I see theres no mention of rummaging through antique shops for old postcards and letters incase they belonged to your own ancestors
Yep guilty as charged!
.. impatient!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK Mick, I have to agree with you - ADDICTED!!!!!!! I cannot deny it any longer ;D ;D ;D
I've dreamt that I was going through census records. Those are the most boring dreams!
Mick,started on look ups, then certificates, now transcribing. know what you mean, kazza.
Lookups, that's how they lure you in.
It's a slippery slope. :( Soon certificates aren't enough, and before you know it, you will be on the transcribing. That is where it gets really heavy....... :-X
Kazza. ;)
I think I'm getting ATG really bad,
must go to the Doc,s,
now he really does have an unusual surname.!!!!!!!!!!!
Gee, Lydart, there were Pomeroys in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, Canada (place names: Pomeroy Ridge & Pomeroy Bridge). And since they were in Charlotte County, they were probably across the river in Calais, Maine, as well. Maybe you could start doing worldwide one-name studies (after you've traced the last of your lines back).
I'm guilty. Addiction is travelling 12,000 miles, then spending time soaked to the skin, goosebumps as big as duck eggs, purple lips....... I'll just check out one more gravestone....."know that feeling ( apart from the 12000 miles) with the other half intow moaning all the time in my ear........................are you finished yet!
... volumes of records with ancestors all jumping out at me saying "here I am, what took you so long to find me!!!!"
I suppose if I count up the losses they would far outweigh the wins lol
Carol
... volumes of records with ancestors all jumping out at me saying "here I am, what took you so long to find me!!!!"
Where are all those volumes of ancestors saying 'here I am ... you've found us' ?? I've never seen them ! My ancestors are all quietly hidden away, sniggering and cackling away to themselves 'Ha, ha ... she'll never find us ... '
I'm guilty. Addiction is travelling 12,000 miles, then spending time soaked to the skin, goosebumps as big as duck eggs, purple lips....... I'll just check out one more gravestone....."
You know you're addicted to Genealogy when ....
... you can't see the wood for the trees ... i.e. when the table is covered with 'trees', censuses, old photo's, certificates, cuttings, scribbled reminders, notebooks, camera ...
... and you HAVE to eat on your knee in another room !
My dear William:
At the present lustrum of your life you are, and should be, supremely indifferent to your ancestors. They are dead and gone and that's an end on't. Your utmost powers of receptivity are properly absorbed by vital considerations. "Dead uns are nit"—as you would put it. In presenting you the following notes I ask not that you consciously attempt to change your present attitude. Inevitably there will come a time when these records of your forebears will have for you at least a passing interest. To you at that time I dedicate them. I hope, indeed, the time will never come when the pulse of glorious life will beat so slowly that you can afford to devote it to genealogical study. A lonely and a sterile life alone can find sufficient satisfaction in the dry-as-dust occupation of delving into dreary records to find a name, a mere name, the date when the name was born and died, the date when the name married another name, and the dates of all the other names that went before and came after.
Hoping to save you from so deplorable an expenditure of vitality, I, not inappropriately, present to you the names of many of the men and women who are responsible for your existence.
Hello Milly.
Welcome to RootsChat ! May I say you must be the oldest member at 143 (see, I DO read peoples profiles) ... so the ancestors you can remember must go back further than ours !!
I hope you can cope with the peculiarities of the people on here ... do we need to shout ??
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Glad to have you on board !
size]or maybe you do, i have a habit of falling asleep in front of the screen
And we don't need to shout !!!!
Your toddler builds graveyard with their dominos (my second child did this!)now that IS starting early
Now that IS a good idea ... a friend is getting married on Friday ... wonder if I could do it in time !if it is who i think it is..........................
One problem might be that his wife to be is from Japan ...
... Decendants Chart with Known Medical Ailments (instead of BDM's), & had done it back to @1850 ...
You obviously prefer them dead then ! ;D ;D ;D
You get given some money for your birthday and spend it ALL on death certificates!
when your son brings home his new girlfriend and you ask her what her mothers maiden name is, go on to her grandparents and great grandparents, and tell her she might be a distant connection....before she gets to take her coat off...
;D
Do you ever notice the glazed look that comes over people`s faces when you start blathering on about your ancestors???
when you check social network sites for people with same surname...and contact them ;D
I passed a road called DOB LANE today and for a brief second I thought Date Of Birth Lane, then laughed at myself :D :D :D;D ;D ;D A true addict!!
when you check social network sites for people with same surname...and contact them ;D
and this time it leads to discovery of a 2nd cousin :P :)
.. and keep hoping one of your ancestors, or at least the place they lived, will be mentioned in the book ;DAnd once they were!!!! :o ;D
Which graveyard, eadaoin?!?!
... or maybe this was me trying to justify my addiction!
Heitch
Yes it was and yes they are!!
People used to think I was morbid bringing my children to graveyards
It helped them with:
Map reading- obviously
History - again a bit obvious
Geography - finding their location!!
Maths - if that grave is ref# A56 242 how far to A56 263 or calculating ages
English - where old english was used and explanations of changes in letters and usage
Civics - through general respect of the property
and this is long before you find the long lost dead relative that teaches the Realism of death being a part of life!!
I knew I was addicted when I went to see my doctor - who has a very unusual name - and while he was examining me I asked him if he'd ever thought of researching his familytree !!
Heitch
Yes it was and yes they are!!
People used to think I was morbid bringing my children to graveyards
It helped them with:
Map reading- obviously
History - again a bit obvious
Geography - finding their location!!
Maths - if that grave is ref# A56 242 how far to A56 263 or calculating ages
English - where old english was used and explanations of changes in letters and usage
Civics - through general respect of the property
and this is long before you find the long lost dead relative that teaches the Realism of death being a part of life!!
or maybe this was me trying to justify my addiction!
Classic line from my daughter today.....(we missed a bus so had an hour to spare...graveyard across the way Wink)
she started crying, saying that "I miss all these people"
Me, "don't be silly, you did'nt know any of them"
4 year old daughter, "but someone knows them and they miss them so I can be sad
I cant pass a church graveyard or cemetary without wondering whether there are some commonwealth war graves in it!!!!
Dee
Reminds me of my late father. He would always look in churchyards, (as I do and did even as a child) and if he saw a child's grave (as you can imagine there were many, especially in the old village churchyards), he would bow his head and say a prayer. We lived near such a graveyard and he found a grave of a child called John. We had no idea who this child was, but every time dad came to visit, he would go to the churchyard to see John, to say hello and say a prayer for him.
Lizzie
When I was in school we were taught a whole subject called CIVICS and it was the study of the rights and duties of citizens.
I think nowadays it would be called social history and economics.
marcie
taught about government, politics, voting, civil duty, economics, banking, international issues and culture, etc.
Must say that the British floor is not as busy as the other floors so have no problem getting a film reader or computer...
And we think a couple of hours to the local record office is a long journey
You're the one telling your parents about their great grandparents.
Every place you visit, you have to walk through the local cemetery.
You cant walk past a Memorial or Plaque without going over the names for links
You get scunnered with the dead ends, so you start to name churches, houses, villages, harbours, bridges and big-wheels for Cazza. ::) ::) ::)
You cant walk past a Memorial or Plaque without going over the names for links
When you live off only basics toast for two weeks to be able to afford one certificate :)I don't have a problem with affording that extra certificate, it's the justifiying it to my OH that's the problem...
Just remind him that blood is thicker than water :)
I don't have a problem with affording that extra certificate, it's the justifiying it to my OH that's the problem...
You know you've been hit with the genealogy bug if…
You explore unusual, non-related family names for fun, as well as your own family names.
I am also a famous author
DGIBBINS -I wish!!I am also a famous author
Are you the David Gibbins who writes the Jack Howard Marine archaeology books? The first one of yours I ever read was Atlantis. I LOVED it!!! I have read several others as well. They are BRILLIANT!!!!
Its a scary/odd feeling as you wander the bookstore with your head tilted to read the authors names and suddenly your own appears.
You wake up with your head on the keyboard after 10 hrs of research ;D
Annie
Haha annie I think you just won the prize. ;D
Haha annie I think you just won the prize. ;D
I agree, you have definitely won the prize. Got to admire your sons ingenuity though. Don't think my son would think to look here, but then he is not that interested in genealogy.
No offence to the ancestors, it wasn't personal, it was just I had a 'victorian' father and years later it dawns that strictness can come as a result of others mistakes.
3) Write your own computer programme to store your recordsor write database applications for a well-known forum, so that others can find names more easily :)
Quote3) Write your own computer programme to store your recordsor write database applications for a well-known forum, so that others can find names more easily :)
Bob
Does anyone else do this when you are introduced to a new person eg this is Mr Jones and you reply which branch are you from? Even when it's not your in your research ? SueMore like this - ''Hmm Jones hey , you know your ancestors more than likely were Welsh - have you done your tree yet? ''
You spend all day touring villages your ancestors lived at, and looking at every name on every headstone, even the more weathered ones.
It's even worse when you start talking about these people as if you'd known them :)
I remember my cousin getting annoyed with me when she asked if I knew who lived in a nearby house and I proceeded to tell her the entire history of both the house and the family who used to live there along with their local connections, where in the churchyard they were buried, etc. but I couldn't tell her the name of the present occupants ;D
Brutal isn't the word, Coombs. When I find my theories blown away by a very inconvenient baptism/burial/marriage, I am absolutely devastated.
Cant remember where but someone else said they type a certain surname into newspapers on FindMyPast and get a verb.
Cant remember where but someone else said they type a certain surname into newspapers on FindMyPast and get a verb.
This happens to me with the surname Revell, I know "revel" is a verb but I also get a lot of "Revelations" results. Very confusing to me how little results for the actual surname comes up.
You should try Pine..... ::)Or London or Carpenter
You should try Pine..... ::)Or London or Carpenter
You should try Pine..... ::)
You come home and find your screen saver has been changed to 'THE DEAD!!!' in red on a black background by a rather irate wife.
When i watch the news, TV shows, and see the end credits etc, and I hear peoples surname I think "Oh that is a surname found in Suffolk" or someone with an English accent whose surname is MacCullen I think, he must have Scottish ancestry.I spotted 2 of mine from the latest Star Wars movie :D
If a crew member is called John Sheldrake I think "that is a Suffolk and Essex surname".
You should try Pine..... ::)
When i watch the news, TV shows, and see the end credits etc, and I hear peoples surname I think "Oh that is a surname found in Suffolk" or someone with an English accent whose surname is MacCullen I think, he must have Scottish ancestry.I spotted 2 of mine from the latest Star Wars movie :D
If a crew member is called John Sheldrake I think "that is a Suffolk and Essex surname".
Found this by accident while browsing for pictures for Kazza - How many of you can answer to yes to all the questions??? LOLI'm a yes, maybe because these ancestors are in the past-and cannot hurt you like the ones today.
I Am Addicted To Genealogy!
When you are in a different city do you look through the phone book to find people that have the same surname as one of your ancestors?
Do you get excited when you drive by a Cemetery?
Do you talk about your deceased ancestors as though they were still a live?
Does your librarian or the person that works at the archives know your whole life story?
Do you check the obituaries everyday?
Does your spouse call the library to see when you are coming home?
Do you spend your vacation tracking down ancestors in county courthouses?
Do you keep pictures of tombstones or long deceased ancestors in your wallet?
Can you remember the date an ancestor died but you can't remember to feed the pets?
Instead of an emergency kit in your car you have a research kit.
Does your boss call the library or archives to see when you will be coming back from your lunch break?
If you said yes to one or more of these you are an addicted genealogist
Jan :)
It's a disease you never recover from!
I am not addicted to genealogy it is just part everyday life like eating, drinking and breathing.
Cheers
Guy
You'll be back, firing on all cylinders before you know where you are - just get ONE tasty new bit of information, and it all flares up again.
You'll be back, firing on all cylinders before you know where you are - just get ONE tasty new bit of information, and it all flares up again.
I did have a quick peep at the Pollard line.... but the matches wouldn't strike, (oh dear.... ..that is supposed to be a funny play on words... :-X :-\ ;D ;D ;D ;D)
xin
When you look forward to the "freebie" weekends so you can check your research (subs too costly from this side) and then spend the entire day trying to sort out one branch til you totally confuse yourself even when you write it down. :o ;D
(OH and son have cheek to interrupt to ask for food etc ::))
I think that's what you call striking out......You'll be back, firing on all cylinders before you know where you are - just get ONE tasty new bit of information, and it all flares up again.
I did have a quick peep at the Pollard line.... but the matches wouldn't strike, (oh dear.... ..that is supposed to be a funny play on words... :-X :-\ ;D ;D ;D ;D)
xin
When you look forward to the "freebie" weekends so you can check your research (subs too costly from this side) and then spend the entire day trying to sort out one branch til you totally confuse yourself even when you write it down. :o ;D
(OH and son have cheek to interrupt to ask for food etc ::))
And that's when my wife wants to go out and buy something for the house or garden, or suggests a daytrip somewhere; and almost invariably it is those weekends that she suggests we go out for a meal. Doesn't she realize I can eat a sandwich at my laptop? ::) ;D ;D ;D
I think that's what you call striking out......You'll be back, firing on all cylinders before you know where you are - just get ONE tasty new bit of information, and it all flares up again.
I did have a quick peep at the Pollard line.... but the matches wouldn't strike, (oh dear.... ..that is supposed to be a funny play on words... :-X :-\ ;D ;D ;D ;D)
xin
You even trace family trees (well the basic info, not buy certs or anything) of TV stars or other famous people etc, if they were on WDYTYA or from biographical info on their parents online. Ie Ross Kemp, who I met once, has Norfolk parents but has a great grandad who came from London and his mum from Oxford. He was fostered to a Norwich family as he was a baseborn child. So Ross has ancestors from Cambridge's rival city like I do.
Reviving this thread, you know you are addicted when you click on a post on Rootschat when you see a surname or place from your tree. Just in case..... ::)
You know you're addicted to genealogy when Rootschat is your "go to" website, morning noon and the middle of the night!
I also put surnames and/or place names into the wee Rootschat search box- usually only found my own posts!
On trips out when doing the travelling you think "What registration district am I in now"?
Blimey - am I really that honest? Yessssssssssssssssssssss :) I might have to have another glass!
Well put Guy, now if we can just convince the non-genealogists ;D ;D
Thought I would add a few more symptoms of "Genealogyitus".
You see a surname of a news reporter on TV or someone being interviewed and the surname sounds like a surname you are researching and think "You have just given me another spelling variant I had not though of before".
On trips out when doing the travelling you think "What registration district am I in now"?
At a RO you make the archivist break out in a sweat with endless requests for original documents.
You research the dead, and forget the living. And get demands from family saying "Where is my cup of tea"? You feel like jokingly saying "I have ancestors to research".
I always have internal thoughts about the surnames of friends and work colleagues and where the surname originates.
On a day trip to London you take about the 1000th photograph of the area your ancestors lived in from a coach or a car. Such as the church or street on the route you are going.
Only recovering addicts would actually admit their addiction. ;)
This posted on my FB page today. It so looks like my download folder ;D ;D
This posted on my FB page today. It so looks like my download folder ;D ;D
3SD..............So it's you who has hacked into my comp ::) :P ;D
Annie
You know your addicted when you come across someone with an accent from the area of your ancestors....ask them if that's a Newcastle (or whatever area) accent & when they say "yes"...you proceed to ask them if their surname is "whatever the surname is you're researching" & if they say "NO"...you ask if they know anyone by that surname in that area ;D.........This happened to me years ago, with the man sitting next to me on a bus in Dublin, each time this man heard an accent from Kildare he asked the person if they knew where Blacktrench was, not only did I know the place he was trying to find but we were related, I got his address and sent him the details my mother supplied. Sadly I left his address in my wallet which was pinched a few months later, he had replied but hadn't put his address on the letter.
The names in my tree must be unique as no-one from the mentioned areas has ever heard of any of my surnames ::)
Annie
You hear a conversation about trees and assume its family trees, not the wood and leaf variety. Happened to me recently very embarrassing ;D.
Patty
You hear a conversation about trees and assume its family trees, not the wood and leaf variety. Happened to me recently very embarrassing ;D.
Patty
You watch WDYTYA and a celeb has an ancestor from the same area as you and you think "Could we be related"???
Barbara Windsor is related to me; somehow!
I could be related to Babs Windsor, her Deeks line vanish from Bures before 1726 and allegedly originate in Glemsford where my Deeks came from. Need to try and confirm this for sure.
You hear a conversation about trees and assume its family trees, not the wood and leaf variety. Happened to me recently very embarrassing ;D.
Patty
;D ;D ;D
Also checked out the RC one and found it was actually a tree tree... ::) ;D ;D
I've only been at it a few weeks and I can relate!! ;D
I've only been at it a few weeks and I can relate!! ;D
Love the choice of your word RELATE, ;D
You're so right - That's twice for me today Ros. I posted something about watching the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics over on the TOT - I posted that I would be watching the Opening CEMETERY
Duh! ::)
You are engrossed in finding out the baptism of someone who died 300 years ago that you forget to cook the dinner for the family who are shouting"Where is my dinner????".
Sounds perfectly normal to me, Lizzie, but then I've just finished researching family trees for my third cousin's husband and his second wife ;D
You're researching the parents and siblings of your 3 x g.g.uncle's 2nd wife because you can't break down your own brick wall. :Dknow the feeling,over 20 years now
While watching the news...
Family member: "That lady's got an unusual surname."
Me: "It's more common in Kent."
Confused looks all round.
You'll find a lot of us have done that, Carol. I got rather excited when the name Izzard popped up on my tree, but alas, no connection. Barbara Windsor is my current target. :)
You'll find a lot of us have done that, Carol. I got rather excited when the name Izzard popped up on my tree, but alas, no connection. Barbara Windsor is my current target. :)
You tell your partner that you'll have to get a bus certificate......
....... bus ticket :-[
... someone asks you for directions to a house in the area and you can reel off previous occupations from census records but not the name of the people who actually live there now!
Meanwhile on all the census from 1891 there is a child living in Edward's household who is shown as a niece aged 3, she is still there in 1901 with Edward's wife and son aged 13 still called niece, and she is still there in 1911 with Edward's wife and son still called niece. The interesting thing is she has as her middle name the surname of my 2 x g.g.aunt and offspring, therefore, so you decide to look for her birth on Scotlandspeople to see if there is a clue as to why she has the family surname as her middle name. There is no reason, her father was a policeman and married her mother in Portsmouth. The mother didn't even have the same maiden name as Edward's wife, and neither her maiden name or married name was the same, so where the "niece" relationship came from I have no idea.
...After watching the Poldark series on TV you buy the first of the books in order to find out more about the history of the Poldark family. A fictitious family! :o ;DEven the name was made up. It was supposed to be Norman-French. And why did a family who had lived in Cornwall for hundreds of years call their son & heir after a Scottish county? Aunt Agatha was the family historian. She reeled off the Poldark pedigree to Demelza, accompanied by anecdotes on D's first visit to Trenwith. Agatha got her own age wrong though.
You are helping a large organisation find dead footballers DOB and DODs while your family is on the backburner, but still look at ALL the other names in the Death Notices hoping to find a connection
You have to tell a relative that white Americans are not an ethnicity. Hilary Clinton was on The One Show and her DNA was said to be mainly English and Welsh. A rellie said "I bet she was thinking she thought she was supposed to be an American". I told her that white Americans are European in ancestry. Elvis' dad Vernon Presley was being interviewed once in 1956 when his son was by then really famous and Vernon and was told he had an old English name and he was surprised. He said "I never heard tell of any of my kinfolk coming over from anywhere. It seems we have always been here in America" He then said "Then again the English connection must have been a long way back". Some people do forget their roots. Babs Windsor was shocked when she found a Suffolk link in her East End ancestry. London was a honeypot for tens and tens of thousands of East Anglians once.
you should stop .... even though there is nothing else to find.
I am only interested in going back to all great great grandparents. There are only 7 great grandparents - one is unknown because of illegitimacy.
I found all birth, marriage, death info and all census entries for each. Nothing further to find methinks. All ordinary hard working families. Time to stop.
We have come a long way though since the early days, so many records online now is there any need for the note on the door asking the postman to please not bend any A4 envelopes from Southport? ??? And is my microfiche reader now obsolete ?
We have come a long way though since the early days, so many records online now is there any need for the note on the door asking the postman to please not bend any A4 envelopes from Southport? ??? And is my microfiche reader now obsolete ?
Suey, if you think it is obsolete now, can I have first dibs on buying it - grin?
Cheers,
Westoe
But I can't read the old 5 1/4" ones from the early days!!
When your eyes ache from looking at a computer screen, your back aches even though it's a comfortable chair and you feel hungry only to find you've been in another world for five hours. :o
When you are in a churchyard and someone walks over the grass and you want to shout "Hey, get off my ancestors!". Especially if they let the dog loose.
rayard.
..my W10 computer still has a USB drive A to enable me to read ancient floppy disks. But I can't read the old 5 1/4" ones from the early days!!
When you lay in bed at night analysing strong conjecture in a family tree line.
I find myself thinking "that's an unusual surname" while watching TV, and then checking FreeBMD to find out exactly how unusual.
Often I will work out a rough tree to check where their ancestors, and thus the name, come from.
"My name is Andrew, and I'm a genealogist." (apologies to another AA)
You walk though a town/city graveyard or churchyard and look at headstones, and anyone who died in, say 1845, you think "They should be on the 1841 census". Or you see a headstone for someone who died in January 1852, you think "Well they made it to the 1851 census".
You walk though a town/city graveyard or churchyard and look at headstones, and anyone who died in, say 1845, you think "They should be on the 1841 census". Or you see a headstone for someone who died in January 1852, you think "Well they made it to the 1851 census".
I cut through the church yard today, glanced at a stone and thought,ooh they'd have been born roughly around when the second church was built and they died before this (the 3rd) one was built.