Ruth's Ancestor's: Births

Showing posts with label Births. Show all posts

Tuesday, 26 November 2013

The Book of Me, Written by You - Week 12 - The Year I Was Born

The Book Of Me, Written By You is a 15 month project set up by Julie Goucher at Anglers Rest.

Each week there are prompts which require answering.

Week 12 - The Year I Was Born

The year I was born was designated the International Youth Year by the United Nations.

Titanic Wreck
(Image link: www.wikipedia.org, Author:
Courtesy of NOAA/Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island
(NOAA/IFE/URI), June 2004)

Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne and Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister.

Significant Events

South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriages
Coco-cola releases NEW COKE, but it was not popular & only lasted 6 months
Discover a hole in the Ozone Layer
The wreck of the Titanic is located
Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in bombed and sinks in Auckland Harbour
A total solar eclipse occurs over the Antarctic
Calvin & Hobbes debuts
Comic relief is launched

Red phone box
(Image link: www.wikipedia.org,
Author: Benkid 77, 27 Sept 2009)

Science & Technology

BT began phasing out their iconic red phone boxes
First British mobile phone call is made
DNA is first used in a criminal case
Windows first version is released by Microsoft
Nintendo's first home video game console is released
Tetris is released

Sport

Boris Becker, aged 17, is Wimbledon's youngest winner
Bradford City football stadium goes up in smoke, killing 56 people

Music

Norway wins Eurovision
Live Aid raises >£50 million for the famine in Ethiopia
'The Power of Love' by Jennifer Rush was the biggest selling single of the year
'Merry Christmas Everyone' by Shakin' Stevens was the Christmas Number 1
Number 1 singles:

Live Aid
(Image link: www.wikipedia.org,
Author: Alfabille, 14 Dec 2012)

'We Are The World' by Band Aid
'I Want to Know What Love Is' by Foreigner
'I Know Him So Well' by Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson
'You Spin Me Around (Like A Record)' by Dead or Alive
'Easy Lover' by Philip Bailey & Phil Collins
'We Are The World' by USA Africa
'Move Closer' by Phyllis Nelson
'19' by Paul Hardcastle
'You'll Never Walk Alone' by The Crowd
'Frankie' by Sister Sledge
'There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)' by Eurythmics
'Into the Groove' by Madonna
'I Got You Babe' by UB40 & Chrissie Hynde
'Dancing In The Street' by David Bowie & Mick Jagger
'If I Was' by Midge Ure
'The Power Of Love' by Jennifer Rush
'A Good Heart' by Feargal Sharkey
'I'm Your Man' by Wham!
'Saving All My Love For You' by Whitney Houston
'Merry Christmas Everyone' by Shakin' Stevens

Bacup Police Station featured in Juliet Bravo
(Image link: www.geograph.org.uk,
Photographer: Dr Neil Clifton, 30 Jun 2011)

Films & TV

Back to the Future, was the highest grossing film
Eastenders is first aired on BBC 1.
James Bond film, A View To A Kill is released
Juliet Bravo, ended (filmed in the town where I lived)
Open All Hours, ended

Famous Births

Lewis Hamilton, British F1 driver
Cristiano Ronaldo, Portuguese footballer
Keira Knightley, English actor
Leona Lewis, English singer
Lily Allen, British singer
Wayne Rooney, British footballer

Famous Deaths

EB White, the author of Charlotte's Web & Stuart Little
Laszlo Biro, inventor of the ballpoint pen

Saturday, 27 April 2013

When we begin researching our family history one thing we must do is talk to older relatives, they will have snippets of information that will really help you in the process of researching your family tree.

If you are just starting out it can be overwhelming to go and see and elderly relative you may not have seen for many years to ask questions about their family, so below are a few questions you can ask to get the conversation rolling.

Questions to ask?

What were the names of your parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles?
When were people born?
Where were people born?
Where did people live?
What jobs did they do?
Was "Polly" their real name or a nickname?
What were they like?
What did they enjoy doing?
What did they look like?
Do they have any old photos you can scan or take a photo of?
Was there a family bible?
Did they fight in the world wars? If not was there a reason they were exempt?

Great, Great, Great Uncle Ted with a work mate

You may find people are happy to talk about their family and come out with facts you would never have thought to ask, but other people may find their family background painful and not as willing to talk about it. Remember to be sensitive as you are talking about ancestors as older relatives will remember them and may even still be grieving for them. There can be facts in which you find interesting but to another relative they can be shameful, especially if great uncle Albert was a bigamist or spent time in jail.

Always take notes as you are chatting or even take something in which you can record the conversation to listen to at a later date. It is amazing what you forget afterwards or may get facts mixed up later on. Verbal facts will later need to be verified with records, do not take your relatives memories as fact until you have found records to back up your evidence.

My great, great grandparents
Edward Davidson & Martha Davidson nee Hair

Looking at old photos with elderly relatives can trigger memories and can help you put faces to names for future generations.

Important facts which you will require about each person are:

Name
Birthday
Year of birth
Place of birth
Date of marriage
Place of marriage
Date of death
Buried or cremated? If buried, where?
Occupation

TOP TIP: Do not delay speaking to relatives, as time goes by facts are forgotten, elderly people can develop dementia or even pass away unexpectedly which can leave a wealth of information lost for future generations.

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Saturday, 16 March 2013

Finding a birth certificate for your ancestor (post-1837)...

In 1837, the National Registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced to England and Wales so "technically" if your ancestor was born, married or died after 1837 there should be a record to find for your ancestors...although some ancestors will always remain elusive.

There are numerous ways of finding records for your ancestors but I will focus this blog entry on the resources I regularly use for finding a birth certificate.

Finding a BIRTH certificate:
We are going to look for the birth entry of my great, great grandfather Frederick Sutcliffe.

Firstly we search for him in the censuses or talk to relatives to gain some basic information about his birth:

born in the Barnsley area of West Yorkshire
aged 50 years old in 1911 (see below) so born approximately 1861

1911 census page of my great grandfather, Wilfred Sutcliffe with his parents and brother

Now we have gleamed these few vital facts we can go to the FreeBMD site and input this information to search a few years either side of the year of birth, using * as a wildcard just in case there are some spelling differences in the name.

FreeBMD site with the details of the search inserted

The results bring up many Fred or Frederick Sutcliffe or Sutcliff's births registered in the West Yorkshire area between the years of 1859 and 1863 but I am going to initially concentrate on those entries from the Barnsley district, which are:

Frederick William SUTCLIFFE, Sept 1859, Volume 9c, Page 99
Fred SUTCLIFFE, June 1860, Volume 9c, Page 121

Either of the above could be my ancestor, there are discrepancies with both names, one being Fred and the other being Frederick William. The latter entry is probably closest in age to the 1911 census form, but ages are often estimated on the censuses or were not accurately recorded.

The next step would be to order the certificates from the General Register Office (GRO) website, which cost £9.25 each and can take a few weeks to arrive through the post or you can pay £23.40 for PRIORITY in order to receive the certificate more quickly. (Due to the cost my preference would be to order one certificate at a time just in case the first one is the the one you want then you do not need to pay for two or do further research on the censuses to figure out which one is more likely to be your ancestor.)

To order a certificate you have to register with the site, have your credit card details to hand and would then need the following information from the FreeBMD search to order the certificate:

Year birth registered 1860
Surname at birth SUTCLIFFE
Forename(s) Fred
Quarter registered June
District name BARNSLEY
Volume number 9c
Page number 121

A few weeks later a copy of the certificate will arrive through your door...

Official copy of the Birth Certificate of Fred Sutcliffe

Ordering the certificate tells you much more information about him and his parents. It gives the exact place of birth and his mother's maiden name, which can help your research go back much further.

NB It is unusual to find a person in the censuses listed as Frederick, registered at birth as just Fred. Usually it would be the other way around, they would be registered as Frederick but always known as Fred so listed as Fred on the censuses. This example just shows how names can vary in your searches and so to be open minded and knowledgable about nicknames and how names can be shortened.

Another NB After 1911 the mother's maiden name is listed in the register so it is much easier to pinpoint the correct birth if there are a few to choose from and you know the mother's maiden name. You could do a search only using the father's and mother's surnames using the registration county or district you know they resided in to find all the children to a specific set of parents without using the child's name.

Problems you may have in finding your ancestors:

name misspelt or variations of spellings
transcription errors
registered under a name which the person was not called regularly....nicknames or middle names were used as a first name
mixed up first names and surnames or middle and first names/surnames
the birth, marriage or death was not registered

Useful websites: Ancestry - Birth, Death & Marriages, FindMyPast - Birth, Deaths & Marriages, The Genealogist, FreeBMD, GenesReunited - Birth, Marriage & Deaths...and many more.

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Comparing the Subscription sites...

In my previous blog posts I have mentioned the BIG SUBSCRIPTION sites quite a lot, as they're a resource I use a lot.

The chart below is a year old now but it may still be useful to those of you who're considering what subscription to get or even what site to subscribe to.

My advise would be to have a look at what records you might use for your research or records that you may find helpful. For example if you know you had ancestors who moved to the colonies you may want a subscription to include the passenger lists and overseas records, in which case the best one may be the Ancestry Worldwide.

Please remember to leave your comments and feedback on the blog and feel free to suggest ideas for blog posts. Is there anything you would like to see here? Thanks for reading :)

Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan

Saturday, 12 January 2013

Transcribing...

Yes, I finally took the plunge after more than ten years of researching and did it?

What have I done, you may ask....?

I have signed up to the FreeReg website to become one of their many transcribers*. I will be soon able to give something back to the world of researchers, as up to now I have solely taken information off these free websites.

The FreeReg website has been a vital tool for me in researching my family tree back beyond 1837**. It offers FREE access to parish records which have been transcribed by their team of volunteer transcribers. The only problem with the website is there are missing parish records which still need transcribing, so this is one of the reasons I have decided to become a transcriber, to help fill some of these gaps.

A baptism record from the Woolwich Parish records - the sort I will soon be transcribing

Recently, I have been researching my ancestors from Hull, East Yorkshire and have found it frustrating going back further than 1837** due to the lack of transcribed parish records for Hull on FamilySearch.

There are other websites available to search parish records online too, many of the big subscription websites such as Ancestry, FindMyPast and TheGenealogist to name a few and another big free website is the Church of the Latter Day Saints family history website FamilySearch. The subscription websites often offer a high quality digital image of the transcribed page as well, where as the free ones often don't BUT a huge number of parishes are still unavailable to search. FamilySearch is useful due to its range of records on offer but it often lacks all the transcribed details such as the father's occupation, any extra notes etc which can be vital when faced with two or more people with the same name, baptised in a similar period of time and in a similar geographical area.

I am looking forward to starting the transcribing, although I have to go through a period of training first. They need to make sure I have the required skills to do the job properly and in detail. I will also have to learn to read old fashioned handwriting. I have already received my four test pages, which I will hopefully get around to transcribing soon!!

Once I have passed the training period I will be able to choose a parish of my choice to start transcribing. The parish I choose must be un-transcribed, the records need to be available to me and it must be within my chosen county. I will choose a county and parish of my choice related to my own family history research which means I will be able to transcribe alongside researching my own family roots!!!

*A transcriber is someone who types up (transcribes) what is written in old documents into a format upload-able for search engines so that family historians like myself, can search for their ancestors parish burials, baptisms and marriages by just typing in a name, date of birth and other vital information.

**1837 is a vital date for family historians, as this was when it became compulsory to register births, deaths and marriages with the General Registry Offices around the country. Before this parish records are the major resource for delving back to discover more about our ancestors lives.

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