Genealogy Chat

It’s very easy to concentrate on a part of your tree and ignore ancestors who may be just as closely related to you. This is particularly true if you feel closer to one side of your family than the other. These tips may help you work out what needs doing next.

I think filling in some sort of a fan chart can be very helpful. There is one you can download from this site. You can then see if you have gaps in generations of direct ancestors. A few months ago I thought up another record which helps me. I find it useful to list direct ancestors by generation then put them on landscape oriented pieces of paper with lots of columns after their names. I’ve got headings for each column including the censuses plus occupation and “Other” (which could be Birth, Marriage or Death Cert or Will etc). I am thinking up new columns for an improved version to include headings like IGI and Parish record etc. As I go down the list of names I put a tick in the columns. If I have found someone on a census they get a tick. If they were dead they get a cross. I give the as yet unborn a dash. I can then see at a glance which censuses I haven’t yet found for any particular person. If I have their certificates I can see which ones and if I have any other documents I can see that evidence too. This all helps to see at a glance which ancestors I may have not fully researched. Sue

Thanks for that Sue, very useful Lulli x

there used to be a really useful feature on this site, where you could print off an alphabetical list of your ancestors, and I did something similar with this. Went through and highlighted all direct ancestors and ticked off bmd and census found. It was also extremely useful for all the UNKNOWNS - seeing them all in a lump together doesnt half make you work at finding them, lol. OC

Excellent idea, Sue.

I had a similar idea and put my tree into a spreadsheet and had columns for each census, date of birth, marriage and death. It took me ages to do but I now have a record to look at for gaps in my research. Karen

Great idea Sue, I especially think the fan chart is a great idea. I printed one off myself and found it very useful. Marie

Yes it's surprising how many gaps you find when you do that. I concentrated on my maternal grandmother's family originally because they lived near where I live but it has taken me a long time to find some of the other branches. It's much easier to remember all the parts I spent hundreds of hours hunting for myself and those who live in parts of the country I know well. I'm trying very hard to fill in the gaps but some of the records I need have been destroyed. It is very strange how some quite obscure records can help though. I couldn't find where one group of my family had come from. I then downloaded a will of an ancestral uncle who mentioned a sister 'now living in America'. I tracked her entry into the US via Ellis Island and double checked her family on the US censuses and discovered her daughters were born back in England. I found her daughters' baptisms then that aunt's marriage to her husband. That was in a part of the county a long way from where I'd been hunting for my ancestors. I was then able to find that aunt's birth and her brother (my ancestor!). I had been diligently working my way out from where I'd found the family and had no idea that earlier generations lived across the other side of the county but moved when they inherited some money. So never give up. Keep digging and you never know what might turn up. Sue

If you go to the home page of this site there is a printable charts link ........right hand side. My husband copied the fanchart onto A3 paper leaving room for me to add a couple more layers but even as it is it's good to get started. Best wishes Sue

Sue Yes, its surprising what unconnected things lead you to your missing ancestors! My paternal 2 x GGM , Ellen Grimshaw,was born in the Isle of Man, in 1823. the parish records are excellent and I found her baptism, her parents marriage and her three siblings without any problem. One sibling I found a death for and ruled a line under him, poor little chap. As my 2 x GGM and her sister Jane, appeared to be very close, moving to the same street in Lancashire etc, I decided one day to investigate the sister's children's marriages, lol, not an easy task with a name like Jackson, and one I had put off for ages, thinking it would be fruitless. One of the sons was widowed young and remarried - to a woman called GRIMSHAW, who had been born in the USA. How odd, I thought, that he should marry a woman with the same maiden name as his mother. Cut a long story short, I had killed off the wrong sibling - another one was born with the same name two years later but I had missed him! He went off to the USA for 20 years, where all his children were born, then came back and settled in Northampton. Once I had this, I found him on censuses, obligingly playing host to some of his married nephews and nieces - which led me to yet another sibling who had been born in Liverpool! I added about a hundred names to my tree that day (in pencil, of course!) OC

For a long time I was stuck with my 3xgrandmother. I had got her approximate age and place of birth from census records, and bought the marriage certificate. When she and 3xgrandfather married, in 1854, she was described as Martha Coates, spinster, of full age. Father's name, James Coates. Her year and place of birth remained consistent throughout all the census records. On the 1881 census, my great grandparents and their first baby, had been lodging with a James Coates and his wife. I knew there was a connecton. I could not find any record of Martha's birth/baptism, despite checking the records of all churches in the area where she was born! Looking at the marriage cert one day, I looked at the witnesses' names: Ellis and Ellen Green. Ellis is quite an unusual name, so I decided to look him up in the census. There were more than I expected, and almost all within a concentrated area of Lancashire. There was one, a couple of years older, born in the same village as Martha! I looked on GR to see if Ellis was in anyone's tree. He was! It turned out that Martha had not, in fact, been a spinster at the time of her marriage, but was the WIDOW of James Coates and already had a four year old child - James!. She had formerly been Miss Martha Green - her father, James Green. Ellis was her brother and Ellen his wife. On rechecking the parish records, I found her baptism, and those of many of her siblings. I didn't find her on Ancestry as a child, due to a transcription error, but on buying the 1841 census on CD (£9.00), from my local records' office, I found her within 5 minutes. Oh happy day! The Greens turned out to be one of the biggest branches of my family. The member who gave me the information made me work for it though, rather than just spoon-feeding it to me (cruel man!). As I found out something new, he confirmed it (or not) and offered a tiny bit more, if I was lucky, lol. I also had to give him info on my branch of the family, such as James Coates the younger, being not just a landlord, but great granddad's half-brother! So I played the same game: a bit for a bit; all in good fun! Although he could have given me the lot at once, I'm glad he didn't really, as it wouldn't have been as satisfying. I suppose the moral of this rather drawn-out tale is that the marriage cert, which cost me just £7.00, was the thing which opened all that up to me. Without it, I would NOT have made that link to the Greens. I still don't know why Martha said she was a spinster, or if it was just an assumption on the part of the vicar, and never will. Witnesses' names can be like gold dust! One of the best £7.00 I've ever spent! Do fill the gaps! It's worth it! Amanda

Erm...Amanda....you do know that one of the main branches of my tree is the GREENs......lol! OC

OC Let's get to the bottom of the other lot first, lol! Amanda

I have not checked on other tree programmes but certainly on RootsMagic (and probable on others, they don't vary much) you can go to Lists > Alphabetical and then chose to print as 'csv' Spreadsheet programmes will import csv files so you have all your tree data on your spreadsheet for almost no effort. A few clicks with a mouse and one file name is minimal compared to 100s or 1,000s of names. Clive

nudged for later reading - looks like a great thread :)

Hello Sue and Karen I went to my homepage and I cant see the print message also how do I put it in a spreadsheet Joyce

I didn't use the GR information to create my check list form. I did it by doing a landscape word document. I had already done a word document for my ahnentafel (list of direct ancestors) so I cut and pasted the ones I wanted to check first. That is from my grandparents back to those who were on the earliest censuses. For me that takes me back to my 4x great grandparents. I've plans to expand this to earlier ancestors at a later date but I am in the process of filling in gaps and building up details about the lives of those closer to me at the moment. I'm sure if doing it from scratch then a excel speadsheet would probably be the way to do it. Sue

I use an Excel spreadsheet with columns for the censuses etc. Plus estimated BMDs. Very useful. Also, having become completely fed up with the number of Unknowns especially as a lot of them are Mary or Sarah I now - on my PAF file and on my list - show their surnames as [husband's name] - that way the Unknowns come out in order and I know who they married. Helps a bit. Not yet tried to see if I can do the same on this site but it might work. Jill

Hi Sue in Somerset, Thanks for the advice - I've just filled in most of my fan chart. I was amazed to find that I had indeed been ignoring certain branches after being fixated with one branch for the last month or so. Even by checking the 1881 Census which is free to look at on Ancestry, I've discovered another 4 x g.g.grandparents straight away and have lots of new info to go on. So yes, I'd really recommend the fan chart to put things into perspective!