ADVICE FOR A NEWBIE.....

[Jean Jeanie]

I only started looking for my ancestors in September 2004. The only site my tree is on is Genesreunited. I have had quite a bit of success from this. I use the IGI search and SP for confirming BMD's and for census information.What I would really like to know is, what else I can do to find out more.

Jean Jeanie

[a-bisset]

Some tips and techinques in no particular order:

1) use IGI entering ONLY fathers forename & surname and mothers forename & surname and location (eg: British Isles and Scotland).

This will list children of those parents (not all as IGI is far from comprehensive).

2) be rigorous in narrowing down searches.

2a) Deaths: Someone appears on a census in 1881 then you KNOW they died AFTER that date, so update your death date to show AFTER 1881. They are dead on a marriage cert then update your death date to show they died BEFORE xx xxx xxxx. Similarly if someone is born in 1860 you can be fairly sure they died BEFORE 1970. Also if you know birth dates of children you can be sure the mother died on or AFTER the date of birth of the youngest child and the father probably died a minimum of 9 months before the date of birth.

You end up with BETWEEN xxxx & yyyy type dates which help you narrow things down a lot.

Using rules like these you can radically narrow down searches. Meaning when you do online searches in SP you can give a smaller range for the search thus saving you credits if you have a common surname to search for eg: Brown.

2b) Births : If you know a child was born in 1860 and you have their parents names but not the parents dates of birth you can interpolate and say that the parents were very likely to have been born BEFORE 1844. This is so much better than putting unknown. Putting BEFORE 1844 shows that they cannot appear on Scottish Statutory Records and at best will be on the OPRs.

3) Diligently record your sources - as your records grow you will inevitably return to someone and wonder how you know that they existed or how you know they died after xxxxx date. If you have recorded a source it leads you to the original document you used to get the data and will jog your memory.

4) Use other sites eg: www.Gencircles.com www.lostcousins.com www.ancestry.com www.cyndislist.com www.freecen.org.uk some of these sites allow you to upload gedcoms or enter ancestors. They provide means of linking up with other researchers looking for similar links.

5) Use bulletin boards like this one to contact others and learn from other people.

Hope these first random musings help.

[Jean Jeanie]

Alexander

thank you for your tips and suggestions. these are the kinds of things which help a novice like me.

Jean

[sporran]

Hello,


sound advice, to which I can only add that, if all else fails, assume that the information is wrong. An example is my great-grandmother stating on her marriage that her father was dead. I searched everywhere between the the last date when he was alive and the marriage, then extended dates. He died 10 years after her marriage, in a Poor House, and the informant to his death was.....yes, my great-grandmother.


Regards,

John

[CatrionaL]

Hullo Jean Jeanie,

I can echo sporran's advice. I spent ages trying to find info on my grandmother who had told me she was from Helensburgh. I did eventually discover that she was born in Paisley and brought up in the Gorbals. She possibly thought that Helensburgh sounded more upmarket or as she would have said "posh".

Hope you enjoy your research as much as I have.

Catriona

[DavidWW]

The way in which I'd approach this situation, as very well demonstrated by Sporran and Catriona, is, by all means, start off with the assumption on the basis of other info, from statutory or other sources, that the info is correct; but once there are problems, then challenge those assumptions

Davie

[StewL]

Names

Dont forget that names are often interchangeable. For example I was looking for my grannie Jane's marriage, and found her married under Jeannie. And dont forgot the Jane/Janet/Jean/Jeannie combinations.
As for the men, well Patrick/Peter combination, and so many others I wont even attempt to list here.