what made you search for your roots?

[BassinghamTerrier]

Some years before my grandfather died, he gave me a package containing three items ...

1) a cloth map of Yorkshire dated 1824
2) a maths book dated 1863, and
3) a marriage certificate between a Thomas Dodsworth and a Jane Ruddock, dated 1839

The map of Yorkshire was lovely, and it's now framed and hanging above my fireplace.
The maths book obviously belonged to one of his relatives as it bore his surname, but the certificate really foxed my father and I! The problem was that my father's middle name is Dodsworth, but we didn't know any Dodsworth's or Ruddocks.

So that's what started us off; we were determined to find out how this marriage certificate came into my grandfather's - and ultimately my - possession.

Turns out that Thomas Dodsworth (of the Dodsworth/Ruddock marriage) sired Sarah Dodsworth, who married my gt-gt-grandfather.

Obvious, wasn't it? 

[Bill749]

My wife started to research her family when the children were all at school and she had time to kill.  Another mum from the school got her interested and showed her the ropes.  She got stuck with her family, so started on mine, which got me interested.

In those days there was no internet to log on to and ask for help - we had to spend hours trawling through the indexes at St Catherine's House, reading wills at Somerset House and sitting in a darkened room peering at census films that had to be ordered up from the reception desk in (I think) Chancery Lane.

There was the IGI of course - on microfiche (almost unreadable in some cases) - for guidance, but not much use to me researching in East Kent, because coverage for this area was very thin.

When we had found what we could there, it became a long slog through the parish registers - the real thing, not microfilm - at the Canterbury Cathedral Archives.  They used to charge a fee in those days - about 50p an hour if memory serves me right.

By the time the registers were filmed, I had more or less completed my direct line research as far as I could go.

Now I make full use of every means I can find to expand my knowledge of the family, but I still enjoy going back to the primary sources to make my own decisions about what is actually written there!

Regards, Bill

[meles]

I started over 30 years ago when my father died, and I realised I did not know anything about his parents, who had also died when he was young. It took me ages going into London to plough through books with birth, marriage and death info. A year to find his parents' names. Eventually, I found out that his mother died when he was 5 and his father committed suicide a couple of years later. No wonder he never mentioned them - I wonder if he ever knew...?

Nowadays, it's so easy, and I've gone back to the 1700's. Which means I have to plough through Parish Registers!

meles

[Lydart]

Hello all !

I started this pursuit after clearing my mothers house when she went into a nursing home, aged 91.  Apart from finding love letters from my father to her (she said "Throw then away, too sugary !" - I've kept them !) ... I also found a cutting dated 40 years previously - 1960, reporting the death of her aunt in Canada.  I had known about Great Aunt Lizzie from my childhood ... she sent parcels in the war, and there was always something for me ... a huge red apple, a book ... and had often wondered what had happened to her, and if there was any way I could find out.  To me, she was a magical, exciting person, who had 'run away' to Canada as a young girl; I too, wanted to travel and see new places, but for me, it was Africa (and I did, for 11 years !)

So I asked my mother if she had contacted this apparently huge Canadian family listed on the obit.  "No", she said, "I didnt know how to".   I said "I'll find them !"  and did, by dint of writing to the mayor of the town mentioned in the obit; he put my letter in the local paper ... and bingo !   Letters in reply from all over Canada !  One cousin even came to visit her in the home (she was actually 'doing Europe' but mother thought she had come specially ... it made her day !)

So a few years later, when Mother had died and left me some money, I used some of it and went to Canada to seek out the relatives; that started a whole flood of photos of 'the old country', pictures of me as a child, but they didnt know who it was, and so on ... A second cousin is coming from Canada in a couple of weeks to see her English roots.

And that obit ?  How did my mother have it ?  You won't believe this ... but its true !  A friend of Mothers was going on a 3 month trip to Canada in 1960; Mother told her she had relatives there, and the town they lived in.  About four months later there was a knock at the door, and Mothers friend called round for tea, bearing a piece of paper ... "Is this your relative" she said ?  You've guessed it, more or less !  Mothers friend was visiting a relative of hers in BC, and idley picked up a local paper ... and there was the obit ... if she hadnt been in that town on that day, she's never have seen it !   And if my mother hadn't been the sort who never threw ANYTHING away in her 93 years, the paper, too would have been binned.  Who says there isn't a God ??!!

So my start into family history was not in the UK, but via Canada ... I've been hooked on it, and Canada, ever since !!

Lydart