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Looking for Clues
Now that you have as many names from living memory on your tree as you can gather, along with dates, places and occupations to work with, it’s time to cast the net a little wider and start looking for physical clues. These can be tucked away in all sorts of unlikely places, such as in old boxes packed away in the attic or cellar; hidden in stuffed drawers; locked away in forgotten photo albums; or in safety deposit boxes in banks. You will be looking for a wide range of material, some of which may only take on a relevance once you’ve done a bit of initial research in archives. Given that you may not know precisely what you’re looking for at this stage, it’s important to try to get as many members of your family involved in the search for clues as possible, so that if anyone else stumbles across an interesting photo or family heirloom in the future they will let you know. Perhaps you will find some army medals or a wedding photo with names and a date on, giving you an immediate link to a military archive or the search for a marriage certificate. These forgotten objects can help immensely with your research, as they usually contain clues and spark up new lines of investigation.
Names and dates are often written on the back of old photos, regiment or ship names often inscribed on military and naval medals, or written on badges and uniforms; and all this memorabilia is evidence of your ancestors’ existence and can fill in the gaps that are no longer within living memory. On the other hand, if you come across family heirlooms and are unsure where they have come from, be sure to ask other people in your family that might know. You are bound to find old photos and not be able to name one single person in them, so why not scan them and email a copy round to the rest of the family to see if they can help.
Make a special effort to locate birth, baptism, marriage and death certificates, as these can help verify the information you have been given from relations and can save you the money you would otherwise need to spend ordering duplicate copies from the General Register Office (see Chapter 5). Any copies of other official records you can find that may have been kept, such as wills, title deeds and legal documents, are a great stepping stone for your research, giving you a concrete foundation to work from and often supplying you with more names to add to your tree. Wills are particularly useful because they very often name members of the extended family and explain how they are related to the deceased person, and indicate where someone lived, who their dear friends were and what they did for a living – as well as possibly lifting the lid on a family secret or two, such as an illegitimate child given a sum of money.
If official documentation has not survived you may be lucky enough to find newspaper articles about your relatives that are often cut out, kept and treasured, perhaps if somebody did something that deserved special comment in the local paper. Wedding announcements and descriptions of the special day were very popular in the nineteenth century; or if one of your ancestors was well respected within the local community, an obituary may have been written about them shortly after their death. As well as newspaper reports, school reports can be just as enlightening, giving you an idea of what that person was like as a child.
Some families used to keep a family bible, handed down through generations, in which details of births, baptisms, marriages, spouses’ names, deaths and special family events might be recorded. If you are lucky enough to have a surviving copy of this your workload will be instantly cut down. Family bibles can detail names and dates going back way to the early nineteenth and even the eighteenth century, and can often pre-date civil registration which, as you will see in Chapter 5, was first introduced into parts of Britain in 1837. As with all the sources you find, however, it is wise to double-check every bit of information that it contains against official records, because some family bibles may have been added to at a later date and could contain discrepancies.
Name patterns are usually a clue to the past. If an unusual first name or middle name has been passed down through a few generations, this can be an indicator that it was a maiden name of one of the women in your family tree that was passed down to her child and their subsequent descendants as a Christian name so that it was not lost after she took her husband’s surname. For example, Basil Fanshawe Jagger was the father of Mick Jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones; a few simple searches revealed that Basil inherited his rather unusual middle name from his mother, Harriet Fanshawe. Keep an eye out for these distinctive names among the documents you uncover and see if you can locate the original source of the name when you start your research in the archives.
Until the late twentieth century, handwritten or typed letters were the main form of communication between family members who lived apart. The advent of email and mobile phone communication has changed all of that, so that correspondence with loved ones can be disposed of with the click of a button. Therefore, old letters that have survived can be of tremendous sentimental value to family historians, as well as being a great practical research aid, giving not only names and addresses, but also an idea of your ancestor’s personality from their style of writing and sometimes giving an insight into their day-to-day lives. You should also look out for old postcards that can give you an idea of the kind of social standing your ancestor may have had. If they travelled abroad before cheap flights made this a common phenomenon, you will know that they probably lived quite well.
The First and Second World Wars produced an enormous amount of central government administration, a lot of which is stored safely in our national archives and is discussed in Section Three. But many of the by-products created by officialdom also ended up in people’s homes. Some soldiers held onto their discharge papers after they had completed their military service, or would have received letters granting them exemption from compulsory conscription into the army, and many of those that did serve received medals or kept part of their uniform apparel as a souvenir of their contribution to the war effort. If you can find documents proving that your ancestor fought during either World War, or even that they were in the army, air force, navy or merchant navy before or after the wars, these will give you an indication of where you need to start looking to find any more documents that may be held in the archives for them. If you have an idea of the date they served and their rank, this is often enough information for you to start with, as will be explained in Section Three. Most medals were awarded for service at a particular time or for specific battles or events, so if you do find medals around the house you can examine the design to identify what they were awarded for.
In addition to the military paperwork generated by the wars, a wealth of civilian material also survives from that era, such as ration books, letters to and from loved ones separated by conflict, and telegrams from the army informing next of kin of the death of a soldier, all of which illustrate how difficult that time would have been for your ancestors. Civilian documents issued at other times are equally informative, like passports with a person’s photo, vital details and stamps from the places they visited, or identity papers and naturalization certificates if they settled in Britain from a foreign country.
Do not pass off as junk the general day-to-day items you might find when hunting in the attic or through drawers. Old receipts, tickets to the theatre, ballet, opera or to a football match, magazines that have been kept, all give an idea of what your ancestors enjoyed spending their money on and doing in their spare time. These are key indicators to what their lifestyle would have been like, and what they were like as people. If they believed that these bits and pieces were worth holding onto then that is an obvious clue as to what was important to them.
SUMMARY
Clues to look out for around the house:
• Civil registration and religious certificates confirming births, marriages and deaths
• Wills, deeds and legal documents
• Newspaper articles and obituaries
• School reports
• Family bible and name patterns
• Letters and postcards
• Military, naval, air force and merchant navy documents, medals and uniform apparel
• Civilian wartime letters, ration books, identity cards
• Passports and citizenship documents
• Old receipts, magazines, tickets to the theatre or to football matches
• Photos
Photos are by far the most fascinating of our family artefacts. Even if we cannot name the majority of people in the frame it is always interesting to observe the different fashions, expressions and landscapes, and to try to work out when the picture was taken and what those people’s lives would have been like. Photos in the Victorian and Edwardian periods were often very formal. Most people did not have a camera of their own and would have visited a photographer’s studio or had their picture taken at a photographer’s stand at a fair. The rarity of a photo opportunity during these eras meant that people wore their finery or would borrow clothes from the studio’s wardrobe to dress up for the occasion. The clothes worn by the subjects can help you to identify a rough date for the photo, as specialists can establish when specific types of dress were fashionable. Your local archive or museum may be able to help you date the costume or background in an old photo. Photographic studios frequently printed their company name and address on photos, so you can trace this in trade directories to establish when that studio was in business, and to work out the rough geographical location where the person in the photo was living.
Do not be scared to take a photo out of its frame to ensure that there are no names or other written details hidden on the back. If the picture does not have any names or a date written on it, show it to as many elderly relatives as you can to see if anybody recognizes the faces or location. It might also be a good idea to make copies of photographs you find in relatives’ houses, either by scanning them or taking digital photographs of the images – having obtained permission first. This way you can write on the back of your copies each time you identify a new face. Carry the pictures around with you so that you can keep adding to them as you show more relatives. You can also find out about how to preserve old photographs, or restore fading images, from local archives and specialist companies who now offer fairly cheap methods of storage and restoration techniques.
‘Do not be scared to take a photo out of its frame to ensure that there are no names or other written details hidden on the back.’
Preserve Your Past for the Future
Whilst talking to your extended family and delving into the family treasures they have hoarded, it will become apparent just how important it is to preserve your own family photos and mementos for future generations. Your children, nieces, nephews or grandchildren may not seem interested in their past while you are enthusiastically hunting away in the archives, but there will more than likely come a time when they will be curious to flick through old photo albums, read old family letters, and learn more about a past era that seems so different from today, but that their parents and grandparents were a part of.
The fantastic thing about genealogy is its educational element. Whilst finding out the names, dates and places of each person on your family tree, it is essential to put their lives into a social context, to find out what the major political and social events were that would have shaped their lives and affected their standard of living. Might they have visited the Great Exhibition when it opened in Hyde Park in 1851? Did they fight in the Boer War at the turn of the last century? Would they have been shocked to hear news of the Titanic’s sinking in April 1912? Placing your family history into a wider national and international historical context brings textbook history to life. These people you are related to really did exist, and while the name ‘John Briggs’ on a census return may not seem immediately exciting, when you look at the bigger picture and learn more about what life was like for him living in a Victorian slum, his existence gains meaning and our combined national past seems closer. As you find out more about each ancestor and can pin major historical events to their lives, you can help the children in your family to understand their history.
SUMMARY
• What is the aim of my research?
• What do I know about my ancestors?
• What do my relatives know about our ancestry?
• Are there any family mysteries to clear up?
• Are there any family heirlooms to give me some clues?
• What information do I need to verify?
Genealogy is not just about the past; it is also about preserving the present for the future. So why not keep hold of a few items that may seem inconsequential today but will help to illustrate some of the defining events of your life in the future. Just as you write down the names of the faces you learn about on old photos you find, make the same effort with your own photos so that people will be able to identify you and your loved ones. The following chapter will explore ways of storing your research and organizing your findings so that the whole family can enjoy your hard work, but remember – it’s all too easy to concentrate on the past at the expense of the present. Make sure that you are at the heart of your research, so don’t forget to leave behind an impression of what you were like. After all, you have just become the chronicler for your family, and future generations will want to know all about you!
CHAPTER 2
Building Your Family Tree
By now you will have spent many hours writing down what you know about your family, talking to relatives and looking for physical clues and objects that have accumulated over the years. The next stage is to organize this information into a family tree, and use this to choose which path then to follow – verifying information you are uncertain of; searching for new ancestors; or pursuing an interesting relative or family story in more detail.
Creating a Family Tree
A family tree is a diagram that shows at a glance how your relatives and ancestors are related to one another. This will become the foundation of your future work, a growing document that incorporates all the biographical information you uncover as you hunt for documentation in archives, libraries and museums. The importance of building a family tree from the instant you start your research at home has already been touched upon in Chapter 1, but you will learn here just how vital it is to keep updating your tree after every discovery so that you can see at a glance what your next research step should be.
People can get quite confused about drawing up a family tree, assuming it is a more complicated process than it really is. There are many software packages on the market that promise you an all-singing, all-dancing family tree with generational reports, photo uploads and print-outs. But if this is your first attempt to put a family tree together, it’s probably best to go back to basics until you’re more familiar with the procedure, and simply use a large piece of paper and a pencil.
‘A family tree shows how your ancestors are related to one another – and to you.’
This section will show you the various methods of writing family trees and the abbreviations and genealogical terminology used. Some of this may be familiar. If you’ve watched Who Do You Think You Are? regular graphics appear on screen to show you how, for example, John Hurt is related to Walter Lord Browne. Or you may have seen pedigrees published in books or newspapers that relate to the royal family or members of the aristocracy. Even though you may not have such distinguished roots, the principle behind a family tree’s construction remains the same.
However, before attempting to build your first family tree, it’s important to have a basic grasp of some of the terminology used, since you’ll need to describe how members of your family are related to one another.
Understanding Family Relationships
In essence, this will be your family tree, so anything you produce should start with you, with your name placed right at the centre of the blank piece of paper. Everyone else is therefore described in terms of their relationship to you. On this embryonic family tree, your parents’ names will be written above you; your brothers and sisters – known as your siblings – will be either side of you, also underneath your parents; and the names of any children you have will be written below you, with their children – your grandchildren – below them. Above each of your parents will be their parents – your four grandparents – and alongside each of your parents will be their siblings, your uncles and aunts.
Every group of people on the same horizontal line represents a separate generation. Most people are familiar with these terms, but these are all close family members, and you will be working many generations back into the past when it becomes harder to keep track of distant relationships; so listed below are some of the key words used to describe relatives from the extended family, and ancestors further back in time, which are perhaps less familiar.
Blood Relations
The direct line in your family tree is made up of all the people who have been biologically crucial to your creation. Therefore they would include your parents and your grandparents, but not any of their siblings and other descendants – these people are your extended family. Each time you move one generation further back, you need to add ‘great’ as a prefix. Therefore the parents of your grandparents are known as your great-grandparents, and the parents of your great-grandparents are your great-great-grandparents, and so on. Every time you search for another generation in your direct line you will be looking for twice the number of people as the generation that came after that. This is because you have two parents, who each have two parents, so that you have four grandparents. These four grandparents have two parents each, which means you have eight great-grandparents, and then sixteen great-great-grandparents. As you work further back than this, you might find it easier to shorten this description to ‘2 x great-grandparents’.
Extended Family by Blood
These are the people that are related to you by blood, but are not biologically crucial in your existence today. Where possible, you should include them in your family tree – particularly after your first phase of research – but you might want to focus on your direct ancestors and come back to them at a later date.
Nieces and Nephews
Your nieces and nephews are the children of your siblings. Niece is used to describe a female offspring and nephew to describe a male offspring. Any subsequent children of your nieces and nephews are known as your great-nieces and great-nephews, and another ‘great’ is added to the prefix each time another generation is born.
