Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (3 page)

‘If you are visiting family members individually, compile a clear set of questions, topics and people to ask them about.'

Alternatively, they might want to talk to a third party or non-family member about what's happened to them. This is particularly true of painful memories that relate to war. You would be amazed how many former combatants don't tell their families about their experiences to shield them from what they went through, but will happily talk to a military historian who they believe has a greater understanding. As a final resort, you can always suggest that your relative writes down their secrets in a sealed envelope and leaves it to you in their will. Although this may appear frustrating, it does give them the opportunity to take their secrets to the grave with them, yet still reveal what it was that they thought too sensitive to talk about.

If there is a particular story or person that fascinates you, it's going to be important to talk to as many members of the family as possible, and compare different versions of the same tale – where accounts agree or overlap, there is likely to be a greater degree of truth. However, it's going to be your job as a family historian to verify everything you hear, which is why good note-taking is essential to this process.

Oral history is invaluable to genealogists and historians, creating a living link with the past. It is preferable if you can record your interviews, because as each generation gradually dies out there are fewer and fewer people to speak to who remember a way of life that will never return, and can tell stories about colourful characters that would otherwise be forgotten by time. There are many ways of recording interviews now, so, if your interviewee gives their consent, make the most of the opportunity to video-record the conversation using a camcorder or digital camera. This way their memories and stories are preserved for future generations to watch and enjoy, and you could find
a way of incorporating this material into a digital presentation of your research once you have finished. Ian Hislop made a very poignant observation when reviewing old cinefilm footage of his family on holiday: most of the time the camera was pointed not at his father, but at him – yet it was his father's thoughts, feelings and stories that he wished to hear in later life.

‘Oral history is invaluable to genealogists and historians, creating a living link with the past.'

This is your chance to record your family, and you should urge them to be filmed – always respecting their decision to decline if they are really not comfortable with this process. At the very least, with permission try to keep a tape recorder handy to catch gems of information, and be sure to take clear, detailed notes that you will be able to go back to at a later date and decipher how each person is related, what details are relevant to which people, and who told you each scrap of information. It is important to keep a track of the sources of all your information so that you can return to that relation if you need to ask any further questions once you have begun your research.

You should be prepared that you might find out more than you bargained for, and your discoveries may even change your perception of some family members. It can be exciting to uncover a skeleton in the closet of a distant relation who died long before your time, but there are often secrets kept within families even now that come as a surprise to a generation that is far more open than its predecessors.

Issues such as illegitimacy, adoption, bigamy and even criminal activity may creep into your family tree at some point in time, all of which will be discussed in greater detail in Section Three. If you do discover a potentially revealing aspect of a close relative's past life, think carefully about how to deal with passing that information on to other family members or talking to the people it may have a direct effect on. It can take a long time before family secrets are accepted as being out in the open, and although moral values have changed so that what used to be considered scandalous behaviour is now not so, there are still many people who hold traditional values and find it difficult to discuss such behaviour. Furthermore, as the chronicler of your family's history, it will ultimately be your research that becomes public knowledge, and your decision as to how much you tell people. Once information is out there, it can't be taken back – so think long and hard before pursuing a family secret.

While the information you glean from your extended family is vital to your research, be wary of believing everything you are told as fact. Oral historical accounts are invaluable, but are also subject to a certain amount of exaggeration and human error. Cross-reference the information you are given with lots of different family members, because details often get confused as time passes and people get older. Various individuals may have a contradictory account of the same event. The more information you are armed with, though, the easier your research should be. It is up to you to untangle the stories and find out who is right using primary sources in the archives.

…avoid early errors

1.
Cross-reference stories, accounts of names, dates, places and events with as many relatives as possible

2.
Be wary of false relatives and aliases – establish exact relationships and find out everyone's full names and nicknames

3.
Use the second-hand information you are given as a guideline for your research rather than fool-proof fact

4.
Be ready to substantiate everything with primary evidence

Never assume that dates and places you are told by relatives are correct, even if your source is adamant they are right. These are simply guidelines for you to follow to speed up the research process. Everything should be verified using official documentation where possible, such as civil registration certificates for births, marriages and deaths (described in
Chapter 5
) which will carry the official date and place that an event occurred. This is often at odds with the supposed ‘truth' you were told by your family.

When collecting information from relatives, be aware that the names they knew ancestors by may not have been the same names they were christened and registered with. For example, Granddad Liam's real name was actually Martin William, but he chose to use his second name, and then shortened that; Aunty Julie was actually born Mabel Julie. You will find that when looking for relatives' documents in the archives it is essential to know their official name because you will usually need this to locate their records in alphabetical indexes. Nevertheless, if a relative was known by more than one name it helps to be aware of the various options, so that you have an alternative to look for if you do not find them under their official name.

False relationships can also be planted in the information you receive from other family members. For example, you may need to do a fair bit of pruning of the family tree to remove lots of aunts and uncles who earned the title through family familiarity rather than blood ties, as well as tidy up the loose use of ‘cousin'; Aunty Marie, who your Granny told you all about, was actually a close family friend rather than a blood relation, and Cousin Joyce may actually have been your Granny's aunt, but because there was such a close age difference between them they were brought up more like cousins rather than aunt and niece. Make sure you gather the specifics about exactly how
each person is related so that you are not misled in your research before it even begins.

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.