experience at first.

I knew when I was starting out, I would be likely to make mistakes, so I used the 'floundering year' to test-drive genealogy programs, checking them for ease of use and so on.

My experience is that sometimes we can learn something with our heads right away, but we don't really internalize it for several months -- for instance, one of the US census years has a notation for the mother for the 'number of children / number of children living'. If your ancestor is a child in that family, it is an important clue about how many siblings your ancestor had. It took me some time to realize that if a certain family is indeed the record for my husband's great-grandmother's family, there were many more siblings than the three I knew about.

If you don't go back and review your previous findings as you gain more experience, you miss this sort of thing.

Jan

I just got my subscription copy of the magazine Your Family Tree (which in North America seems to be distributed as Your Family History, but it's the same magazine).  Issue 57 (November 2007) has as their cover feature '100 research tips'.  

They have articles from seven researchers, who break down the process of studying your family history into small steps.  It's a great checklist, especially for those of us who are just starting out.

Both subscriptions and some single issues are available on Future Publishing's web site:

http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/


Hope this helps.

Jan

The best tip I've got came to me recently. Using freebmd.org I downloaded a text file (s) of all the occurrences of my search family names. I then put them in to a spreadsheet and used the autofilter facility to find all births in a location in a time period for a particular family name.
Sadly a proportion of these also appeared as deaths in the same period. This way I could find those children who didn't make it in to any censuses.
This process also showed up people who moved between censuses and people who just seem to appear or disappear.

Solved a lot of mysteries (and created some new ones [smile]) for me.

i also keep a spreadsheet if I go to a Records Office and scan through for a set of surnames - I keep columns for up to three people (allows for both parents at Christening), have a status for BMD, put in years, any notes and on a separate tab describe the register, where and when I saw it and what names I looked for. I find that I need to go back and look for extra names sometimes.

Also having a good parish map helps - ancestors tended to move around between parishes (which may also be in different counties (and I imagine countries))

In a previous post, I suggested that Peter do a self-interview, or enlist the aid of someone to act as interviewer and to interview him.

Today I found a list of interview questions in the genealogy section of the US website About.com -- the link is here:
http://genealogy.about.com/cs/oralhisto ... w.htm?nl=1

It is easy to overlook simple things (for instance, some of the US Census years have a question about whether the household owned a radio or not).

Even if you don't have older relatives to interview, thinking about the questions (e.g what songs were popular when they were teenagers) can help round out the general picture of what life was like during that time.

Peter, how is your research coming along?

Jan