Me too! The Frasers of Lovat! We'll have to compare family trees.
oh dear
hey sis!
yes - when i have all my cr@p together - i'll give you a holler!
Genealogy
- Thread starter geoffw
- Start date
oh dear
hey sis!
yes - when i have all my cr@p together - i'll give you a holler!
also just found http://www.cyndislist.com/
they would have to have every site from all over...
flippin' frightening how much info there is out there!!!!!!!!
they would have to have every site from all over...
flippin' frightening how much info there is out there!!!!!!!!
No not true, I've found heaps on Croatian ancestors in their files. Don't think there are too many countries in the world they haven't microfilmed.
In most cities they have research centres where you can order in the films you want to look at for a very small price. Well worth it as no where everything is online.
And for those tracing Irish ancestors the full 1911 census is now online
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie:80/search/
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie:80/search/
Thanks, ani. Fortunately I only have one Irish ancestor, so far back that I'm about 1/32 Irish. As you probably know, Irish ancestry is one of the most difficult to trace, due to all the pre-1901 Census records having been destroyed (many by a fire in 1922, the rest by government order for mysterious reasons).
i heard a nice little conspiracy theory about that one - something to do with the Sachs Coburg Gotha line....
If you're interested in genealogy in general and not just your own, the series Who do You Think You Are is a must see. A British series featuring British celebs but interesting all the same watching them trace their family trees. The most recent series has just finished but the BBC Knowledge channel is showing the previous one at the moment.
Also saw advertised a show called Heir Hunters starting Monday night (Lifestyle channel I think?). Researchers looking for any living relatives that would be eligible for money left in wills. The preview showed them searching through archives/records and poring over old photos and talking about illegitimate children. Looks interesting too.
Olly
Also saw advertised a show called Heir Hunters starting Monday night (Lifestyle channel I think?). Researchers looking for any living relatives that would be eligible for money left in wills. The preview showed them searching through archives/records and poring over old photos and talking about illegitimate children. Looks interesting too.
Olly
I wouldn't cope with that - ever since Geoff posted the initial thread - i have been up stupidly late most nights tracking down family members (i'd do it in the day, but too busy working )...
must...get...sleep...
damned addictions! hehe
I am loving it all though - found some really interesting stuff and have managed to quell/confirm several family legends!! Now just starting to hit brick walls with pre-census data and incomplete records!!
)...must...get...sleep...
damned addictions! hehe
I am loving it all though - found some really interesting stuff and have managed to quell/confirm several family legends!! Now just starting to hit brick walls with pre-census data and incomplete records!!
Yes, it's fascinating. There's also an Australian version that I think aired on ABC. Cathy Freeman's was really interesting. Her Mum is Aboriginal and was married to a white man. As recently as 1962 (I think it was 1962), she had to write to the Aboriginal Protectorate in order to get permission to visit her family during her Christmas holidays!
And if that's not insulting enough, permission was denied, with no reason given.
If we looked into the family background, we could well find out that the Spanish princess that my mother-in-law insists was one of her forebears was not a princess, perhaps not spanish, and even possibly didn't exist at all . MIL changes stories to suit the occasion, so I feel quite sure this is probably just another example of "imagination gone wild".
I sometimes have a smile when people always seem to find that they are from the nobility, or descended from someone famous, or from convict stock.
There must have been a lot of extraordinary folk around back then.
. MIL changes stories to suit the occasion, so I feel quite sure this is probably just another example of "imagination gone wild".I sometimes have a smile when people always seem to find that they are from the nobility, or descended from someone famous, or from convict stock.
There must have been a lot of extraordinary folk around back then
.Actually, not really. People think that if only, say, 1 in a million people were noteworthy 300 years ago, then only 1 in a million people today should have a noteworthy ancestor, but this simply isn't true.I sometimes have a smile when people always seem to find that they are from the nobility, or descended from someone famous, or from convict stock.
There must have been a lot of extraordinary folk around back then
The number of descendants of a particular person increases exponentially with time, much faster than the overall population does (because with time, each person also has more ancestors). So the proportion of the overall population which is related to a particular ancestor increases with time.
For example, assuming a generation length of 25 years and an average number of children surviving to reproductive age of 2.3 (figures which give accurate population growth from approximately 3.5M to 60M for the UK), approximately 30% of British people today would be direct descendants of Shakespeare. (Not taking into account his particular family tree; any famous figure who lived in the UK about 500 years ago.)
So they're not necessarily "full of it", not at all.
Chances are that all of us would have a famous ancestor somewhere; it's just that only some of us know who it is. I take your point.You just never hear that "Oh, I am descended from a bog standard tooth puller" and a "horse rug maker"
It's a running joke between hubby and I that my ancestors are predominantly engineers, tradespeople, businesspeople, etc, and his are nearly all labourers, cotton pickers, or even one unfortunate soul whose occupation was simply listed as "poor".
ROTFLMAOI tease him that one of his ancestors is going to turn up as the "downstairs boy" in one of my ancestors' households.
Hey good one UC.I wouldn't cope with that - ever since Geoff posted the initial thread - i have been up stupidly late most nights tracking down family members (i'd do it in the day, but too busy working
must...get...sleep...
damned addictions! hehe
I am loving it all though - found some really interesting stuff and have managed to quell/confirm several family legends!! Now just starting to hit brick walls with pre-census data and incomplete records!!
I actually tried to search for your family war records. Well, the complete National Archive records (www.naa.gov.au) where I had found a few matches for some members of my family.
So I did a search on "Urban Cowboy". There were two matches.
Not knowing your history I didn't know if there were any matches.
Even a search on the surname "Cowboy" gave 61 matches.
I hope that helps. ;-)
I remember seeing that series and the Cathy Freemans episode. Of course 1962 may seem like eons ago to some but to those of us who were alive at that time hearing about what aborigines were treated like back then seems quite shocking, although I don't remember any hooha about aborigines being treated badly back then. Maybe it was a 'given' so not something worth talking about(?)Yes, it's fascinating. There's also an Australian version that I think aired on ABC. Cathy Freeman's was really interesting. Her Mum is Aboriginal and was married to a white man. As recently as 1962 (I think it was 1962), she had to write to the Aboriginal Protectorate in order to get permission to visit her family during her Christmas holidays!
And if that's not insulting enough, permission was denied, with no reason given.
Fast forward 10 years to the 70's and here's some more hard done by groups.
There were no single parents pensions unless you were divorced or a widow, and illegitimate children were ba*tards in the true sense of the word - not entitled to inheritances, titles etc. Unmarried mothers were sacked from jobs once they were found out or not given jobs at all and generally discriminated against in all areas. Women couldn't get loans without guarantors - who had to be men of course!
Thank goodness for progress and those who fought for changes.
