Thetownend.com

Has anyone done this?  Having my own child and watching Who Do You Think You Are? has left me wanting to do this.  Without going in to detail our family knows nothing about my Grandad on my Dad's side except his name.  I'd really like to find out more.  How you go about doing it is all online so I don't need a "how to" - I'm more after people's experiences and if its worth the time/effort/expense.

Thanks

Billy

I know Leefer has done this in great detail Billy.He would be the man to speak to buddy

I've done my family & traced back the line(s) through both sets of my kids grandparents. I've got back almost 500 years in some cases.
Most helpful place that I started was Genes reunited & the best resource is the census at least in the 19th Century.

Recently found letters from an ancestor to his wife when he was Captain of a privateer in the early 1700's. ie He was a legalised pirate.

The most facinating stuff was from the Luscombe family which came from Devon, & at one stage owned a large part of the County. It's a long story but the land was lost when a will was altered by someone by placing a pen in a dead mans hand after he was poisoned. A private detective was employed to look into it about 120 years after in the 1930's but he disapeared without trace after finding something. (His family never heard from him either & the rumour was that he was either mudered or bought off)

I got lucky.  A relative discovered that my late grandmother was descended from a family on which someone else had done extensive family research and published all the details on the web.  As a result, I know that I have a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather called William Kerby who lived in Devon and died in 1671.  Maybe he fought in the English Civil War?  Fascinating stuff.

Thanks both - much appreciated advice.

Agree that Genes Reunited is a good place to start as well as the census information from 1901 / 1911.
You will hopefully find that you share ancestors with people who already have their trees on Genes Reunited hence may have done a lot of the work already.

I'm guessing there aren't any good websites that do this but don't charge?

I think Genes will cost you a annual membership of around a tenner plus more if you want to do more than just basis searches.
Also, take a look at ancestry.co.uk as I think they have some introductory offers (e.g. 14 day trial etc).

And there's this:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

where you can search other people's records yourself for free.

My mum did our family tree (on her side). Previous owners of Harland and Wolff shipping company a few generations back. Also a strong link to the Duke of Northumberland. My nan's family used to have picnics with the Duke and were given a farm by the estate, but we can't find that missing link for me to claim my rightful title  8).

A great, great, great Auntie was Penny Marks (of Marks and Spencers). She invented the penny run or something. She married a chap who ran a jam factory (made some famous Yorkshire relish), but he was a drunk and the family disowned her.

I might have got this slightly muddled but they were the interesting bits I remember.

I know my Dad has got us back to about 1500's without great expense, think if you join ancestry.com or something like that you get all the census accesses etc.

The scary thing is how dull our family have been, essentially came from Bucklebury and Kingston Lisle, moved to Swindon in the 19th century to work in the factory and thats it!

Except that he has discovered that we are reasonably closely related to Tony Hatch - who wrote the music for Crossroads and Neighbours!

Other people have tried in my family, but its a bit of a eurotrash mongrel and so proved difficult.

We've got Danes (via Guernsey), Irish, German,Swedes and English. I don't think any were followed back more than 4 or so generations.

Surely if you going back to 1500's then that's what 25 generations ago? In powers of two that's over 33 million great (x whatever) grandparents. It's just selecting the people you think are impressive or putting more importance on random lines (down the mother or fathers). It's all pretty much nonsense.

I'm only looking to do three or four generations back from my old man really.

You could try this.
You can build your own family tree up also.
http://www.geni.com/home

I am sorry, it will be no help to you. But I did this for the German side of my family about 2 years ago. I am lucky we come from Bayern and they keep very comprehensive records that are available free, as a result I was able to trace once side of the family back to about 1390. Really nice stuff, seeing all the different names and looking back at where we came from is very emotional.

Me and the missus traced our roots back to 1806 very easily and in about 2 days with genes reunited and ancestry.com going back further than that is harder as the records arent really online so much prior to the census of 1801.

Be wary as a lot of the web sites are catering more for the American market rather than the british one.

We gt back to 1860 on my side but couldnt get past "Born at sea on voyage" the records didnt say where the voyage had come from all we know was it landed at Gravesend and after tracking what boats landed there it was basically from anywhere accross Europe or even a ferry from Tibury!

Its difficult when you get stuck but incredibly rewarding long term, but also not cheap because you will require some birth certificates to complete records.

Good luck.

Thanks all - I think I'll give it some more thought and have a word with my old man.  Might have to talk to the superior half as well if it will cost a fair bit.

Thanks, peace and love.

Billy

Hi Billy,it wont cost you alot,there are plenty of sites to get free info on,growing up i didn't know any of my family,but lots of research later has helped me find lots of info.
If you are serious about the whole tree then it will cost a little,but certainly not hundreds of pounds.

All the best with it and when you want to crack on feel free th PM me.

When I say not cheap I am talking about £7 to £8 per birth certificate, me and the missus did both our trees so it cost us more than just doing the one tree ancestry.co.uk (the best site) works out at £13 a month for each month or if bought as a year membership £9 a month, genesreunited is done on a credits basis with each search costing 5 credits and £5 gets you 50 credits so £5 gets you 10 searches.

We tried the freebies but you get stuck a lot and be prepared for following a lot of false leads.

In all for our two families to get fully (nearly) researched we put aside 3 months and with many birth certificates printed cost us approx £150 but we did have a fair few false leads that led to a few certificates being printed that we didnt actually need.

Well worth it though and worth the time put in, the wife put in 8 hours a day for a few weeks solidly as she is at home all the time, if you can access library records etc then even better and often cheaper than doing it online.

One thing that did come out of it though is that my wife has the poet Byron in her family and Capt Pilfold who was in charge of the Ajax at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Do it, you wont regret it.

Cheers Muffin Man. I will hopefully be able to do it looking at your post.

Agree,and remember all your future family get to keep it also if they want to once you have done it.

 Shears if you just want a basic tree....use ancestory.com.  It costs, but you can use it free from Swindon library. I know you live elsewhere, but the same facility might apply.

 I've got mine back to 18th Century descendants...essentially all my lot are either Wiltshire or Dorset, with the odd rogue in Hampshire, Gloucestershire or Somerset.

 The Dorset lot, have two areas....around Dorchester, or Cerne Abbas...home of the Cerne Abbas giant. Got gravestones in the churches and memorials to fallen in the war fighting fascism.

 Wiltshire lot, spike around Hullavington, if there's any Hullavington Reds, then we're probably related  :)