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Beginners => Family History Beginners Board => Topic started by: Ausigeni on Wednesday 11 April 18 01:58 BST (UK)
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Hello everyone,
I'm new to Roots Chat. I have an extensive family tree on the go but I am hitting a brick wall with my Paternal Grandmother's family line.
The irony is that I met my Grandmother when I was a child, (I did not have that opportunity with any of my other Grandparents), I know her maiden name and where she lived and who she was married to but she shares a common first name with many others born around the same time and a last name that is so common that it's hard to tell which family line is hers.
The family on that side is now deceased and there was only one other family tree that listed her on Ancestry but they too have admittedly hit a brick wall.
I have found a marriage record for her, but I cannot decide between five different children with the same name and relative birth dates for a birth certificate. My grandfather, her husband, is listed in multiple family trees but as my grandmother was his second wife, most only list the first family details.
To further confound things, I did decide to sketch in a potential matching family for her but then took a DNA test which suggests that there are/or were eastern Europeans briefly in my line. There are no other opportunities in my tree for that to occur unless it happened in my missing line.
Any helpful tips and advice most welcome.
Thanks,
Paula
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Welcome to rootschat, Paula.
Could you give us some names, places and dates so that we could track what the possibilities are, to suggest ways to eliminate some of the candidates?
We tend to ignore family trees on Ancestry and just look at what are known to be facts.
If this all happened in Australia, then different tips are appropriate than to other countries, which is why actual names and places are needed.
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You say you have found a marriage 'record' for her - have you actually got a copy of her marriage certificate? That would be your first step as hopefully will give you a name and occupation for her father.
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I have come across a marriage record for her, they married in England. I'm ignorant to the process, is it common for parents names to be listed on the marriage certificates, especially if the couple was older when they married?
I'm a little hesitant to give names as grandparents are close relatives and some of their relatives are still alive. I guess what I'm really asking is, are there any instances where official records must carry the kind of information that will take you back a generation, other than a birth certificate?
Thanks to all:)
Paula
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The marriage certificate should name the fathers of the bride & groom and give their occupations. Witnesses are often useful too.
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Copy of marriage cert can be ordered online here
https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/
Use the reference you found in the gro index (assuming that is where you found the record)
If you need help finding this, you will need to give us the names and year of the marriage (assuming both parties in it are now deceased. If not, then why not ask them for details of their parents?)
If it was a Church of England marriage, and IF the parish registers for that Church are online, then you may be lucky and be able to get the detials without ordering a cert - but again we dont know without knowing when and where!
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There's no reason why you can't give the required information as it's already in the public domain on Ancestry.
Difficult to help without it.
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There's no reason why you can't give the required information as it's already in the public domain on Ancestry.
Difficult to help without it.
Yes. this is really true ::) ::)
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You don't have to post anything you aren't comfortable with putting online but there may be other ways to work out your grandmother's background. Are we talking about England, Wales or Ireland?
If she got married in England then the marriage certificate should list father's name and occupation.
Does her death certificate list an exact place of birth? place?
Was she born before 1911? If so, should be listed in the census (we can't do lookups for it here but you might be able to find her on www.familysearch.org
If you are talking about Scotland or other countries then the advice and resources will vary.
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Thank you to everyone for giving me such excellent advice. I had not considered the GRO numbers on the records before. I think I may have now found my grandmother's birth certificate, (finally), using the Free Marriage and Birth Index. I am yet to find any more matches on Ancestry but I will persist!
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If you are trying to go backwards from your grandparents you really need to purchase their marriage certificate.
Please don't rely on trees on Ancestry they are sometimes wrong and then copied on by others which then leads people to believe they are accurate as so many people have the same information.
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Agree totally with Rosie
I mentioned the gro numbers, as you will need that to apply for the copy of the marriage cert.
The numbers referencing a marriage cert will, in no way, lead you to the birth cert for that person!
Research cannot be done by relying on computer "matches" - they can only match the obvious and real life isn't like that. People remarry, use a different name, move area unexpectedly etc.
For an example - ( Ican't remember the exact dates etc without looking it up, so don't go checking it out, but this is the principle)
I had a Martha Parker, with a brother James. Martha was born in, say 1862 in Worthing Sussex. Her brother James married a Martha Price. Martha Price was also born in within a year of 1862 in Worthing. So - of course - all computer programme "matched" the death of Martha Parker with a birth date of 1862 with the birth of Martha Parker in 1862. If I hadn't looked further, it would have been so easy to have accepted this. Of course the actual situation was that this death was for Martha nee Price, and the Martha Parker who had been born in 1862 died as Martha something else as she too had married.
Just a silly example, but shows how you cant accept a "match" on face value, but only take it as a possibility to be followed up and confirmed with research. Same with online trees, as has been said a large proportion are absolute rubbish, but just sometimes something is worth a closer look. But that doesn't mean just accepting it, but looking closer at it and engaging in some research to see if there are documents or evidence to back it up.
So, if you think you have found the marriage in the gro index, and cant find a parish record for it, then you need to get the cert to find out more about it before moving on to the next step. A computer may have "matched" all sorts of births to that marriage - but none of them may be correct! And you certainly cant just pick one randomly with no further evidence to have lead you to it.
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I will order the certificate definitely, I ordered one for one of my parents last year not realizing that I would one day need to order one for genealogical purposes.
I've already come up against people getting it wrong on Ancestry before when I input my husband's family tree, people had followed links and made assumptions which then did not gel with the facts we had inherited from family bibles which was later turned into a tree by a relative.
Thanks again.
Edit: Unfortunately because my Grandparents were both older I think they must have married in a town hall in the North of England and so there was no church record aspect that I could have looked into.
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And remember - Rootschat people are always willing to help if we can!
Sorry, if I came over a bit sharp in my last post, but I just didn't want you, or anyone else, going off on a wrong tangent, following the wrong person and ending up with an incorrect tree, because of the modern-day pressure of computer generated matches!