Any genealogists on Breedia, and if not - what is your hobby? General Chat

I have been researching family history for about 10 years now and have thoroughly enjoyed the journey. It is by no means a cheap hobby, but the rewards far outweigh any expense !

Now I am at a point where new information is rare, and I can go weeks without even doing any research - not like the initial years when it was a total obsession, although sometimes I get the chance to do a bit of digging for friends and relatives which relights the fire so to speak.

I've been doing it for a few months now. Most interesting find was an ancestor sentenced to be hanged for rioting - the day before execution was due to take place the sentence was commuted to transportation.

At the moment I keep coming to dead ends and it is very frustrating! The last two certificates I ordered turned out to be the wrong family - it can very easily become very expensive!

Hobbies - dogs, dogs, dogs; trying to keep fit; and writing extremely poor novels three times a year for NaNoWriMo.

Azz, I thought about doing that but probably won't bother for now. I have gone back a long way down all lines, and I am a bit of a crossbreed to be honest Half German (Jewish from my grandfather backwards) and half Yorkshire/Cumbria.

Janet, we all pray to find a rogue amongst the ancestors and yours sounds interesting; it was fairly common wasn't it for sentences to be commuted at the last minute, but oh dear those holding ships were appalling weren't they

I have some truly inspiring and fascinating ancestors, but also had one that died of the DTs in a workhouse in Yorkshire!! Rather sad really, because his siblings all sailed off to America and left him to cope with the family business on his own - clearly the pressure was too much for him

With your writing skills you should be brilliant at putting together your family history as new facts come to light. Are you on Ancestry?

my uncle did this a while back and traced us back to a group of spanish/itailian gypsies on my mums side.

my hobbie is crafting. i like making things and am currently working on patchwork curtains and cushions for my 70's trailer tent as im fed up of the 70's mustard and brown

Katygeorge, I love patchwork - not only is it colourful but also is often made up of material with sentimental attachment. I am hopeless at sewing, but do rather like painting.

yeah its one of my more ambitious projects, im kinda regretting it as i only have a small hobby sewing machine thats not really up to the job. ive done a few paintings aswell that we have up at home. Just splatter ones on large canvass nothing to artistic but i do stare at it for ages as i find new things in it all time, such as an elephant and a giraffe

Sally my hobby is similar to yours but GSD pedigrees

I would LOVE to get into something like this, however have never known where to start. My cousin and Aunt did some research into our family history a few years back and came up with nothing. But it does fascinate me and I'd love to discover my ancestry.

Hobbies of mine include photography, music, holidays, walking. The "usual" stuff really.

@wildmoor, I find studying pedigrees interesting too. Am very new to it but have found myself spending hours looking up various pedigrees of dogs I'm interested in.

[QUIOTE="Bitkin, post: 175972, member: 15917"

Janet, we all pray to find a rogue amongst the ancestors and yours sounds interesting; it was fairly common wasn't it for sentences to be commuted at the last minute, but oh dear those holding ships were appalling weren't they

I have some truly inspiring and fascinating ancestors, but also had one that died of the DTs in a workhouse in Yorkshire!! Rather sad really, because his siblings all sailed off to America and left him to cope with the family business on his own - clearly the pressure was too much for him

With your writing skills you should be brilliant at putting together your family history as new facts come to light. Are you on Ancestry?[/QUOTE]

I'm not on Ancestry - I chose Find My Past instead, but I think when it's due to renew I'll try Ancestry.

As for writing skills - it's Peter, the rioting ancestor, who had the writing skills! If you google 'Peter Withers love letters' you will see the very touching letters he wrote to his wife - though whether she was able to get anyone to read them to her I don't know. At their wedding, neither she nor the witnesses were able to write their names.

Peter was involved in the agricultural Swing Riots. Most of the death sentences handed out were commuted to transportation, but nevertheless, lots were hanged. One of them was twelve years old.

It's so sad to find ancestors in a workhouse. I know Peter's wife was in one for a time after his transportation. I know I'm never going to find any aristocracy amongst my lot!

I like writing too - I will look at your link, Janet. I like cycling and squash, swimming and generally keeping fit, walking Loki (of course!), reading and painting but I rarely get time to do much with the kids. I want to learn to pay the guitar properly and keyboards.

If you like writing, Lucky Star, you could join the NaNoWriMo April event!

My son is trying to teach himself the guitar, but I am totally lacking in any musical ability. I keep saying I'll try and learn a language - it would be good exercise for my aging brain!

I traced my family history a few years ago .... a facinating journey of discovery which took me all over England to the US, France, Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as Australia, South Africa and India which probably accounts why the present generation of my family love to travel.

I'm also interested in military history, particularly WW1, cooking, gardening, and sewing. I used to make my own clothes but now confine my efforts to soft furnishing ..... curtains, cushions etc.

The dogs keep me busy but in their quiet moments I try, with not much success, to improve my Hungarian.

How do you start searching for your ancestors? It all sounds really interesting and something I would love to do.

Wagtails - if you are prepared to become totally obsessed then:-

Start with your parents and if you know all four grandparents that's brilliant because you can ask them for details. The next step is to join Ancestry on tinternet - it really is the best, and you can build your tree in there; you will have access to all the census records from 1911 back to when they started in 1841 plus masses of other records too. Just remember never to assume anything, and always back up everything with certificates etc. - don't order these through Ancestry though because they charge more than the GRO.

If you decide to give it a go, then just pop in to ask for tips if you need them.

Pork1epe1............you have made my head spin!! Goodness you have many talents.

As I was living in South Africa when I started mine I couldn't join Ancestry or Genes Reunited because of exchange control. Instead I looked up my maiden name on The Latter Day Saints website which is free and has the world's largest collection of family trees. It was only when I came to live in Hungary that I joined both Ancestry and GR which are excellent sources of information but expensive.

Two years ago having gone as far as I could (and wanted to) with my own family I decided to start adding my daughters in law to my tree but got very demoralised when I found both had very posh pedigrees .... two Prime Ministers and a number of lords in one and the other who's French, counts and countess's ....which rather overshadowed my motley lot who were mainly coal miners ...... so I gave up!

The Mormon website can be useful but you do have to be very careful not to take it as gospel (hehe, no pun intended!) - a bit like Wikipaedia, anyone can put whatever they like on there and very often it is guesswork at best and frankly ridiculous at worst. I find the same applies to peoples trees on Ancestry...........they mix up England and America with all the similar place names, and just bung down the names without checking what they are doing. Certificates and parish records are an absolute must to make sure that you have the correct line, but so many people don't bother.

I bet your coal mining lot were a great deal nicer than the PMs etc.

And choose to be born into a family with unusual names! I totally abandoned attempting to do the Welsh side of my family (all Evanses who married Davieses and who were all coal miners!) On my father's side, his father's family was quite easy because they originated from a small village in Wiltshire. My grandmother's family though, seem to have been in London for generations and there are so many people with identical names and of the same age and born in the same area of London that it is very difficult to identify the right one.

So very very true Janet! On my father's side they were all extremely individual names (mostly German) so that was very easy indeed, but elsewhere I had a Cooper and some other equally common names.

At least you didn't have a Jones!! That would really have sent you screaming for the hills!!

Doesn't it drive you nuts too, that they all seemed to call their children by the same names.......whole families in one area all with exactly the same names Sometimes too, if they lost a child, they would give the next one the same name.

Very true - no originality at all! And spelling is a problem too - my grandmother was Ellen Shepherd. But sometimes the family were shown as Sheppard. Or Sheperd. Or Shepperd. And on one census my great-grandmother was the same age as my great-grandfather, but ten years later she was a few years older than him. Ten years after that, she was a couple of years younger!