Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy: The definitive reference guide to tracing your family history

SUMMARY

Recap of what to write down when making your initial notes:

• Your full name, dates of birth and marriage, names and dates of birth and marriage of your children and grandchildren

• The names and vital details of your siblings

• Your parents’ names, dates of birth, marriage and death if applicable

• The names and vital details of your aunts and uncles

• Your grandparents’ names, dates of birth, marriage and death if applicable

• The names and vital details of your great-aunts and uncles (the siblings of your grandparents)

• Anything you know about your great-grandparents, their siblings, and anyone who came before them

• Family stories you have heard and who told them to you

Widening Your Search: Talking to Your Family

Having written down as much information as you can about your forebears, it’s time to cast the net a little wider and draw upon the collective wisdom of your living relatives. Holidays such as Easter or Christmas, when the family tends to congregate, are often good times to begin your research, because festive gatherings tend to generate a sense of nostalgia, when folk naturally start to reminisce about happy times from the past, swapping anecdotes about relatives who may no longer be around to enjoy the festivities. If you can’t wait for a natural opportunity to arise, you can always organize a family reunion, making sure to invite as many of the older generations as you can. You will probably find that others are just as interested in your research as you are and will be eager to help you – story-telling is as much fun for the narrator as the audience.

Although you may have heard the same stories told year after year, there are probably plenty more that you haven’t heard, mainly because it’s easy to play down moments in one’s life that we think are uninteresting, but are actually fascinating to someone who wasn’t there. An ‘everyday’ childhood memory of growing up during the Blitz is still a powerful, unknown and chilling story to a later generation who have no concept of what it would have been like.

Aside from these colourful stories, it’s important to focus – as before – on simple biographical details of names, dates and places. This is why it’s important to talk to older members of the family; they can tell you about their parents and grandparents, folk that you are unlikely ever to have met other than in faded photographs. However, don’t forget to record details of their lives as well – where they lived, what their jobs were and, most important of all, what they were like as people. It’s all too easy to treat family history as an academic exercise, but these are the details you’ll want to pass on to other members of the family. You’ll be amazed at what you can uncover by spending several hours talking to a great-aunt – details of your grandparents as children, growing up in the countryside for instance, and working on a farm before moving to the city later in life. These conversations will peel back time and you’ll see your family in an entirely new light – your grandparents as children; your uncles and aunts as brothers and sisters; and generations of your relatives at work and play, in love and in mourning.

Sadly, many people leave it too late to start this important process, or simply don’t have any living relatives to help with this initial research. Whilst this makes things a bit harder, and removes the colour from the first stage of your research, it is still perfectly possible to start your family history from scratch, using the information on your birth certificate to find your parents’ marriage and birth certificates and then work back from there. If this is the case, the information in Chapter 5 will help you get started.

Interview Techniques

It may seem like the most natural thing in the world to sit down with your relatives and extract information, but in reality a great deal of planning ought to go into this process, not only to focus your attention on what you need to find out, but also to put your family at ease. After all, you don’t want them to think they’re about to face the Spanish Inquisition! It can be rather unnerving for both interviewer and interviewee at first, so you need to go out of your way to make the process as simple and fun as possible. For example, if you’ve set up a family gathering, you could even have a bit of fun and turn it into a game – initially asking the same few questions to everyone and comparing the answers afterwards to see who remembers the most, stimulating discussion and allowing you to focus on the most likely source of further information.

However, if you are spending time visiting members of the family individually, make sure you’ve compiled a clear set of questions, topics and people that you want to ask them about. Who was Great-aunt Alice? When was she born? Who was her husband, and when did they marry? Where was the ceremony? Did they live in the same area? So, Great-uncle Herbert was a farmer? Where was the farm? It’s also important to focus on one family member at a time, so that neither you nor your relative becomes confused. In general, you should concentrate on obtaining initial information about:

• Names, including Christian and nicknames, surnames and maiden names

• Dates of birth, marriage and death

• Places of birth, marriage, death and abode

• Occupations

Once you’ve obtained as much biographical data about a person as you can, it’s then time to ask about what the people were like. Having found out that Great-aunt Alice was born in London, but ended up marrying a farmer called Herbert in a remote part of Norfolk, the burning question is how did they meet? How did she adapt to life on a farm, having been brought up a Londoner? What was she like as a person?

This is where you’ll have to exercise your diplomatic skills, as people can ramble on a bit, and memory will play tricks if the events being described took place a long time ago. You will need to balance the desire to learn about a particular subject with the ability to let someone talk about their past without too much interruption, because we all love telling anecdotes. However, your relatives may not want to talk about everything that’s happened to them. Attitudes to illegitimacy have changed over time, and what to us is an interesting story might be a stigma that’s caused pain and misery for decades. If you sense that someone is uncomfortable talking about certain matters then do not force them to continue. It is better that you leave that topic of conversation so your interviewee does not feel pressurized. They may even decide to come back to talk to you about it at another time when they feel more comfortable.

‘If you are visiting family members individually, compile a clear set of questions, topics and people to ask them about.’

Alternatively, they might want to talk to a third party or non-family member about what’s happened to them. This is particularly true of painful memories that relate to war. You would be amazed how many former combatants don’t tell their families about their experiences to shield them from what they went through, but will happily talk to a military historian who they believe has a greater understanding. As a final resort, you can always suggest that your relative writes down their secrets in a sealed envelope and leaves it to you in their will. Although this may appear frustrating, it does give them the opportunity to take their secrets to the grave with them, yet still reveal what it was that they thought too sensitive to talk about.

If there is a particular story or person that fascinates you, it’s going to be important to talk to as many members of the family as possible, and compare different versions of the same tale – where accounts agree or overlap, there is likely to be a greater degree of truth. However, it’s going to be your job as a family historian to verify everything you hear, which is why good note-taking is essential to this process.

Oral history is invaluable to genealogists and historians, creating a living link with the past. It is preferable if you can record your interviews, because as each generation gradually dies out there are fewer and fewer people to speak to who remember a way of life that will never return, and can tell stories about colourful characters that would otherwise be forgotten by time. There are many ways of recording interviews now, so, if your interviewee gives their consent, make the most of the opportunity to video-record the conversation using a camcorder or digital camera. This way their memories and stories are preserved for future generations to watch and enjoy, and you could find a way of incorporating this material into a digital presentation of your research once you have finished. Ian Hislop made a very poignant observation when reviewing old cinefilm footage of his family on holiday: most of the time the camera was pointed not at his father, but at him – yet it was his father’s thoughts, feelings and stories that he wished to hear in later life.

‘Oral history is invaluable to genealogists and historians, creating a living link with the past.’

This is your chance to record your family, and you should urge them to be filmed – always respecting their decision to decline if they are really not comfortable with this process. At the very least, with permission try to keep a tape recorder handy to catch gems of information, and be sure to take clear, detailed notes that you will be able to go back to at a later date and decipher how each person is related, what details are relevant to which people, and who told you each scrap of information. It is important to keep a track of the sources of all your information so that you can return to that relation if you need to ask any further questions once you have begun your research.

Family Secrets and Myths

You should be prepared that you might find out more than you bargained for, and your discoveries may even change your perception of some family members. It can be exciting to uncover a skeleton in the closet of a distant relation who died long before your time, but there are often secrets kept within families even now that come as a surprise to a generation that is far more open than its predecessors.

Issues such as illegitimacy, adoption, bigamy and even criminal activity may creep into your family tree at some point in time, all of which will be discussed in greater detail in Section Three. If you do discover a potentially revealing aspect of a close relative’s past life, think carefully about how to deal with passing that information on to other family members or talking to the people it may have a direct effect on. It can take a long time before family secrets are accepted as being out in the open, and although moral values have changed so that what used to be considered scandalous behaviour is now not so, there are still many people who hold traditional values and find it difficult to discuss such behaviour. Furthermore, as the chronicler of your family’s history, it will ultimately be your research that becomes public knowledge, and your decision as to how much you tell people. Once information is out there, it can’t be taken back – so think long and hard before pursuing a family secret.

Verifying Information

While the information you glean from your extended family is vital to your research, be wary of believing everything you are told as fact. Oral historical accounts are invaluable, but are also subject to a certain amount of exaggeration and human error. Cross-reference the information you are given with lots of different family members, because details often get confused as time passes and people get older. Various individuals may have a contradictory account of the same event. The more information you are armed with, though, the easier your research should be. It is up to you to untangle the stories and find out who is right using primary sources in the archives.

HOW TO…

…avoid early errors

1. Cross-reference stories, accounts of names, dates, places and events with as many relatives as possible

2. Be wary of false relatives and aliases – establish exact relationships and find out everyone’s full names and nicknames

3. Use the second-hand information you are given as a guideline for your research rather than fool-proof fact

4. Be ready to substantiate everything with primary evidence

Never assume that dates and places you are told by relatives are correct, even if your source is adamant they are right. These are simply guidelines for you to follow to speed up the research process. Everything should be verified using official documentation where possible, such as civil registration certificates for births, marriages and deaths (described in Chapter 5) which will carry the official date and place that an event occurred. This is often at odds with the supposed ‘truth’ you were told by your family.

When collecting information from relatives, be aware that the names they knew ancestors by may not have been the same names they were christened and registered with. For example, Granddad Liam’s real name was actually Martin William, but he chose to use his second name, and then shortened that; Aunty Julie was actually born Mabel Julie. You will find that when looking for relatives’ documents in the archives it is essential to know their official name because you will usually need this to locate their records in alphabetical indexes. Nevertheless, if a relative was known by more than one name it helps to be aware of the various options, so that you have an alternative to look for if you do not find them under their official name.

False relationships can also be planted in the information you receive from other family members. For example, you may need to do a fair bit of pruning of the family tree to remove lots of aunts and uncles who earned the title through family familiarity rather than blood ties, as well as tidy up the loose use of ‘cousin’; Aunty Marie, who your Granny told you all about, was actually a close family friend rather than a blood relation, and Cousin Joyce may actually have been your Granny’s aunt, but because there was such a close age difference between them they were brought up more like cousins rather than aunt and niece. Make sure you gather the specifics about exactly how each person is related so that you are not misled in your research before it even begins.

Looking for Clues

Now that you have as many names from living memory on your tree as you can gather, along with dates, places and occupations to work with, it’s time to cast the net a little wider and start looking for physical clues. These can be tucked away in all sorts of unlikely places, such as in old boxes packed away in the attic or cellar; hidden in stuffed drawers; locked away in forgotten photo albums; or in safety deposit boxes in banks. You will be looking for a wide range of material, some of which may only take on a relevance once you’ve done a bit of initial research in archives. Given that you may not know precisely what you’re looking for at this stage, it’s important to try to get as many members of your family involved in the search for clues as possible, so that if anyone else stumbles across an interesting photo or family heirloom in the future they will let you know. Perhaps you will find some army medals or a wedding photo with names and a date on, giving you an immediate link to a military archive or the search for a marriage certificate. These forgotten objects can help immensely with your research, as they usually contain clues and spark up new lines of investigation.

Names and dates are often written on the back of old photos, regiment or ship names often inscribed on military and naval medals, or written on badges and uniforms; and all this memorabilia is evidence of your ancestors’ existence and can fill in the gaps that are no longer within living memory. On the other hand, if you come across family heirlooms and are unsure where they have come from, be sure to ask other people in your family that might know. You are bound to find old photos and not be able to name one single person in them, so why not scan them and email a copy round to the rest of the family to see if they can help.

Make a special effort to locate birth, baptism, marriage and death certificates, as these can help verify the information you have been given from relations and can save you the money you would otherwise need to spend ordering duplicate copies from the General Register Office (see Chapter 5). Any copies of other official records you can find that may have been kept, such as wills, title deeds and legal documents, are a great stepping stone for your research, giving you a concrete foundation to work from and often supplying you with more names to add to your tree. Wills are particularly useful because they very often name members of the extended family and explain how they are related to the deceased person, and indicate where someone lived, who their dear friends were and what they did for a living – as well as possibly lifting the lid on a family secret or two, such as an illegitimate child given a sum of money.

If official documentation has not survived you may be lucky enough to find newspaper articles about your relatives that are often cut out, kept and treasured, perhaps if somebody did something that deserved special comment in the local paper. Wedding announcements and descriptions of the special day were very popular in the nineteenth century; or if one of your ancestors was well respected within the local community, an obituary may have been written about them shortly after their death. As well as newspaper reports, school reports can be just as enlightening, giving you an idea of what that person was like as a child.

Some families used to keep a family bible, handed down through generations, in which details of births, baptisms, marriages, spouses’ names, deaths and special family events might be recorded. If you are lucky enough to have a surviving copy of this your workload will be instantly cut down. Family bibles can detail names and dates going back way to the early nineteenth and even the eighteenth century, and can often pre-date civil registration which, as you will see in Chapter 5, was first introduced into parts of Britain in 1837. As with all the sources you find, however, it is wise to double-check every bit of information that it contains against official records, because some family bibles may have been added to at a later date and could contain discrepancies.

Name patterns are usually a clue to the past. If an unusual first name or middle name has been passed down through a few generations, this can be an indicator that it was a maiden name of one of the women in your family tree that was passed down to her child and their subsequent descendants as a Christian name so that it was not lost after she took her husband’s surname. For example, Basil Fanshawe Jagger was the father of Mick Jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones; a few simple searches revealed that Basil inherited his rather unusual middle name from his mother, Harriet Fanshawe. Keep an eye out for these distinctive names among the documents you uncover and see if you can locate the original source of the name when you start your research in the archives.

Until the late twentieth century, handwritten or typed letters were the main form of communication between family members who lived apart. The advent of email and mobile phone communication has changed all of that, so that correspondence with loved ones can be disposed of with the click of a button. Therefore, old letters that have survived can be of tremendous sentimental value to family historians, as well as being a great practical research aid, giving not only names and addresses, but also an idea of your ancestor’s personality from their style of writing and sometimes giving an insight into their day-to-day lives. You should also look out for old postcards that can give you an idea of the kind of social standing your ancestor may have had. If they travelled abroad before cheap flights made this a common phenomenon, you will know that they probably lived quite well.

The First and Second World Wars produced an enormous amount of central government administration, a lot of which is stored safely in our national archives and is discussed in Section Three. But many of the by-products created by officialdom also ended up in people’s homes. Some soldiers held onto their discharge papers after they had completed their military service, or would have received letters granting them exemption from compulsory conscription into the army, and many of those that did serve received medals or kept part of their uniform apparel as a souvenir of their contribution to the war effort. If you can find documents proving that your ancestor fought during either World War, or even that they were in the army, air force, navy or merchant navy before or after the wars, these will give you an indication of where you need to start looking to find any more documents that may be held in the archives for them. If you have an idea of the date they served and their rank, this is often enough information for you to start with, as will be explained in Section Three. Most medals were awarded for service at a particular time or for specific battles or events, so if you do find medals around the house you can examine the design to identify what they were awarded for.

In addition to the military paperwork generated by the wars, a wealth of civilian material also survives from that era, such as ration books, letters to and from loved ones separated by conflict, and telegrams from the army informing next of kin of the death of a soldier, all of which illustrate how difficult that time would have been for your ancestors. Civilian documents issued at other times are equally informative, like passports with a person’s photo, vital details and stamps from the places they visited, or identity papers and naturalization certificates if they settled in Britain from a foreign country.