Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Mary & Hilary you are both absolutely right,(as is Bert & others), this nonsense of her being 16 is probably just that, (I'm afraid my Aunt is getting on in years now), and the date my cousin gave for Mary Janes birth is 27/01/1891 so it looks like she was maybe just a year out and that death registration could well be right, I'm afraid I had lost touch with most of the family by 1978 but my other cousin will be able to verify this once she is back from her travels . I apologise once again if I appear to be a bit reluctant to accept facts here because I most certainly am not & again I can only thank you all for the magnificent help you are giving me, it's just that I am putting about 10 hours a day into this at the moment because I've injured my shoulder and can't get out to work & my head is spinning with it all, Howarth/Howorth/Howard , please bear with me & don't give up on me, (I still can't work out how you guys get the info because I don't seem to be getting very far on my own). I have to say my experience of ancestry so far leaves a bit to be desired, would anyone recommend using another site,(I have heard that myheritage is very good).
Lee

Lee,

One thing that's for sure, no one will give up on you, as for Ancestry, you're new to it and it takes time, the more the good people on here guide you the easier it will become.

When we help people get started on Ancestry in the library we tell people to look for things they know the date off. For instance look for your own burth registration, your partners. your children. Look for your parents if you know their birth dates. Look for their marriages.

Study a census entry and then try and go forward or back one census.

Also have a play on other websites such as www.freebmd.org.uk and www.lancashirebmd.org.uk both are free.

Family History is not quick it's a long process. Definitely get to the library or get someone to go for you and get a book on family history.

Education Officer wrote:When we help people get started on Ancestry in the library we tell people to look for things they know the date off. For instance look for your own burth registration, your partners. your children. Look for your parents if you know their birth dates. Look for their marriages.

Study a census entry and then try and go forward or back one census.

Also have a play on other websites such as http://www.freebmd.org.uk and http://www.lancashirebmd.org.uk both are free.

Family History is not quick it's a long process. Definitely get to the library or get someone to go for you and get a book on family history.

Yes I will try my local library although not sure how helpful it will be, we live way out in the sticks and our nearest town is very small.

See if this helps

http://www.ffhs.org.uk/tips/first.php

Hilary mentioned the library because this is where she holds Help Desks for the Southport Group and also Getting Started Talks, as do the Liverpool Group at the Liverpool Record Office. I would suggest that you might see if there is a local Family History Group which you could join, even if you don't have family in the area they will be willing to give you help, which might be a little easier with somebody beside you.

I wouldn't suggest you try another site, any with censuses available will be subscription sites and as you now have access to the one with the most databases, or at least the most for the Liverpool area, then it's worth following Hilary's step by step directions and getting used to it more slowly than jumping in. We will be here for whatever queries you have and if you can tell us what searches you are doing we will also be able to follow and perhaps make suggestions.

Thanks Mary, well I decided to start at the very beginning just to see how easy/hard it is to trace back so I looked for......myself. Put in my name/d.ob. & place of residence on ancestry & I found an entry for my birth but no image so I couldn't see my mum or dads name or anything that would get me further back,(which would obviously be no good if I was searching somebody I didn't know much about), so my conclusion was that ancestry was no help at all really. I'm presuming a lot of members on here have subscriptions to other sites so can access better records than I seem able to find on ancestry, either that or I'm doing it totally wrong. Tried searching for my dad's army records - I have to pay, his merchant seaman's records - I have to pay, in fact everything I am looking for seems to be on sites where I have to pay, now I'm not trying to get stuff for free here but I've paid for Family Tree Maker which has given me 6 months access to ancestry.co.uk's records but they just don't seem to give enough details, maybe I should just give it a rest for a while as I've been on this laptop non stop for way too long now.

See I've just done a search for my dad who I know is on the records, put in his d.o.b., fathers name, place of residence & it came back as zero matches, what is that about then?

winstonevertongroovy wrote:Thanks Mary, well I decided to start at the very beginning just to see how easy/hard it is to trace back so I looked for......myself. Put in my name/d.ob. & place of residence on ancestry & I found an entry for my birth but no image so I couldn't see my mum or dads name or anything that would get me further back,(which would obviously be no good if I was searching somebody I didn't know much about), so my conclusion was that ancestry was no help at all really. I'm presuming a lot of members on here have subscriptions to other sites so can access better records than I seem able to find on ancestry, either that or I'm doing it totally wrong. Tried searching for my dad's army records - I have to pay, his merchant seaman's records - I have to pay, in fact everything I am looking for seems to be on sites where I have to pay, now I'm not trying to get stuff for free here but I've paid for Family Tree Maker which has given me 6 months access to ancestry.co.uk's records but they just don't seem to give enough details, maybe I should just give it a rest for a while as I've been on this laptop non stop for way too long now.

Lee,
You need to understand what is available online and what is not. For instance you mentioned finding your own birth details on Ancestry. The birth certificate itself will not be online. All you will get, on any site, is the bare details from the GRO Birth Index.
For example....
Birth: JONES, John
Registration district: West Derby
County: Lancashire
Year of registration: 1912
Quarter of registration: Jan-Feb-Mar
Mother's maiden name: Evans
Volume no: 8B; Page no: 525

Other sites such as FreeBMD may present that information thus:
Births Mar 1912: JONES, John - Evans - West Derby - 8B - 525.

In the above example to find the mother's forename and the father's name you have to get the birth certificate from the GRO or the Liverpool Registry Office. The GRO charge £9.25 per cert.

Before September 1911, the online info for births does not include the mother's maiden name. So in some areas of England and Wales you might be lucky to find an online image of a baptism which might provide that detail. There are also limited numbers of marriage records online taken from parish registers.

Scotland's records are somewhat different. Statutary BMD records and a lot of parish records are accessible online for a small fee and you can download the image. Hopefully our GRO will oblige us and do the same in the not too distant future.

I believe Education Officer suggested investing in a good book about family genealogy? That should be your next expense because it should tell you what is and what isn't available online, and where to find the information that isn't.

BTW, I don't have a subscription to Ancestry but to another site which I prefer for particular reasons. It costs me over half a week's pension per year but it is my hobby and fees to a golf club would be a lot more!

Just seemed a bit crazy to me that I have seen my dad on a census list that someone on here has put up so I know the info is out there yet when I put a search in for him nothing comes back, it's making me think that either I'm the stupidest person on the planet or this 6 months sub you get with family tree maker is actually a watered down version of what I'd get if I handed over the full fee.

I have moved this so our forum members can help rather than cluttering up your post researching your family.

Please tell us step by step just one particular problem search you are doing, perhaps give the details of the census we have already found your father on - and try to let us duplicate it and help you find it.

I assure you that you aren't getting any different subscription from somebody who has paid for it. As the others have said, it just takes some time to get used to the way to search, and often the search is too wide and so too many results appear.

Thank you for being so patient with me Mary, I should have probably told you that I have Tourettes which makes me quite obsessive about things, so much so that if I don't get instant results I tend to get very frustrated, my wife has promised to edit my posts in future before I put them up

We can have patience, don't worry. Unfortunately in this hobby we don't get instant results, that's where you will have to have the patience.

Hi Lee, patience is one 'virtue' you have to have in this family research stuff. Most of the older or more experienced 'heads' on this forum have been at it for a long time. And we still have gaps we are trying to fill or bridge or branches of trees we are trying to complete. Most of us have 'missing' people who seem to have vanished off the face of the planet... And we never stop learning how and where to search.

MaryA has asked you to post the information you used in your luckless search for your father and the steps you took. One of the search tips I learned very early on is 'less is more'. Don't put too much information into a search at the beginning. Things like 'Place of residence' can present problems because you don't know where a particular 'place of residence' is listed in the census returns. Occupation is another, because you don't know what was written on the Household Form by the head of household. The minimum could be just forename [with variations], surname [with variations], year of birth [plus/minus at least 2 years]. Variations in names is essential because names can get modified. Patrick could be entered as Ptk, John as Jn, etc. Then patiently 'filter' the results, perhaps first by county of residence, then by county/city/town of birth. Some search engines have a box for another person resident with the main search person which is another 'filter'.

I have had cause, or rather the necessity, to search using just a forename, approximate year of birth and place of birth, because the surname had been very badly transcribed, in fact mutilated!

The latest census you can see is the 1911 census so if your father was born after that date you will not see him on a census.

All service records post approx 1920 are still with the Army, RAF or Royal Navy so you have to apply to the relevant service for their records.

The First World War Army records were stored in a building that was bombed in the Second World War. Approximately 30% survived the subsequent fire and water damage. These are all filmed and on Ancestry.

As has been said earlier take it slowly. If you pm your home addressto me (don't post it on here) I will send you a copy of a small booklet one of the Southport group wrote that we use at our Getting Started sessions in Birkdale library.

Originally posted on other thread at 9.22 on 1 Dec 2012:-

The most recent available census is for 1911 so for most of us what we will find for our parents are their birth and marriage registration index records. The index records are useful because they give us the details ie name, district, year, quarter, volume, page to enable us to order the certificates.

The website record providers make it look easier than it is in their adverts. Buying certificates goes hand in hand with building a tree and using one website alone won't provide you with everything you need.


Blue

Blue70 wrote: The website record providers make it look easier than it is in their adverts. Buying certificates goes hand in hand with building a tree and using one website alone won't provide you with everything you need.

Totally agree with Blue here, but don't go throwing money around with another subscription, try some of the free sites for baptisms, marriages, indexes for Wills etc. a list here http://forum.liverpool-genealogy.org.uk ... =14&t=9947

and you will also find some good information here http://forum.liverpool-genealogy.org.uk ... =25&t=6937

Do we sometimes think it was so much easier when there were fewer sites available? it was certainly more of a struggle but we also spent more time looking things up at the Record Office.