Category Archive

Being a computer person I’ve done a lot of my family history research on the internet. But all the information on the internet has been transcribed from the original records and so mistakes can (and do) creep in. If you’ve looked at an original census record or a parish register you can see how easy it is for things to be copied incorrectly – the writing can be practically illegible, spellings are arbitrary and depend on the writer and the actual original may be in very poor condition, after all if could be 400 hundred years old if it’s an early record. So there came the time when I knew I had to be brave and go into unchartered territory and visit a records centre. It was very daunting at first as I didn’t know how to use a microfilm reader or how to find what film or fiche I needed but with the help of the very friendly and helpful staff I found at all the records centres I visited I survived my first few visits and now I really look forward to visiting one.

The most famous records centre for family history research has to be the Family Records Centre (FRC) in London. Here you can search birth, marriage and death indexes and census returns for the whole of England and Wales. Personally, I wouldn’t bother now with a trip to the FRC unless I wanted to search census records for relatives scattered around the country. I prefer to visit a Local Records Centre / Local Archives / Local Family History Centre – they all seem to be called something different they are all basically the same.

The advantage of visiting a local records centre is the breadth of information available for that particular area. As well as microfiche copies of birth, marriage and death indexes and local census data, they hold large collections of other historical records such as parish registers, electoral rolls, trade directories, wills, local history books, photographs, maps and much, much more.

In the last year, I’ve been to Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Gloucester, Surrey and Sussex records centres and have found all sorts of information that isn’t available on the internet (yet!). At Surrey records centre I discovered that my gt, gt, gt Grandmother Sarah Wheeler and my gt, gt grandfather Samuel Wheeler both died of cholera within a few days of each other along with 2 of Samuel’s children – what a terrible blow for Samuel’s wife, my gt, gt grandmother. At Gloucester records centre I found the will of my gt, gt, gt, gt grandfather Richard Burrows who died in 1835.

The one thing I’ve discovered whilst trying to trace my family tree is what a friendly and helpful bunch other family history researchers are. Early on in my research I decided to put my family tree information onto the Genes Connected website www.genesconnected.com the Roots Web website http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com as a way of making contact with others researching the same names as me. Both sites allow you to import a GEDCOM file so as I was already using software on my PC to record my family tree it was very easy to export my data in the appropriate format and then import into my area of Genes Connected and World Connect. This meant that I didn’t have to type everything in again which would have been a real pain. Through these sites I’ve made contact with a number of distant cousins and we have shared information which has allowed us to add information to our own trees. One contact in particular provided me with information that took one line of my family back another 200 years to 1600.

Another site which I have used is www.ukbdm.co.uk where family history researchers can post details of birth, marriage and death certificates they have and are willing to share with others. At the moment the site seems to be under used and would benefit from more researchers posting information but it did come up trumps for me. I did a search in hope rather than expectation and low and behold there was my great grandmother’s name. Subsequent contact with the owner of the entry not only gave me the information I wanted without having to pay £7 for a copy of a birth certificate but also information about other members of the family and contact with a second cousin I never knew I had.

More recently I have signed up with a couple of family history subscription lists. As my family don’t come from the Midlands, I have found these lists very helpful and interesting and many people have kindly looked up information for me or given me advice on where to look next when I’ve been stuck. There are lists for most counties - see www.genuki.org.uk/indexes/MailingLists.html for a complete list. To start with I subscribed to most of the counties my ancestors lived in, 6 in all. This turned out to be completely unmanageable as each day there would be dozens and dozens of emails in my inbox, so now I just belong to two which relate to the areas I am researching at the moment. I also subscribe in digest mode which means that instead of getting lots of individual emails from I get one long email each day from each list with all that days emails in it. I find this much easier to manage and quicker to scan for anything of interest. I’ve found each of the lists are different, the topics they cover, how chatty the contributors are and how wide a subject range is allowed but all have helped me find out more about my ancestors.

Last time I told you about how I used birth and marriage certificates to find out who my great grandparents were. Sometimes I had trouble deciding which birth certificate to order as some of them had common names and there were several possible matches – William Jenkins and William Wheeler in particular gave me a lot of trouble. So my next step was to look at census information to see if that could help me pinpoint where they lived and where they were born.

A census has been compiled every 10 years since 1801 (except 1941 due to World War II). The earlier returns 1801, 1811, 1821, and 1831 did not record names of individuals but from 1841 names of individuals were recorded. The census returns from 1851 onwards are particularly useful as they give an age and a place of birth whereas the 1841 census doesn’t have a place of birth and the ages of persons over 16 rounded down to the nearest 5 years.

The easiest to use, and the ones I’ve used extensively are the 1881 and 1901 censuses as these are both available online (1881 at www.familysearch.org and 1901 at www.1901censusonline.com) and are both indexed by name so that I could search for my grand parents and great grandparents my name. The 1881 census online is free to use but with the 1901 census having done a search you have to pay to get the information you want.

It was the 1901 census that gave me the information I needed to sort out my William Wheeler problem. I couldn’t look for my grandfather himself as he wasn’t born until 1904 but I knew he had a brother with the slightly unusual name of Ashley Wheeler. So I did a search for him and found him straight away. By paying to see the household details I then got information about all the family including Dad William’s place of birth which then helped to pin point which birth certificate to order.

Using census information has also meant that I have been able to flesh out information from birth and marriage certificates, identifying some of my great grandparents’ brothers and sisters. Because censuses only give a snap shot of a particular time in their lives, I can’t always be sure if all the family group are together in the one house at the time of the census – elder brothers and sister may have married or been apprenticed and moved away. Younger brothers and sisters may yet to be born. Other siblings may have been born and died between censuses. My family of Dewfalls are a good example of this, only 7 children appear on the 1901 census but I have subsequently found out that there were 6 more children, 4 died in infancy and 2 were born after 1901.

I’ve done most of my research using the internet and have managed to trace both sides of my family back at least 5 generations to the early 1800s using a combination of births, marriage and death certificates and census information. Civil registration of births, marriage and deaths started in 1837, so, in theory, it is relatively easy to trace your ancestors back to then.

I’ve mainly used the Family Records Office website www.familyrecords.co.uk to obtain copies of certificates as it can supply copies of certificates for the whole of England & Wales and I could order them online. To use this online ordering facility I have to supply specific information to identify the certificate I want – the General Register Office (GRO) index reference. The Family Records Office won’t issue a certificate without this information. I have used a number of different ways to find out the GRO index references for the certificates I wanted to order. The cheapest is to use the website freebmd.rootsweb.com This brilliant website is run by volunteers who have copied many of the GRO indexes to a massive database which can be searched easily online. The only draw back is that not all the GRO indexes have been put on yet so sometimes the person I was looking for wasn’t there. The next options cost. Wolverhampton Archives (Wolverhampton Archives & Local Studies Centre, 42-50 Snow Hill, Wolverhampton) have a complete set of the GRO indexes on microfiche which are free to look at but you have to pay to use the microfiche reader – it cost me £2 for 2 hours and I managed to check about 10 years worth of indexes in that 2 hours. The other way I’ve done it is to use www.findmypast.com This site costs approx 10p to view one page from one volume of an index. When I’m sure of the date of a birth or marriage I use this site as it works out cheaper than paying for parking in Wolverhampton and to use the microfiche reader at Wolverhampton Archives.

I started by getting birth certificates for my 4 grandparents as I knew when and where they were born. As well as giving the name, date and place of birth of the child, birth certificates also record the parents’ names, including the mother’s maiden name, the father’s occupation and the address of the informant (which is usually one of the parents). So by getting birth certificates for my 4 grandparents I found out who my 8 great grandparents were. Armed with this information I was then able to find marriage certificates for my great grandparents. Marriage certificates include on them the age of the bride and groom so using that information I could then look for birth certificates for these people. Using the information on these certificates I could then research the proceeding generation and so on.

Sound easy huh? Well sometimes it is as straight forward as this but sometimes my ancestors moved around and weren’t born where I thought they had been and some had common surnames so there were dozens of possible matches in the GRO indexes. My great grandfather Charles William Dewfall had an unusual name so should have been easy to find. The only match I could find was born in Bristol but I knew he had been married in London. Did he move to London to get married or was I on the wrong track? And then there was my other great grandfather, William Wheeler. There are dozens of William Wheelers in the GRO index but which was mine. The only way to find out was to look at census information.

As I’ve researched my family history I’ve been interested in the new surnames I’ve collected with each generation. I was born a Jenkins and my mother’s maiden name was Wheeler – both common surnames that have given me headaches as I’ve tried to progress backwards through the generations. My grandmothers added Dewfall and Burrows to my list. Again Burrows is quite a common surname but Dewfall was interesting. There are only approximately 130 individuals recorded in the 1881 census with the surname of Dewfall or Dufall (the other common spelling of this name). Compare this to approximately 40,000 Jenkins and 18,000 Wheelers and 17,000 Burrows and you can see how rare the Dewfalls really were.

It seems that the Dewfalls originated from Dorset and as I found out more information about my Dewfall families I found that they did indeed come from Dorset back in the late 1700s before moving just across the border into Somerset. They then moved to Bristol where there are still a number of Dewfalls living today. But it wasn’t the place for my great grandfather as he moved onto South London where my grandmother was born.

Given that 3 of my 4 grandparents were born in Surrey, the other in Essex, I was quite surprised to find this connection with the South West and to follow the movements of the families around the country. I had always thought that people didn’t travel far in those days but I found it wasn’t unique. Research into my Burrows ancestors revealed that they came from around Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. My great grandfather Charles Burrows married Mary Masters whose family came from near Romney Marsh on the Kent / Sussex border and they married in Fulham. How did they both get to Fulham and why? I don’t know yet and perhaps never will but it’s interesting trying to find out.

I’m still trying to sort out my Jenkins family, with such a common name they are proving difficult to unravel. Not only have they got a common surname they were all named William, the most common Christian name in the 1800’s. And to make matters worse my great, great grandfather married a lady called Eliza Johnson. The surname Johnson is even more common than Jenkins (over 100,000 in 1881) and Eliza / Elizabeth the second most common Christian name (Mary’s the first if you are interested)! Family myth has it that my Jenkins came from South Wales, not surprising given that this is where the surname originated and where it’s most common in 1881, but when did they move to Surrey? Did they stop anywhere on their way there? I’ve found that you have to be patient and methodical when your tracing your family tree. It’s like being a detective and I could just do with Inspector Morse or Hercule Poirot to help me with this puzzle!

 Have you ever wondered if one of your ancestors was somebody famous? I’ve never had any illusions that my ancestors were anything but common stock but I have still found finding out who they were and where they lived to be an absorbing hobby.

Don’t be put off by thinking you will have to trawl through mounds of old documents – you may choose to but you can also find out a lot of information using the internet.

I’ve done most of my research using the internet and have managed to trace both sides of my family back at least 5 generations to the early 1800s. I was born in Surrey as was my Mum and Dad, but back in 1835 my ancestors were spread around the country in Kent, Gloucester, Somerset, Surrey and Sussex which surprised me as I had a picture of people in those days living and working in the same village all their life. They were mainly agricultural labourers, some were carmen, ie they drove horse drawn carts, one family were bakers and one family butchers, there’s also an odd miller and bootmaker but nobody famous or distinguished.

They must have lived hard lives. The largest family I’ve found sound far had 14 children and families of 7 or 8 are common. Often the husband died young leaving a wife with small children to look after. Many children died before their 3^rd birthday. Take my great grandfather, Charles William Dewfall and his wife Sarah, for example. They lived in south London, not a very affluent part of the country, between 1882 and 1918. Charles was a carman so probably didn’t earn much. They were only married for 15 years but managed to have 13 children. Unfortunately 4 of the children died before they were a year old. I can’t imagine the pain of losing one child let alone 4. Neither can I imagine what it was like trying to bring up the other 9, especially after Charles died aged only 51 leaving Sarah with 5 children under the age of 15 and the youngest only 18 months old. Presumably the elder children would have had to support the family, I hope so or poor Sarah would have had a really tough time of it. It’s not really surprising that she died 10 years later aged only 58. The hard life they had as children may have also contributed to my grandmother’s early death in 1936 aged only 46.