My Genealogy

Researching in circles

2006-01-05T00:29:00.000+13:00

I mentioned in my previous post that you should always check your sources. Sometimes even the official sources add confusion.

When I first began researching my family tree I got some information from someone about my anscestors coming to New Zealand in 1873 on the ship Rooparell. They can be seen in the passenger list and are:

Charles Double, aged 27
Ellen Double (Wife of Charles), aged 24
Charles Double, aged 3
William Double, aged 7 months

The other information I received was that Charles (full name Charles Cornelius Double) and Ellen (Ellen Elizabeth Humphrys) were married in the 4th quarter of 1869, Mile End, England. Ellen's parents were Oliver Charles Humphrys and Sarah Saulter and she was baptised on 21 Nov 1847, died 21 Oct 1927.

This was a huge help to my research. I had absolutely no information on the Double side of the family at that time. And here we learn how even official sources cause confusion.

I orded Willam's birth certificate. He was born in 1873 in Mile End, London, just before their journey to New Zealand. That birth certificate lists the parents as Charles Double and Ellen Double, formerly Humphreys. So that data seemed to match fine.

Next I got Ellen Elizabeth Double's death certificate. She died in Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand of heart failure. Her parents were not listed but there last name was shown as Humphreys and occupation of father as Tailor. Again, all matches, great!

Next came Charles Cornelius Double's death certificate. He died in Auckland from a cerebral haemorage, aged 74. The death certificate lists his parents as being James Double and Mary Double, Grocers. Uh oh, this doesn't match the information I originally got which had the parents as Cornelius Double and Mary Fletcher.

To further compound the issue, his wife is shown as Helen Elizabeth Double. This is close enough to 'Ellen' to be a possible error in the way the name is heard.

To clear things up I looked up the marriage record for Ellen and Charles. There wasn't one for an 'Ellen Humphrys' but there was a marriage between Charles Cornelius Double and Elizabeth Humphries. Slightly different spelling of the last name but that's pretty common. Is it normal to use their middle name sometimes though? There is an Ellen Humphries that got married in 1869 (the same year of marriage, different quarter though) but to an different person.

I ordered the marriage certificate and it added yet more different data. The dates for the ages on the certificate match up and Charles' father is shown as 'Cornelius Double' which matches the information I received but not the death certificate. Elizabeth has the father listed as 'James Humphries' and the marriage was witnessed by 'James and Sarah Humphries'. The father hear is different to the father I got in my infomrtion originally.

So where to from here to try and find out what the real information is? Currently I'm ordering the birth certificates of the other children of Charles and Ellen to see if they have more details. I'll also look up Ellen's birth record and order her certificate. That should confirm the parents. I'll do the same for Charles.

Here's hoping this other data doesn't add more confusion! Currently I'm working on the theory that the parents on Charles' death certificate are likely to be wrong - death certificates tend to be a less reliable source of information due to the person providing the information maybe not knowing.

I suspect that Ellen is the same person as 'Elizabeth' and her father really is James. Interestingly the occupation of her father on her death certificate (Tailor) is the same as on her marriage certificate so that's promising.

The moral of this post is always check your sources. And then, don't necessarily trust them! Cross check them with other sources.

Categories: genealogy, uk, newzealand

Surprises on the Internet

2006-05-28T13:10:00.000+12:00

It's funny where you can run across information about your family. Some of my anscestors are from Pitcairn Island and I have a lot of interest for Pitcairn related information. I run a Pitcarn News website for example.

On a Pitcairn related mailing list I saw a post about a document containing stamps and an old Pitcairn postcard.

One of the items in the document was a 'parcel clipping' from 1943 and it was addressed to my Grandparents! A screenshot of it is here.

I emailed the author, Mark Butterline, of the document giving them some background on the sender and recipients. The sender was my great grandfather and postmaster of Pitcairn Island, Roy Clark.

Apparently the parcel clipping was part of a Pitcairn Exhibit by Mark at a major stamp show in Toronto last month. According to Mark the judge was particularly impressed with the parcel clipping and the exhibit won a national gold.

The exhibit is also being shown at the 2006 World Philatelic Exhibition in Washington which is on at the moment.

Categories: pitcairn

NZ Births, Deaths and Marriages on Microfiche

2006-02-03T00:02:00.000+13:00

In a previous post I wrote about the New Zealand Births, Deaths and Marriages indexes on microfiche. These can be viewed at some public libraries and other places. It's also possible to purchase the microfiche from the Department of Internal Affairs.

I contacted them for prices recently and they turn out to be fairly pricey if you want the whole lot. The indexes are broken down into smaller pieces though so you could build up a collection over time. The prices for the birth indexes on microfiche are:

Years	Cost ($NZ)
1840-1900	$199.00
1901-1920	$175.00
1921-1930	$87.00
1931-1940	$92.00
1941-1950	$136.00
1951-1960	$175.00
1961-1970	$177.00
1971-1980	$281.00
1981-1990	$281.00

Death indexes on microfiche are:

Years	Cost ($NZ)
1840-1900	$78.00
1901-1920	$73.00
1921-1930	$105.00
1931-1940	$105.00
1941-1950	$105.00
1951-1960	$105.00
1961-1970	$105.00
1971-1980	$105.00
1981-1990	$105.00

Marriage indexes on microfiche are:

Years	Cost ($NZ)
1840-1900	$105.00
1901-1920	$115.00
1921-1930	$215.00
1931-1940	$215.00
1941-1950	$215.00
1951-1960	$215.00
1961-1970	$215.00
1971-1980	$215.00
1981-1990	$215.00

In New Zealand there used to be a seperate register for births, deaths and marriages of Maori. The indexes for these cover the years 1911 through to 1961. If you are researching names and you are unsure if they are of Maori descent it can be worthwhile to look through these indexes. The price is $150.00 for the entire register covering all years and births, deaths and marriages. I'll write more about the Maori registers in a future post.

Interestingly the price list also shows a price for an electronic copy of the records rather than a microfiche copy. The prices for these are much more expensive. For example an electronic copy of the Maori births is $3,000.00. For the general register of births it's $474.00 per quarter or $225.00 per month. Ouch! I'm not even sure what format this is in. I'll try and find out what exactly an electronic copy is.

It would be nice to have a scanned in version of all the microfiche available on CDROM or DVD, fully indexed to facilitate searching in a similar manner to what services line 1837online have for the UK registers. Even better would be to then OCR or have volunteers manually enter the information to provide a freebmd type service for New Zealand. If anyone knows of such a service that is planned leave a note in the comments as I'd be very interested.

Categories: genealogy, newzealand, bmd

Maori Birth, Death and Marriage index

2006-02-15T23:17:00.000+13:00

I mentioned previously that there was a seperate record for Maori Birth, Death and Marriage information.

For marriages this registered operated between the years 1911 and 1954. Prior to 1911 only marriages between Maori and Pakeha were required to be registered and these appear on the standard registry.

Births and Deaths were recorded on the seperate register for Maori between the years 1913 and 1961. After these times the entries were registered in the standard Birth, Death and Marriage registries.

If you are searching for ancestors in the indexes and you know them to be of Maori descent it is important to check both the Maori register and the general register just in case. In may pay to check the surnames in the Maori register in case there is Maori ancestry you are unaware of.

A nice thing about the Maori register is that for the entire year range it is in alphabetical surname order. The general register is in alphabetical order for each year so it requires you to look information up for each year if you don't know the actual year of the event. The Maori register requires just a single lookup under the surname.

The NZSG Maori Interest Group has some good tips for looking in the Maori registry:

When searching the BMD Indexes for Maori entries, you must be aware of looking under both an individual’s first and last names and any aliases used as before 1900 Maori surnames were not commonly used – Maori people usually had both a tribal name and also a name easy for Pakeha to pronounce. Maori of Pakeha descent may also have used their father’s name and a Maori translation of that name.

Categories: genealogy, newzealand, maori, bmd

Update on NZ BDM Microfiche

2006-02-15T23:10:00.000+13:00

Further to my post about the New Zealand Birth, Death, and Marriage indexes on Microfiche, I received information today on what the electronic copies are.

The microfiche indexes are for the years 1848 to 1990. After that the records are available in electronic format, not on microfiche. Unfortunately the electronic copies are much more expensive than the microfiche formats.

Categories: genealogy, newzealand, bmd

Birth, Marriage and Death certificates for England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland

2006-02-01T00:33:00.000+13:00

I've recently had the site bmd-certificates.co.uk pointed out to me as a resource for getting birth, death and marriage certificates for England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

I've previously ordered certificates for England from the online ordering system of the GRO but this requires you to know the GRO index numbers and can involve a fair amount of time and research. The situation for Ireland seems even more difficult as I've not found an online index search site. There is a pay site for Scottish research which seems quite useful but I've not subscribed to take a look.

What I like about what the bmd-certificates.co.uk website is that it offers to do the research for you and you can't complain about the following policy from their main page:

If you do not have every detail for your certificate, please do not worry, because if we do not find an entry based on the information you give us, we will give you a complete refund.

If there is any doubt, or a choice of entries, we will consult you, and will not act until we hear your decision. If you decide not to proceed, we will give you a compete refund.

Recently I've been helping a friend with some family research and just today I got the New Zealand birth certificate for one ancestor which showed the parents as being from Ireland and Scotland. So the information about the bmd-certificates site was quite timely. A quick search through Ancestry picked up nothing about the people so I will probably try bmd-certificates out for at least one of them and report back here on how it went. The two people concerned are:

Patrick Joseph McCarthy, Born about 1892, Limerick,Ireland
Susan Mary Devons, Born about 1894, Bellshill, Scotland

They were married in Wellington, New Zealand on 21 July 1917. I'm keen to try and get their birth certificates but the only date of birth I have is approximate, calculated from the birth certificate of their son, by subtracting their ages on the certificate from the date of birth.

Categories: genealogy, scotland, ireland, bmd

New Zealand Birth, Deaths and Marriages

2006-01-24T01:06:00.000+13:00

The Births, Deaths and Marriages office is where you need to go to get certificates for New Zealand citizens. There is no online ordering method so you need to either call them on the phone or visit their offices.

The price is currently $20.00 if the event took place after 1874 and $26.00 if it occurred before then. Make sure they charge you correctly. Recently I ordered the certificate of someone born in 1859 and I was only charged $20.00. Unfortunately a week later I got a letter in the mail telling me I had to pay the extra $6.00 before they would send me the certificate. It's a shame they couldn't ring or email me since my contact details were part of the request.

Apart from that glitch I've always found the service very fast and efficient. Make sure you ask for an electronic printout and not a certificate. The electronic copy of the record has more information and is in the original writing. This helps to prevent transcription errors from someone typing onto a certificate or missing information (like marriage witnesses).

It helps to look up the particular person you are looking for in the birth, death and marriage indexes first. This will give you a folio number you can use to reference the record when making your request. It will also ensure that there is actually something for them to find without them having to do a search. The indexes are available at the birth, deaths and marriage office and some local libraries also have a copy.

On the birth certificate you'll often get the parents names, ages and birth locations. You'll get the mothers maiden name and if you are lucky their dates of births as well.

The marriage certificate often contains the parents names (or the fathers at least) of the bride and groom.

The death certificate will give cause of death, where they died, age at death, where they were buried and details on living offspring, spouse and parents.

Categories: genealogy, newzealand

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey

2006-01-07T02:23:00.000+13:00

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey is a fun website to search through, or even just to browse. It is a fully searchable online edition of all proceedings of the Old Bailey in London from 1674 to 1834.

When searching, you can search via keyword, surname, and place amongst other things. For example, a list of all people with the surname of Double can be obtained. From there we can see a number of people with the surname of Double, both as defendants, Jury members and victims. The original text of the proceeding can be read:

Thomas Street and John Double , of St. Andrew's Holbourn, were indicted for burglariously breaking the House of John Airy , and entering in the Night-time, and stealing a Gown, a Stuff Gown, two Pair of Stays, a Wastecoat, two Pair of Breeches, and other Goods , the 19th of March last.

An especially cool feature is clicking on the location of the event, and seeing an old map with that location identified. Even without looking up crime information it makes a useful map search!

It proves to be a useful genealogy tool as you can search for ancestors to see if they ever appeared before the Old Bailey, or search for the areas they lived in to get maps and information on crimes that occurred in that area.

Categories: genealogy, uk

The Double Surname

2006-01-06T01:12:00.000+13:00

One of the surnames I'm most interested in researching in my Family Tree is 'Double'. In a previous post I mentioned that my line of the Double's came to New Zealand in 1873 on the Rooparell.

Looking through the New Zealand Births index I saw a number of Double's that were born prior to this date. Mostly in the Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill areas - basically the South Island of New Zealand. I was curious about the origin of these Double's and came across Richard and Judith Green's web page. They have a large section on the Double surname as well as a portion specific to Double's in New Zealand.

While there appears to be no relation to my line of Double's, they are definitely the ones that arrived in Timaru. As is mentioned on that page, they came on the Strathallan, arriving in 1859.

The first birth's of Double's I found in the NZ Birth index were:

Janet Double, born 1859, Otago, Dunedin
Amelia Double, born 1861, Dunedin
Eliza Double, born 1861, Timaru
Alfred Martin Double, born 1862, Timaru
Susanna Double, born 1862, Dunedin

I've hyperlinked Eliza and Alfred's entry to the relevant part of the Green's family tree. I see no mention of the Double's born in Dunedin though. I wonder if Janet and Amelia is part of the Timaru branch, or another group of Double's?

Categories: genealogy

Ages on certificates

2006-01-06T00:35:00.000+13:00

This thread from Family Tree Magazine's forums has some reasons for why ages on certificates may be incorrect.

In the cases mentioned in the threads it was related to the age that people needed to be before they were allowed to marry without parental consent. It seems that in a number of instances the person would add a few years to their age so they wouldn't need parental consent to marry. The result of this is an incorrect age on the certificate making it difficult to go from there to the birth record. As the last poster in the thread says:

NEVER believe any age given on certificates or especially, the census

I spent today working through some New Zealand and UK birth records going through each year looking for names. It's a tedious task! At least with the UK records you can often do a search on Ancestry or FreeBMD but the New Zealand records are not online.

Categories: genealogy

Check all sources

2006-01-05T00:16:00.000+13:00

It pays to check sources of information that you receive from others, even if you are sure that it is likely to be accurate. I've come to the belief that if you haven't sought the source of the information yourself, it quite probably isn't true!

Information from other people's research is still very useful of course. It provides leads, names and dates to research that can give you new information. And even if you can't confirm things it makes good information as a 'may be true' within your genealogy research.

One example I came across recently was looking for the date of birth of Frederick Rowland Williams. I did not know his birth date of location but did know that he was married to Elvina Imogene Clark. Getting the marriage certificate gave me an age which gave me an approximate date of birth and the location as London, England.

Usually I'd search through the birth, death and marriage indexes over a date range to find the date of birth details but 'Williams' is a common name and there were many entrys.

Talking to family members I got a date of birth as '2 Jun 1923' but nothing in the UK indexes had an entry. Another family tree from an aunt who research some of that side of the family had the date as '2 Jan 1922' and that was a dead end when looking in the indexes as well. Finally I 'bit the bullet' and worked through the indexes from 1925 down. I finally found an entry for 'Frederick Rowland Williams' in the 3rd quarter of 1922, born in West Hampshire.

I still do not know if this is my F.R Williams, but the entry did show the mothers maiden name as 'Mayers' which matches so am reasonably confident. I'll order the birth certificate and check the details too confirm but I'm reasonably confident.

But that shows there were three different sources for the date - so it was worthwhile crosschecking the information.

Categories: genealogy, uk

New Zealand Historical Data

2006-01-02T00:00:00.000+13:00

I did some exploring on the net today to see what New Zealand specific genealogy resources are avaialable online and came across a couple of interesting ones.

The New Zealand Historical Data site has information on Fires, Earthquakes, Missing Persons and other information, It makes fascinating reading.

The list of earthquakes dates from c1460 through to 1854. For example, the report of an earthquake c1460 which created Miramar Peninsula, where I used to live:

Date  Place   Magnitude  Reference
Circa 1460 Wellington  7.5+   (6)
 Known in Maori tradition as "Haowhenua" which indicated that uplift
 rather than subsidence occurred. "The channel between Motu 
 Kairangi and the mainland became shallow enough to wade and 
 eventually silted up to convert that island into the present Mirimar 
 peninsula."

The weather section provides insight to what the weather was like for most months from 1868 through to 1900. From September 1880:

September
Remarkably fine and pleasant weather for time of year. In every
case the temperature is above the average; the rainfall on the
whole is much less than is usual for this month. Winds generally
moderate.

Genealogy Index has a database of births, deaths, marriages, in memoriums, anniversaries, school and shipping information for the Wellington region gained from Wellington newspapers published daily since 1999.

Categories: genealogy, newzealand

New Zealand Cemetery Records

2006-01-01T03:09:00.000+13:00

I mentioned in my previous post that the Porirua Library genealogy section has the New Zealand cemetery records on microfiche.

This collection of information contains a variety of information about cemeteries within New Zealand. Some of it provided by the cemteries and councils and some of it by volunteers. For a particular cemetery it can contain maps of the cemetery, historical information, burial records, cremation records and even transcripts of headstones (the latter usually provided by volunteers).

The headstone transcriptions can sometimes contain useful information about partners, children, birth and death dates, etc. Most of the entries include a location of the grave within the cemetery so you can find it easily should you visit.

To start a search through the records it's easiest if you have the death certificate information. This often lists the cemetery where the person was buried or cremated. This is useful for areas that have a large number of cemeteries. If you don't have the name of the cemetery it becomes a matter of looking through each cemetery within the area. Which can be quite a job if it's a large area!

As an example, I had the death certificate of Charles Double, died 4 Aug 1921. From that it showed he was buried at Waikumete cemetery. There is a booklet at the library that lists all the cemeteries in alphabetical order and the microfiche the information is on. This is very useful as with just a cemetery name it can be difficult to find sometimes.

I looked up the microfiche for Waikumete and it contained a map and historical information followed by various indexes of names for the people buried there depending on what section they were in. I looked up 'Double' at it gives an index number. Later on in the fiche I found the entry for that number giving the entry:

"In loving memory of Charles Double died 4 Aug 1921 aged 74 years and his beloved wife Ellen Elizabeth died 21 Oct 1927 aged 81 years."

It also gave the location of the grave. I'll be heading up there sometime to take a photo.

Some entries don't have transcriptions, they just have the burial record. This was the case for another entry I was looking for. I knew the person was buried in Whakatane but not what cemetry. I looked through each cemetery looking for the name and found them in the index for Hillcrest cemetry. They only had burial records so no transcription but it did give the date of death, age at death and the plot number with a map.

Some cemetery records are available online but it requires going to each individual cemetery or council site and using their own search protocol, or reading through PDF documents. I've not done this yet but will with some of my other records and see how easy it is to use.

Categories: genealogy, newzealand, cemetery

New York Immigrant Search

2005-12-31T03:15:00.000+13:00

I haven't started searching any US based databases for anscestors yet but I'm keeping note of interesting sites containing information that may help when I get to it. One of these is the Ellis Island passenger search.

Ellis Island was known as the 'Gateway to America'. According to the website it's estimated that nealy half of all Americans today can trace their family history to at least one person who passed through the Port of New York at Ellis Island.

They have a page on their website which shows some case studies of family research that involved Ellis Island as well as a list of known famous arrivals.

Categories: genealogy, usa

Porirua Library Genealogy Section

2005-12-31T01:34:00.000+13:00

I use the General Register Office to order UK birth, death and marriage certificates for anscestors from England.

To order a certificate you need something known as GRO index reference information. The GRO index reference information comprises the quarter, year, district name, volume number and page number of the record requested.

Some of this information is available online using services line Ancestry, FreeBMD or 1837online. The definitive collection is held on microfiche and available at various places.

What suprised me is the Porirua City Library has an extensive collection of genealogy information, including the GRO indexes on microfiche. Porirua is about 20 minutes drive from where I live so I went in today to do some research.

The genealogy section in the library has lots of stuff. This includes:

GRO indexes on microfiche for 1837-1930
IGI information on microfiche
English census CDROM's and computers to use them on
Reference book section specifically for genealogy and New Zealand history
Index of New Zealand birth, deaths and marriages on microfiche
Cemetry records, transcriptions, etc on microfiche
Lots of other stuff

They even have a genealogy assistant there to help you out. The person walked me through the entire section showing me what was available and giving advice on how to look up information.

Thanks to the GRO indexes I was able to compile information for lots of people in my family tree, all ready for when I can afford to order the information from the General Register Office.

Looking up the information is easy. The microfiche are seperated into the births, deaths and marriages. For example I was looking for the birth information for Juanita Isabella Halle who I knew to be born in 1864. I took the microfiche for each quarter in 1864, looking up 'Halle', a relatively rare surname. I found the entry in the December quarter (always the last one you look for!):

Juanita Isabella Halle, Islington, 1b, 222

Using this I can order her birth certificate. Juanita's information is actually available on Ancestry so what are the advantages in using the microfiche indexes?

For one, if I didn't have an Ancestry subscription the library option is free. Ancestry's search relies on OCR'd (Optical Character Recognition) versions of computer scans of the index. If the OCR is imperfect it may have the names slightly incorrect resulting in making it hard to find. Looking at the actual record on microfiche may make it easier to identify.

An example of the OCR problem is searching for another ancestory of mine. Cornelius Double, died September quarter in 1856. The record in Ancestry has an incorrect Page number as it couldn't scan the last character. This character is readable (just) on the microfiche.

The big advantage with online search databases is being able to do instant searches across a range of dates. Microfiche records make for a nice backup if the online search finds nothing and its at no cost - except my time.

When searching for marriage records you have the choice of looking for the spouse's surname or the grooms. They both point to the same GRO reference. Pick the name which is likely to be more rare. In searching for the marriage information for Cornelius Double and Mary Fletcher, married in 1843, there were lots of Fletchers. But very few Double's. So it was much easier finding Cornelius' record.

I also did some searching through the New Zealand cemetery records which I'd never done before. More on that in another post.

Categories: genealogy

Online Genealogy Databases

2005-12-30T01:53:00.000+13:00

There are a number of online genealogy databases available. These allow users to create or upload existing family tree information so that they can be maintained and searched online.

The main selling point is that the databases provide search capabilities across all genealogy information added by users. If someone else is researching someone who exists in your family tree they can find the information and collaborate with you.

The bigger services also provide the ability to search other information. Things like census data, birth, death and marriage data, etc. By cross referencing this data with information in user submitted family tree it becomes a great resource.

My article on census searching mentioned ancestry.com. This is one of the bigger genealogy database websites around. It's fairly expensive as they charge for access to pretty much everything but in my opinion its well worth it if you are doing active research. My main interest with Ancestry is access to all non-user submitted data. That is immigration information, census, births, etc. The trees submitted by other users are also useful but there are free services that do similar.

One such free service is Rootsweb. You can use this service to upload a GEDCOM file or create a family tree. You can also search across all trees that users have submitted. Rootsweb are actually part of the Ancestry family and they share the family tree database. According to their website they have over 400 million people in the database.

What I tend to do with regards to my family tree information is keep a detailed database of data locally on my computer. I then go around some of the online databases and create copies of portions of my local database. The information I load for each name in my database is usually only:

Full name
Date of Birth
Place of Birth
Date of Death
Place of Death

So there exists in the online database a simple copy of the essential data, but none of the extra research I've put in. I include my contact details so anyone interested in more information can contact me and we can collaborate. This helps prevent the problem of people just using your data and never getting in touch with you with their own information.

By having this information across a few databases it increases the chances of reaching people who are searching for similar names. The services I use so far for this are:

Rootsweb is free. One Great Family is a subscription service. Genes Reunited is free to upload your information but requires subscription to get in touch with others users.

I've had the most collaboration success with Genes Reunited. They do a regular email listing 'hot matches' of your tree against other users. This indicates names that are potentially the same across other users data. I've added many new people to my family tree as a result of getting in touch with other people as a result of these matches. At times I think I've reached a dead end in my research on a particular line, some information will come up as a result of a Genes Reunited contact.

Now Genes Reunited is not the greatest for holding all your genealogy information. It pretty much only holds the basic information I provide. So I really only use it for the chance to colloborate and find contacts. It does have a nice user interface for adding and updating your tree though. And it's all done in HTML.

The fact that Genes Reunited only holds basic information is actually conducive to collaboration. You need to get in touch with other users to find out what they have. You cannot look at another users family tree information without their permission. So this encourages getting in contact. I like this aspect. They claim to have over 49 million people in their database.

One Great Family is a subscription service. You get a seven day trial but you need to provide your credit card number and it automatically bills it after the seven days. They used to provide regular newsletters to users but for some reason these have stopped in the last 12 months. It may be something to be wary of. It's always nice to see regular updates to sites you subscribe too. One Great Family has been a bit quiet of late.

They take a slightly different approach. Instead of having seperate family trees for each user it is one giant database. Every time someone adds or edits a record the system will search for a matching record. You can choose to indicate they are the same person and it will 'merge' the data. into a single record. In this way there is only one copy of the information no matter how many trees that person appears in. It's like editing a single family tree shared across millions of users with conflict and merge handling built in.

Again, I only use it for basic data. I've never had a response to my emails to colloborate with other users with this service. It's like people start using it and stop updating. Maybe it's the people who upload their data with the seven day trial then quit. On the positive side I have add whole branches to my tree from information already contained in the database.

Rootsweb is like Genes Reunited in that it holds seperate trees for each user. But they are all sharable. You don't need permission from the other tree owner to look at their information. This allows you to quickly find information but does tend to discourage collaboration. I have successfully contacted other tree owners and swapped inforamtion though. Note that Rootsweb does not make data on 'living people' available to anyone but the tree owner for privacy reasons.

Overall I find online databases very useful. There is no guarantee that the data is correct of course so I flag the information as being suspect and use it to confirm information I already know or provide places to look to confirm that information. Then I add it to my own tree.

Some things to be aware of with online databases:

The subscription services will automatically bill your credit card whenever it is due. You may not get notified in advance. It may be difficult to cancel the subscription. Make sure you are aware of the steps required to cancel it.
The information may not be accurate or it may be out of date. Contact the original uploader via email to collaborate and get up to date information.
By uploading your own data you may find that the service uses it on CDROM's it sells or for their subscription searches. I don't mind this personally but some people may not like the idea of others profiting on their work. Hopefully the service is charging for the search and distribution of the data, not the data itself.
Backup your data. Keep a local copy. Online web services can disappear overnight.

Categories: genealogy

Searching in the UK Census databases

2005-12-29T01:27:00.000+13:00

Much of the United Kingdom census data is available online through various paid (and some free) services. This data is a goldmine for finding out family history information but it usually requires a bit of digging.

As an example, I wanted to find out information on 'Marian Barber', born in 1876, in Birmingham, England. I had got this information from the birth certificate of one of Marian's children. Also from the birth certificate I knew that Marian's parents were Joseph and Mary Ann Barber.

My first stop was the online free census database. This is a volunteer effort to enter all the census information and provide it availble for free. It is currently incomplete so there is no guarantee that you'll find what you're looking for but it makes for a good first start.

Using the search facility I started with the 1891 census and searched with Marian's name and birth year. Her entry was there as the only result. From the result you can click on the 'Show Household' button to find out information on all members of the household during the night of the census. This listed:

Joseph Barber, Head of Household, Aged 53, Pearl Button Maker (Employer)
Mary Ann Barber, Wife, Aged 50
Eliza Barber, Daughter, Aged 21
Minnie Barber, Daughter, Aged 17
Marian Barber, Daughter, Aged 15
Eva Barber. Daughter, Aged 10
Alice Lowe, Servant, Aged 24

It also listed their address as being 4 St Georges Crescent, Birmingham.
Freecen does not have the 1881 or 1901 census information which would be the next ones to try for Marian. To access those I went to Ancestry's census database. This is a paid service but it is well worth it in my opinion. It enables you to search across all the census data they have and view the actual census images.

Again, searching for Marion provides hits on the 1891 and 1881 census. Looking at the latter finds a number of Marian Barbers but only two with the same approximate birth year. One of these has the address in Birmingham as this seems quite likely. Pulling up the details gives:

Eliza Barber, Daughter, Aged 11
Eva Barber, Daughter, Aged 4 months old
Jesse Barber, Son, Aged 3
Joseph Barber, Head, Aged 43, Pearl Button Maker, Employs 48
Joseph Barber, Son, Aged 4
Marian Barber, Daughter, Aged 5
Mary Ann Barber, Wife, Aged 40
Minnie Barber, Daughter, Aged 7
Rebecca Barber, Daughter, Aged 15
Rose Barber, Daughter, Aged 14
Ann M Kelsall, Servant, Aged 18
Sarah Ann Worley, Servant, Aged 18

This time the address is 2 St Georges Crescent. So we now have more members of the family and a new address. We also know that Joseph employed 48 people in his pearl button making business.

The actual scanned images of the census pages containing this information and more is split across two pages - page 1 and page 2.

The steps I usually follow from here is to search for each person I find in each census result across all available census data. This enables me to get clues as to what other dates I should start researching.

If someone 'drops off' the census then they may have died, moved out or (if female) got married. For example, Jesse Barber is in the 1881 census but not the 1891 one. To see if he may have passed away I would check the death register for this 10 year period. Doing this finds 3 Jesse Barbers who died during this period which gives me something to go on. I don't actually know what happened to Jesse yet - still researching!

One disappearance was Eliza Barber. She is on the 1881 and 1891 census but not the 1901. Interestingly while searching for Eva Barber in the 1901 census I got the following information:

Eva Barber, sister-in-law, aged 20
Emma Farmer, Aunt to wife, aged 65
Harriet Gury, Servant, aged 23
Donovan Odell, Son, aged 4
Eliza Odell, Wife, aged 31
Henry Odell, Head, aged 35
Kathleen Odell, Daughter, aged 6

Here Eva is listed as being a sister in law. That can only be to the head of the household since that is where all the relationships are based from. This makes her the sister of the wife, Eliza Odell. Eva had a sister Eliza Barber who would be aged 31 at this census, the same age as Eliza Odell. Could Eliza Odell and Eliza Barber be the same person? Possibly and this helps us find her spouse and children.

From here I would use this information to track down the marriage certificate. For marriage searches I tend to use freebmd as the first point of call. This is similar to the free census database but holds volunteer entered birth, death and marriage records. It allows you to search based on both the husband and wife names for the marraige which cuts down the number of matches. And we know that if Eliza Barber married Henry Odell then it must have happened between 1891 and 1901.

Putting these ranges in freebmd immediately comes up with a match. Henry Joseph Odell married in the fourth quarter of 1891 in Aston, folio reference 6d, page 775. Looking on that page shows an Eliza Barber. This would seem to indicate that the theory that Eliza Odell is Eliza Barber. Lots of new people to add to the family tree and to research as a result!

I hope this gives a taste of how census information can be used to find out about family information. While it doesn't guarantee that the information is accurate or correct, it does stand a good chance of giving lots of new names and leads to look for and confirm with other records.

Categories: genealogy, census

Why Research Family History?

2005-12-29T01:16:00.000+13:00

Why get interested in researching your family history? For me it was because I knew nothing about where my family came from. I'd heard various things about being related to various historical people and it got me curious about finding out what was true and what was myth.

One christmas I couldn't afford to buy presents for my family so instead I decided to do some research and put together a simple family tree for my parents, sister and nieces, to give them an idea of where we all came from.

My plan was to start really small and just do up to my grandparents. Little did I know how addictive doing this research was! I kept finding snippets of information about my anscestors on the internet and researching in the public library. Each piece of information drove me to find out more.

In the end I wrote a 30 page document detailing some branches of the family with all sorts of interesting facts and information. The receivers of my gift were (hopefully) fascinated by what i'd dug up. Probably boring to anyone outside the family but to us it was very exciting.

There is still much I have to learn and find out. The reason for this blog is to provide information and links to some of the internet based information to do with family research, with a bias towards New Zealand based research and history. And hopefully to receive feedback and tips on how to go about things. Worst case it gives google something to find if anyone searches for names I'm stuck researching :-)

Categories: genealogy