Growing your family tree - Filtering information

     Another post about my experiences building the family trees that are here. A bit about some of the things that tripped me up at first that may help others in their searches.

     You have harassed, annoyed asked your relatives for information. How to use that start to build your tree further?

     I was lucky, I have living relatives who could take my tree back to my great great grandparents, my grandparents grandparents. I got some names, children, siblings etc, a few dates and some places.

     I assumed names would be the most important. Not so. It is surprising how many records list people with nick names rather than proper names. Surnames go through some wild spelling variations. The further back, the less formally information was collected, especially in rural areas. My great great grandparents tombstone lists their nick names not their proper names. Hard to find if you don't know both. This lack of formality varies from place to place, type of record to type of record. It goes back to  a time when communities were smaller and most people knew each other.

     Dates then, those have to be important. Again not so much. The further back the less important. Travelling clergy would baptise an entire family of children at a time when they were through an area. It would depend on how often they visited. People weren't very concerned about age. It didn't have a lot of bearing on how they lived their lives. The advent of labour laws and operating licenses changed that to our modern obsession with accurate dating of everything.

     The one thing I thought wouldn't be important, places, turned out to be very important. If you don't know where your ancestors lived, you don't know where to start looking for records. That makes a huge difference. I have spent many hours looking for people in the wrong places.

     Places also has a challenge. Boundaries changed, a lot. I'm speaking of Canada because that is where 80 percent of my research has been. You have to do a little digging to find what the place was at the time your ancestors were there. Canada West became Ontario, district boundaries changed then became provincial, new townships formed, then reformed, counties changed names, boundaries then amalgamated. There are layers and layers of records to look through.

     Places and surnames, the two places to start further digging. Throw in some given names and a few dates and you are on your way. Next up, I'll go through some of the records that were of the most help to me.

     Ever dug into your family's past? Any tips to share?

Growing Your Family Tree, Getting started

     Building a family tree can be a lot of fun and a very rewarding experience. If you like solving puzzles, this is the ultimate. It is also a lot of work. I'm going to take you through some of the things I've encountered building the trees that are here in the "Kitchen". I'm still a newbie, not even a year of research under my belt. I've made a ton of mistakes. Hopefully, I can help you avoid making some of the same.

     The first thing to decide, how serious are you? What do you intend to do with your tree? I knew I wanted to post it online. I didn't originally take it very seriously. In my defense, I had no idea anyone would ever see it beyond my immediate family. I didn't realise what I was getting into when I started my research.

     My original intent was not really motivated by tracing an extensive tree for any of my families. I wanted to identify people in photos. I didn't want them to be nameless faces, staring out from forgotten family albums. I called the project, putting leaves on the family tree. The rest grew from that. An un tapped photo album still makes my heart beat faster.

     The family histories are by far the most viewed posts I have done, thousands of page views, hundreds of emails, a couple of comments, responses from all over the globe. People take this very seriously. So do I, now.

    If you are going to publish what you find, be as accurate as possible. Outline your sources, identify if something is just anecdotal. Whether you intend it or not, publishing things you can't back up can waste  a lot of research time and money. In doing my outlines, I have run across two very extensive trees that are ultimately wishful thinking. One is complete fiction, cobbled together bits of several different trees. The other is the result of a lot of research, unfortunately there are unsupported connections as well. Both have been widely shared and incorporated into other people's work. I don't think either represent any malicious intent, just an abundance of enthusiasm.

     Be accurate, keep records, be able to support your findings. People will ask. Where to start?

     The best place to start is with your living relatives. I have badgered harrassed annoyed talked with many of mine. They can provide a surprising amount of help. My job was made much easier by two things. Several relatives already had started research. I had a huge head start. I had pictures. Getting relatives to identify people or places in photos is a great memory aid. The fact that I have quite literally hundreds of living relatives to pump for information didn't hurt either, 90 years of living history to draw from.

     A word of caution, memory is a tricky thing. We get things wrong. As an example, I have always thought one of my uncles was a surviving twin. I have repeated this story numerous times, it's fiction. I only found out this year. For forty some odd years, I believed it to be true. Obviously I heard or was told something as a kid and got the details wrong. It happens.

     Go ask your questions. You'll end up with lots of information if your family is anything like mine. Next post will be about filtering information, what to look for and how to use it.

     Have you ever tried to find out more about your family?
 

Family histories, Huh?

     After spending countless hours in front of the computer running down family information I thought I should add some notes on the histories or "our" stories. This will help any future amateur geneologists, you can learn from my mistakes. LOL

    I can't tell you how important is is to know the place, and I mean the exact place, where people came from or where they went to. One of the most useful tools in finding people are the census records. I've searched needlessly through thousands of pages not knowing that my family isn't from Montague township or even Lanark county. What is a 10 minute drive today encompasses three counties and six or seven townships. Township and county boundries and names change with time as well so double check for the time you are looking at. In some cases the location is almost if not more important than the given name.

     Having said that, the census records are wildly inaccurate and often contradictory. There are several reasons. Early Canadian records, pre Confederation, were in some cases deliberately mis represented. People were afraid of being taxed so the answers are false. The census was also at the mercy of the enumerator, if you weren't home,  answers could be provided by a child or neighbour.

     Literacy was also an issue. It is hard to imagine now but the literacy rate in England was about 40% in 1800, 25% in Ireland and about 70% in Scotland. What constituted literacy was also different, being able to sign your name in the parish records was considered being literate in some cases. So you have people who can't read giving information to enumerators that can't be checked or verified. It results in some creative spellings let me tell you. We are also at the mercy of transcibers in the modern indexes. The old records are hard to read and mistakes get made. I have found several just because I know what the name should be. I couldn't find the Lumsden family because it was transcribed as Lamsden in the early records.

     Age is also very fluid, the largest one I have found is a ten year difference. As it turns out, until the Child Labour Laws and drivers license came into effect, age wasn't all that relevant to a lot of people. You could serve in the army at 14 or 15 and be an old pensioner by 25. People didn't think much about it. You worked until you couldn't, married when your parents said it was okay and had children until you couldn't.

     Given names are also a bit of a crap shoot. First, families passed on names so you end up with lots of related people with the same name in the same area. Although it can be helpful sometimes it can also be hard to make sure you have the right "William, John or Mary". One of the saddest things I have encountered is multiple occurances of the same name in children. It usually indicates a child's death. Renaming a later child was a sign of respect. To avoid confusion, many people went by their middle names or nicknames. For example, Grandma Craig's grandparents were "Bert" and "Lena" Wood, everyone called them that and the 1911 census records them as that. Their marriage certificate lists them as Charles Albert Wood and Lurinda Stewart. Never would you know that from Bert and Lena. Be prepared for names switching as well, John William can become William John at the drop of a hat, there doesn't seem to be any consistancy in record keeping for many of the early records. In that vein, people also are recorded either as Sarah or Maria depending on the documents with the full name being Sarah Maria. It can be maddingly frustrating.

     The histories are as accurate as I could be. If the only source I had was anecdotal, I'll say so. The census records, death certificates et al are to provide context and confirmation of family stories and connections.

     The histories started out as an extension of identifying and getting old family photos. Just as an aside the first photgraph was in 1837 in Paris. I have been lucky enough to have had a lot of help for the Craig and Dowsett families and am hoping the Lumsdens, Woods, Fishers and Sadlers will come out of the woodwork as I continue. It has been a lot of fun and incredibly interesting to find out about the family and the times they lived in. I have found out I am not the product of generations of farmers like I thought. There are a few scattered through the family tree but a lot of the family started out in the trades, coopers, blacksmiths, moulders and in the case of the Dowsetts, the military.  Who knew, not me, that's for sure.

     At some point we all wonder, where do I come from? Hopefully these family histories can shed some light on any questions you might have. It also provides a starting point to help pool information that various people have found. It kills me how expensive the ancestory sites are, they've got a good thing going. Posting on the blog offers a free starting point for any future research. Feel free to share anything you'd like posted or just say hi if the family posts are your ancestors as well, after all there are thousands of us out there. Mwahahaha

Take care.