|
HJB posted:Part of what I do involves reverse genealogy of sorts, as in looking up people as far back as the 16th century, finding out about their lives, and picking up BMD information as I go. It's not too helpful for those working backwards but I can recommend a few sites to check out besides the ones mentioned. The main one is archive.org/, it carries a lot of stuff that's also on Google Books but there's plenty besides, plus the search is fairly intuitive, as is the reading function, and most texts come with (an automated) text-only version for Ctrl+F-ing through. This is a good recommendation. Like you implied, it's particularly good for old journals if you happen to have some ancestors from Massachusetts and thereabouts, as Google Books can get flakey with The Mayflower Descendent and the Register, even pre-1923. HJB posted:For British history in particular, you've got the National Archives (you can search freely for top-level information, but wills etc. you have to pay for to get the full thing), British History Online, which is mostly free to search and read, and for more localised information a good tip is to Google FamilySearch plus a place/church name, as the site has information on where to find records for practically every church in the UK, some of which will be free (Whitechapel St Mary for example has links to marriage records buried away in genealogy books hosted on the Internet Archive). I'll have to check this out. I have been meaning to follow up on a birth index record for Stepney in the 1850s. I'll also throw in FreeReg as a good source of indexed church registers. It helped me potentially close the loop on where two English immigrant siblings were born (I've been meaning to write in to a journal about my findings, since these two have already had maybe a half dozen articles mention them and their parents in the past 100 years)
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2016 02:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 11:46 |
|
|
My mother's intensive burst of research has been going into the female side of lineages since they tend to be under researched traditionally. So far my original settler lineage, founders of Salem, MA, has managed to avoid mention in the witchcraft trials. No longer; mom has tied a spouse to some of the witches. According to her research, Abigail Faulkner is a first cousin of mine. There is going to be so much work to fact check this poo poo in the future.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 17:12
|
|
|
My family (well, the family my grandfather was adopted by) got moved to Mexico by a minor noble along with all the serfs in their village. Cool stuff
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 17:42
|
|
|
Since the parish registers (baptisms, marriages, burials, etc) for my hometown prior to 1814 burned in a fire, I'm working on indexing the names from the church accounting records 1701–80. They contain some useful stuff like money paid for ringing the bells at funerals, yearly fees for the good pew seats & gifts to the church. I'm also cross-referencing with urbaria/rent-rolls (Jordebog etc below), censuses, fief & district accountings (which contain things like fines for extramarital sex, as attested by a very pious priest), copyhold records, muster rolls, probate records &c.  It's tedious work, but it's given me lots of solid info already. I've been able to go back to roughly 1700 on all but one of my ancestors from that area, and expect to be able to get back to 1650 for most of them when I'm done. Pretty good without parish registers, I think! 
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2016 17:29
|
|
|
Whoa I just found some earlier urbaria records in the archives, I may be able to go back to the 1570s! That's pretty wild, considering the town is officially stated as having been founded the late 15th century...
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 02:16
|
|
|
Very cool! Also lol at the fines for extramarital sex.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2016 22:28
|
|
|
Sex is serious business! At least the punishment was only a fine at the time, earlier it could also be forced public confession, whipping, & jail time. The fines were abolished entirely in 1812, don't know if that's progressive or not compared to other countries.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 13:00
|
|
|
Weird. I ordered & went through a bunch of rent-roll accountings from the 1660s & 70s last week, but this week I ordered the subsequent accountings from the 1680s, & the archives rejected my order because I should look at the microfilms instead of the original papers. The microfilm readers are such poo poo though, and it's impossible to get a good photo from the screen for later transcription. Hopefully I can get a permit or something cause having to do it by microfilm is gonna throw a spanner in the works. Did take about 1200 pics of accountings from the 1730s though. Now to sort them out!
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2016 17:52
|
|
|
I opened up my genealogy file for the first time in months upon seeing this thread just now and it's in a poor state. I'm half-tempted to start it again, as bone-headed as that would be. There are partly transcribed documents, no way to tell which people need researching, records located but not yet added to the database… and since I didn't realise I would be abandoning it, I didn't leave myself any notes about progress. To be fair, I've gone about as far back as I can without international travel or branching sideways to people I barely care about. And I'm not doing it alone; my father has a less rigorous tree of his own on Ancestry somewhere and a cousin made a poster of our grandfather's current descendants, which looks nice even though it's full of dating errors. Considering the objectives I had when I started – identify people I only hear about in my mother's stories and Christmas cards, and find out where my parents' surnames came from – it's as complete as it needs to be. Plus there's not much excitement in our tree - no convicts, no royalty, and a minor 19th-century composer who was long-assumed to be family turned out to be unrelated. Though we have had a master criminal or two: quote:"Railway fireman GW was proud of the garden he created on land by the track between West Minster and Queenborough. He grew fine crops, including a special lettuce called Ryders Long Standing, but produce was trampled or disappeared almost daily. After following a trail of earth, it appeared three men on night shift at the Gas Works were responsible. At Sheerness magistrates court JB pleaded quilty, but VH and HH denied involvement. They bragged no need to steal as they were earning 36 shillings a week [£1 16 shillings; ~200USD in 2016?] and able to afford food for the family. So the chairman of the bench decided they would have no problem in paying a fine of £1 each with 11 shillings and 8 pence costs."
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2016 08:25
|
|
|
Well you never know if someone will turn out to have been a criminal. Most families aren't too fond of passing on those stories – all of the crime stuff I've discovered in my own tree was completely unknown to us. The first one I discovered was the guy I mentioned earlier. I was looking at his probate, which mentioned that he was separated from his wife. I then found the separation records where he complained that they'd been through the courts a number of times, and I started checking out name indexes for the various courts in the places where my ancestor(s) had lived. I now do this for all ancestors and have found a lot of small stuff & some big stuff.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2016 16:36
|
|
|
Yeah my mom and her collaborators elsewhere in the family are starting to probe into some of the family secrets, like "why didn't great grandma so and so ever talk about her family?" So far she has called out a murder-suicide, and one old woman who was struck by a pickup truck and dragged to her death while walking to church  I kind of find it all fascinating really.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
Two direct ancestors on my dad's side hanged themselves. One, in 1879. His widow explains (my translation, trying to maintain the language of the time): quote:By request and sworn to Truth, she told that her deceased Husband stood up this Morning about 4:15 and that she began making Coffee while her Husband went to his Workshop to sharpen a Scissor, that had been delivered for Sharpening, wherewith the Deceased so did. When the Deceased went to sharpen the Scissor, she said that it might be best if she cut Food, but thereto the Deceased answered that it could wait some. When the Coffee was finished, she went to the Workshop and called her Husband and they went together to the main House where the Deceased drank Coffee. When he had drank this, the Deceased said that he needed to go to the Workshop and do something about his one Shoe, which he brought with him (Police Assistant Hein had been sent to the Workshop and returned with a Shoe that bore clear Signs of the Backpart having been taken off and it had not been used on the Ground) and added that she could cut food. She then cut Food and when she thought it was Time for her Husband to go to Work (it was about 5:30) she went to the Workshop and then found, that her Husband had hanged himself from the Workbench. He sat along the floor with the Legs stetched out in front and his Back against the Bench with the Head resting against the Workbench. She promptly grabbed a Knife from the Bench and cut him from the Noose and laid him on the Floor, whereafter she ran to her Neighbor Carpenter Peter Andresen, and the latter arrived with his Son Mason Emil Andresen; Peter Andresen also fetched Bathhouseowner Jensen. The Clothes of the Deceased were loosened, likewise his Neckerchief was cut off and the Deceased was warm still. He was then brought to his and her Living Room and laid in Bed without further being done to him other than his Clothes taken off, whereafter the Wife of Mason Andresen went into Town after a Doctor; whereafter Doctor Schiødt came about 7-7:30. She assumes that her Husband after drinking Coffee was only a half Score Minutes in the Workshop before she found him hanged. She assumes that her Husband's Motive was Monetary Worries. He, who was 65 Years old, had for some Years worked for Carpenter Hansen in Roskilde but when the latter closed his business he could no longer work there, and because he was old he did not take further Employ, but worked for himself. In the last 10 Days, the Deceased has worked for Consul Schram in Roskilde, and when the Deceased came home Yesterday Evening, he complained, what he had done for some time, about being tired and flat, and this Morning he said that he "probably could not go further" what she understood to mean that he would not go to Work in Roskilde Today. That is the only Reason that she can think of, and she cannot really grant its Validity, as though she and her Husband had little work, they did have no Debt in their House and some Money in the Bank, and their Children would also help them as best they could. (wherever it says "she", it says "Cptd:" which is short for "Comparentinden" ie comparent-ess, comparent meaning someone making a statement, but I didn't feel like working out how to write that in English without torturing the language even further.) The other hanged himself in police custody in 1881; the death certificate presumes "bibulousness" as motivation but unfortunately the police investigations on suicides from that jurisdiction/period have been lost (apparently they were shipped wholesale to the national statistics bureau, which destroyed them after collating whatever was needed).
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2016 09:59
|
|
|
Bilirubin posted:Yeah my mom and her collaborators elsewhere in the family are starting to probe into some of the family secrets, like "why didn't great grandma so and so ever talk about her family?" So far she has called out a murder-suicide, and one old woman who was struck by a pickup truck and dragged to her death while walking to church Agreed & by the way, can you talk about the murder-suicide? I'm morbidly curious.
|
|
#
?
Oct 25, 2016 22:35
|
|
|
Snapchat A Titty posted:Agreed & by the way, can you talk about the murder-suicide? I'm morbidly curious. Yeah, it was recent enough that there are articles available on it too. They were distant cousins not direct ancestors. Anyway, its a sadly common story. Wife filed for divorce. Man shot her, then himself. Now they are buried together, forever, which is another tragedy. So, I'm a Cubs fan. I've been reading a lot of stories leading up to the WS, and one was about Mr. Baseball Ernie Banks, who died a couple of years ago. The story detailed how the team paid for him to be buried in a cemetery not to far from Wrigley Field. The name rang a bell, and checking my mom's tree, sure enough, my great great grandmother and father are also buried there. They arrived in Chicago from Sweden 4 years before the Cubs' last win. In correspondence with the cemetery I learned where they are located roughly, but they are without a headstone. My parents and I are considering getting one now, because that has struck me as so sad. Anyway, next time in Chicago we'll pay them a visit.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 02:03
|
|
|
Ugh sorry I thought it was in your great grandmother's time. Though I guess that doesn't really make a difference, it's still people dying. Just something about the distance in time makes it less immediately sad (I don't know, maybe because they would be dead anyway?). How long are graves kept in America? I suppose you have enough space to keep them a good while. Here, graves are reused after 20 years if noone wants to pay for an extension. The headstones are thrown away & ground up for roadfill or what have you, though sometimes a church may save particularly old or interesting ones along the cemetery wall. Some of m great great grandparents' headstones are by the wall in my hometown.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 08:44
|
|
|
Snapchat A Titty posted:Ugh sorry I thought it was in your great grandmother's time. Though I guess that doesn't really make a difference, it's still people dying. Just something about the distance in time makes it less immediately sad (I don't know, maybe because they would be dead anyway?). Oh no big deal. It happened at least 40 years ago, to people I didn't know, in a place I have never been. No more emotional impact than any other such story--terrible, but people suck. I feel fortunate to have known some of my great grandparents--we're pretty long lived stock mostly. I knew both my maternal grandmother's parents (that great grandfather taught me how to shuck clams, and that grandmother made fresh donuts every morning that were killer), and both of my father's grandmothers (although very briefly and I was very young). RE: graves. I confess to not knowing much about that industry (except morticians since I teach anatomy), but I have never heard of graves being replaced like you describe--definitely only 20 years would be very unusual. As you say we are not starving for land.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 02:28
|
|
|
Snapchat A Titty posted:I'd like to take you up on that offer Ok, sorry for the late reply. The loose scrap of paper is interesting. Here is my guess: A lot of these registers were big books, left open somewhere, with new information filled in whenever it arrived. This was usually chronological only. But the book you described is both chronological and alphabetical, so it could have been a copy compiled sometime later, when they already had all the names of the kids who were born, and these were copied in chronological/alphabetical order. Now, for some reason this entry was left out in the new compilation and had to be reinserted later on a scrap of paper. My guess is the scribe who did the copying and alphabetizing simply overlooked it, and this was only noticed later, and it was added in (which is why it's in a different hand). I highly doubt the child was born outside of Amsterdam if there is no mention of it here. As for the other stuff, those questions are a bit too time consuming for me to answer right now. What I can do is poke around in the genealogy database in The Hague next time I'm there. They have files organized by family name and people who help you sort through this sort of stuff. So I'll keep it in mind. I have no idea when I'll be back in The Hague though, so please don't expect a quick response. Edit: Maybe there is something useful in the Amsterdam city archive so too, let's see when I have more time to help you with this.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 13:05
|
|
|
twoday posted:Ok, sorry for the late reply. Excellent, thanks! No worries about time, genealogy is a pastime for the patient
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 15:37
|
|
|
Snapchat A Titty posted:How long are graves kept in America? I suppose you have enough space to keep them a good while. Here, graves are reused after 20 years if noone wants to pay for an extension. The headstones are thrown away & ground up for roadfill or what have you, though sometimes a church may save particularly old or interesting ones along the cemetery wall. Some of m great great grandparents' headstones are by the wall in my hometown. Up here in New England they're kept...basically forever. I can walk or drive to just about any cemetery and see headstones from the revolutionary war era or earlier. Sometimes too you can come across a little family cemetery that isn't used anymore and see a dozen or so ancient headstones on the side of the road, or just visible from the interstate or even in the woods (most of the wooded area in New England is second or third generation forest, there isn't much original woodland so what is now a forest was likely farmland 150 years ago)
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 15:53
|
|
|
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2248/do-cemetery-plots-have-expiration-dates
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 16:17
|
|
|
Yeah it kinda sucks when I discover that someone was buried someplace fairly recently, cause the headstone will almost always be gone. There are several volunteers that have taken photos of gravestones and put them online though, so not all will be lost. Anyway, still working my way through the land accounting stuff and it's really starting to pay off. So far I've been able to add 9 great-8 grandparents and 3 great-9 grandparents on those branches. I also found an account of a fight that two of my great-8 grandparents were involved in: Peder Jensen Skaaning (byname meaning "of Scania") and Laurs Andersen Jyde (byname meaning "of Jutland") were both invited to the wedding of a daughter of "beach bailiff" Laurs Bjørnsen in easter 1714. A witness explains: "The witness was at the aforementioned wedding at Laurs Bjørnsen's, where then the witness rose from his seat and went to Peder Jensen Skaaning, who sat on a chair by the door and was pouring beer, and said "good afternoon, I hadn't seen you yet, Peder Jensen!" Then came Laurs Andersen and also bade Peder Jensen a good afternoon, whereafter the witness saw Laurs Andersen touch Peder Jensen with a flat hand upon the forehead, whereby his hat fell off. The witness remained standing, and Peder Jensen stood up and clapped the witness on the cheek and said "have I not paid my hat myself?" and then he said "have I not paid my hat myself?" to Laurs Andersen and took him by the hair, and the witness left as he did not want anything to do with the quarrel. He did not see anything else." Another witness explains further: "When the witness was in the living room, it was yelled out that there was a quarrel, whereby he immediately ran to stop it. The witness saw that Laurs Andersen and Peder Jensen stood in the kitchen and had each other by the hair, and in that moment the witness became aware that Laus Andersen had a knife in his hand, which he cut about him with, and cut the witness down his belly and through two shirts. Thereupon the witness grabbed Laurs Andersen's hand to make him let go of the knife, which he did. Thereafter the witness and another man separated them by pulling their hair." The judge asked both men if they could deny the events, which they could not. They were each fined 3 rigsdaler for fighting, and Laurs Andersen an additional 2.5 rigsdaler for pulling the knife but causing no bodily harm. I guess the witness wasn't injured. Some weeks later the county official comes by to collect the fines, but they can't be paid as both men own nothing of value. They were thus remanded to jail & forced labor, though it doesn't say for how long. In the summer of 1714, the beach bailiff himself and some other men are accused of brawling, but there are few details as they all confessed immediately & so no witnesses were needed. They weren't to my knowledge related to me, so I'm lucky it wasn't the other way around! e: It was their great grandchildren that married and both men were dead before they were born, so the story was probably forgotten by then. Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Oct 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 21:04
|
|
|
Here is a question for you (and the others). The great great grandfather whose grave I just located told a story my grandfather recorded and passed on to me :My grandfather posted:My grandfather said that at age 6 he saw his father and older brothers break through the ice in a sled—horses and all. Their home town was Gamleby, which means "Old Town," located on the east coast of southern Sweden. So something like that should have been recorded in a local paper presumably, although it is a small town? How would I go about searching for documentation? Perhaps a search for newspaper archives in Västervik would be more productive. The event would have been in 1845 if he correctly remembered being 6. I also am assuming they all died, since he goes on to tell another story about his uncle survivng a similar ice fall through.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2016 02:16
|
|
|
The Swedish Royal Library is digitizing historical newspapers: http://tidningar.kb.se Status & list of papers are here (plan is to scan 60 titles from 1645 and on, finishing sometime next year): http://feedback.tidningar.kb.se/viewtopic.php?id=69 I'm not too hot at writing Swedish, so searching is pretty hard (I can read it and translate it fine, though, if you need it). Try searching their names, or maybe drop by Skanditråden for some help on how to search. Related, for Danish papers: http://www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream/avis
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2016 02:40
|
|
|
Awesome, thanks for the links! I am actually trying to learn a little Swedish so this will be good practice, and I still have relatives there I am in contact with despite the passing of the original immigrants. e. also after reading the rest of my grandfather's letter, he does confirm they all died in the accident
Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Oct 28, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2016 04:59
|
|
|
This is a neat thread. Full disclosure - I am and LDS (Mormon) member that resides in Salt Lake. I grew up less than ten miles away from the Granite Mountain Records vault (aka "The Vault") which is literally just a cave that they dug out in the mountain where they keep all of the microfilm and stuff. I know that the OP was hesitant about using the resources from the LDS church regarding some of the doctrines/practices that are a motivation behind genealogy but I would be happy to answer any questions about it the best of my ability. As a quick side note you can request that any family tree stuff that you have completed be excluded from any ordinances. That said with my family history dating back in the LDS church to pretty early on there are some neat bits of information. My maternal Grandfather was adopted in Idaho. The man that adopted him was one of 12 children. His father was the son of an immigrant from Prussia (Germany) that joined the LDS church while in Preston, England (1838). He was studying to become a Rabbi, but changed to become a dentist and surgeon. He migrated to America to Nauvoo, Illinois. He spoke seven different languages and helped Joseph Smith Jr. learn Hebrew and German. He made the pioneer trek to the Salt Lake Valley and was the first dentist here in Utah. He made false teeth for Brigham Young. I have seen his dental tools on display at a museum even. My paternal side of my family to Sweden which is very neat. The furthest back line I have so far is like into the late 1500's.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2016 19:18
|
|
|
My father has occasionally mentioned a family tale about one of his grandfathers, Henry, getting a medal in WWI, but we could never find anything about it. Earlier this year he managed to get in touch with Henry's daughter, who gave a description of the medal itself (held by her brother, who isn't online), and we found out it was the Military Medal (awarded for "acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire"). Better yet, the medal has the text "H.T. Lastname" and his regimental number. I don't know much about military records, so when I went looking for more information and came up empty I moved on to the next mystery, though my father remained curious about what he did to receive it. Tried again today and found several records with the correct regimental number but under 'Harry Lastname' instead. 'Harry' signed up to a regiment on the other side of the country, about as far as possible from where we lived. If we didn't literally have the medal as evidence I'd assume it was a different person! Disappointingly, there's not much information - It looks like his service record might have been among those destroyed in the WW2 bombing. Still, one step closer - now we know what units he served in (ed: via the Victory/British War Medal record), and I get to redo a bunch of other searches with Harry Lastname just in case... edit 2: Found him in the (Edinburgh?) Gazette in October 1918, so I guess it was not long before that? Hitting dead ends otherwise. edit 3: Ah, in the London Gazette a few days earlier, that makes sense. Unfortunately apparently there's no chance of the citation existing, but checking the battalion war diary as a last resort. final edit: Listed in the diary in June with four others, identifying details only. Guess that's the end of that then. uvar fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Nov 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 09:00
|
|
|
I'm having a similar problem with an ancestor, going from one source to the next to find the specifics... I know he and his wife separated in 1863, and have obtained the case records for that. During a routine look through police registers, I found out that he'd been sentenced for fraud in 1859. So I went and found the case, and it appears that he due to poverty wished to enlist as a volunteer in the army. The case documents imply that this was not possible for a married man with children at the time, and so he and his wife had agreed to separate. He had obtained a writ from nearby innkeep Meisburger that stated he was not married. Apparently though, he was still married, as he and the innkeep were both sentenced for fraud. The writ itself was not in the police case files and since I want to see it, I kept looking. A note says that some of the documents were taken out to be used in another case against Meisburger and 3 others in 1862. This case was judged by the local court in 1863 and appealed to the supreme court the same year. So I found those case files in the supreme court's documents. Meisburger was never sentenced, as he died during the processing of the case, however it also says that some documents were extracted for a case against one of the 3 others, a commissar Albeck, for a case in 1870. The 1870 documents appear to be lost, though... In the box, there's a contemporary index of the 5 or so cases judged that day, but only one of them is actually in there (and as far as I can tell this case was not appealed)  It does appear from newspapers that Albeck was sort of a serial fraudster though, who specialized in tricking poor people with army excemption/volunteer writs. Perhaps I can find a later case against Albeck with the documents intact?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 11:48
|
|
|
Somewhat Heroic posted:This is a neat thread. Full disclosure - I am and LDS (Mormon) member that resides in Salt Lake. I grew up less than ten miles away from the Granite Mountain Records vault (aka "The Vault") which is literally just a cave that they dug out in the mountain where they keep all of the microfilm and stuff. I know that the OP was hesitant about using the resources from the LDS church regarding some of the doctrines/practices that are a motivation behind genealogy but I would be happy to answer any questions about it the best of my ability. As a quick side note you can request that any family tree stuff that you have completed be excluded from any ordinances. No offence intended, just find your doctrine for ancestral baptism a little problematic--mostly out of respect of the beliefs of my predecessors. None of that stuff really means anything to me. Besides, one of my ancestors that first moved from Sweden to the US was LDS so all this is already in the system already anyway so, pragmatically, no big whoop. Maybe we're related even. I was supposed to have attended a conference in SLC last week but I am still not cleared to fly so vOv. I would have headed to the archives had I been there.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2016 06:18
|
|
|
I passed on my findings about Henry/Harry to my father, but neglected to point out that the citations were gone, so he went looking and found one anyway! From The 25th Division in Flanders and France by Malcom Kincaid-Smith: quote:...Pte. Collins and Pte. Nevitt as stretcher bearers were most noticeable and thoroughly deserved the decorations awarded them. It's not a lot, but it's more than I had expected to find at this point, and is compatible with the rest of the legend that I'd forgotten about (that he got the MM for rescuing an officer who got the VC, which is trivial to disprove, but maybe inflated from a Military Cross or something). Despite the book being public domain and digitized by Google, they only have a limited-preview version of a more recent publication so I'm slowly scraping another source and will eventually find out the context. But looks to be ~25 April 1918 in Kemmel, which is apparently part of the Battle of Lys/4th Battle of Ypres.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2016 11:13
|
|
|
uvar posted:I passed on my findings about Henry/Harry to my father, but neglected to point out that the citations were gone, so he went looking and found one anyway! From The 25th Division in Flanders and France by Malcom Kincaid-Smith: Wow nice! Presumably that bit is based on the now-lost WWI service records then?
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2016 14:58
|
|
|
Powaqoatse posted:Wow nice! Presumably that bit is based on the now-lost WWI service records then? Something like that - it was first published in 1918, and the author served as an officer elsewhere in the division. The stretcher-bearer stuff is probably a summary of the original citation.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2016 00:27
|
|
|
I've been tracing things back from my paternal grandad, both he and his parents died in their fifties so family history on that side isn't very good. His mother is turning out kinda funny. She has a very distinctive name, but it has four variations in spelling, so everything has to be searched extra times. Her birth certificate is from 1881, but I've also seen D.O.B.s of '85 and '83. Her true age would be the same as the guy she married, so maybe she didn't want to appear older than him? Perhaps they just didn't really track it. Today I got my Grandfathers military record and the on the enlistment paperwork he stated that she was from Ireland! (Actual birthplace: Surry Hills, Sydney) She was already dead for 10 years by then, so who knows how that misinformation came about. Anyway, I'm compiling it all and giving it to my dad for christmas.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2016 02:17
|
|
|
Thanks for sharing!! There can be multiple reasons for mismatching ages/years of birth. The most common one is that census records were self-reported, so if someone said they were so&so old, that's what the census taker wrote. After ~1850 though, that's usually no more than 1 year off (in the olden tymes, at least in Denmark, they counted from the first year: a new born was in their first year & so was 1 year old in the census; some older people kept doing that even after it became normal that you were 1 year old on your 1st birthday). I do have a remote cousin though that I had a really hard time finding for a while. I knew that she had 3 children out of wedlock in the 1860s, but after that poof gone. And there are very good searchable indexed sources for that area of Denmark. Eventually I found out that she had married a guy, taken 10 years off her age, and then gradually added them back on as time passed. Their marriage record states the correct age, but then the census the year after states her 10 years younger. Then 5 years after, she's only 8 years too young, and so on until she died at her correct age. I told another Danish genealogist about this weirdness, and he said that one of his ancestors had stopped using his middle name & pretended 5 years younger/older (I forget which), in order to avoid the police catching up with him for unpaid alimony. So far I haven't found any police - or any other - reason for my age-changing woman, but there can be many reasons & they're all worth looking into imo. Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Nov 12, 2016 |
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2016 02:36
|
|
|
I'd love to do more, but it's getting pretty expensive. I got the 4 most important certificates and bam, that's $80 down the drain. Ancestry has electoral rolls behind another paywall (Just descovered that I might be able to access them via the library) and I tried the shipping records to get when they came over to NZ, but I can't really ID them properly if I don't know the destination port.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2016 04:58
|
|
|
Jaguars! posted:I'd love to do more, but it's getting pretty expensive. I got the 4 most important certificates and bam, that's $80 down the drain. Ancestry has electoral rolls behind another paywall (Just descovered that I might be able to access them via the library) and I tried the shipping records to get when they came over to NZ, but I can't really ID them properly if I don't know the destination port. I did notice that there's not a lot of publicly accessibly stuff on Australia. One of my grandmas cousins emigrated around 1920 and lived & died in Woolloongabba. I eventually tracked him down via the Australian National Archives RecordSearch. Then I did have to order the actual documents, but I didn't mind (cheaper than an aeroplane after all). I got the inquest with statements from his neighbors about his health and all, it's really sad actually, but it's part of my family history and some of the things I find sometimes help my parents put a finger on "oh so that's why they so~and~so" All along the way I got a ton of help from rootschat.com members though, so I very much recommend them to all who are searching in the current & former commonwealth! (also I forgot if I mentioned, but I'll be happy to help with Scandinavian research). I have no words but good for that forum, they really know their poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2016 05:35
|
|
|
Learned that I'm actually Mostly English instead of mostly Irish. Turns out my grandfather's parents actually moved to Ireland from England before eventually moving to America. His parents had died at one point and he was in an Irish Orphanage. He was rather young (less than 5) so he always thought he was Irish. Funny what little things come up.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2016 05:22
|
|
|
I had a quick look at rootschat today, looks like a potentially very useful site, so thanks for that recommendation! Got lucky earlier in the week. A g-g-grandfather was a member of a the foresters friendly society, a sort of insurance co-op which probably also had a heavy social element. Probably because of this, he got a 500 word obituary instead of a typical death notice in the paper. So suddenly I'm able to narrow down searches in virtually every respect and flesh out a whole branch of the family tree. For example here's the ship they came out in, the Woodlark.(courtesy artuk.org) There were two couples, the guy I mentioned and (almost certainly) his brother + their wives and one child:  The arrival of the ship caused a stir because it arrived under the flag of quarantine, scarlet fever had broken out on board and there were 18 deaths over the 4 month journey. The child I mentioned died the day before landfall, virtually all the fatalities seem to be children. I think this was when the emmigration bandwagon was well underway and they would pretty much pack ships to bursting with immigrants, in this case the departure was very hurried and a family that was recovering from the disease was allowed on board.I've learned a lot about searching in NZ and NSW, so hopefully I'll be able to do a bit of a post on the resources available before the end of the year. There's still a few more things I want to try before I call it a day.
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2016 23:36
|
|
|
Nice progress! An overview of what sources you've found would be awesome I went & visited my grandma's brother last weekend. He's 97 years old but still fresh as you wouldn't believe. He bikes to the beach pretty much every day all summer & takes a swim. I'm in awe. We had some coffee & cake that my mom (his niece) baked, and just talked about old stuff & I got to borrow a couple of his photo albums  His mother (my great grandmother) when she was around 20, with her "unit" in the Salvation Army:  The left flag says "blood and fire" 
|
|
#
?
Nov 26, 2016 01:13
|
|
|
Don't die, thread I'm steadily working through the old accounting stuff, and discovered from a copyhold lease that my great-9 grandfather came from Sweden to my hometown during the Scanian War in the late 1670s, probably as a fugitive. He was likely born around the time of the previous war, where Denmark lost Scania to Sweden. The lease mentions his birth-parish, so I'm trying to figure out if I can trace him back further in Sweden. I've gotten another branch in the town back to a great-11 grandfather, who was born before 1620 at the latest, so that's 200 years before the earliest extant church records! This is all possible because for each lease, the accountings mention if who takes over is the son or son-in-law of the previous holder, or sometimes marrying the widow. Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Dec 9, 2016 |
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2016 17:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 11:46 |
|
|
I'm still gonna do that post about the antipodes, I'm just still finding more things to search! Tomorrow I'm going to try and find the birthplace of a couple of people in Ireland and then I'm going to concentrate on presenting what I've found. Great-great-great grandad shot a bushranger! I thought he must have been a convict, but he was a soldier who became one of the first mounted policemen in New South Wales. His son's slum house got torn down and replaced by police station that is a true monster of the brutalist art. I wonder what he would have thought of that. Good work on the land records. I've ben using a bunch in Sydney to plot where all these people live.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2016 13:25
|
|