catgate Posted March 27, 2006 Report Share Posted March 27, 2006 Management has got herself interested in family trees (I think she wants find out when our line came down from the trees..but that is classified information). Poor girl, she keeps getting so far and then hitting a brick wall. So in a moment of mad recklessness I said I would enquire if any of the good folk in WFland knew of any genuinely good sources on the 'net. The ones we have looked at seem to be keen to take money with no guarantee that there will be any real seccess. What she wants is good information without having to sell me into the white (well grey) slave trade. Any advice, please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dadyassa Posted March 27, 2006 Report Share Posted March 27, 2006 I found about the same as you, you can get so far then its money, money, money with no guarantee that they will be your relatives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanHo Posted March 27, 2006 Report Share Posted March 27, 2006 My experience is that there is no free lunch. Ancestry.com and Genesreunited.com seem to be the two leading sites but you have to pay for certain information.You can "pay as you go" to ostensibly keep costs to the minimum - but I have found it better to pay the monthly subscription and then spend every spare minute to make the most of it each month.I found that getting back to 1851 in England (the earliest census) fairly straightforward - but before that you will need to search the national records at Kew or parish records wherever. Be warned that the activity can become compulsive, very frustrating and costly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doug Posted March 27, 2006 Report Share Posted March 27, 2006 During your searches into the past AH, find any good jokes on the way? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted March 27, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2006 Thanks, all.Ancestry.com and Genesreunited.com were the two main sites she has been looking at these last few days. The problem seems to be that although she has no objection to paying for information, so far there has been little indication that the information she wants is there. She has got back as far as the very early 1800s in Notts. Derbyshire, Westmorland and Lancashire but then come unstuck.or parish records wherever.We had a spell a few years ago when we covered an awful lot of miles trailing from one parish to another, often fifty miles or more apart (they did a lot of travelling even in those days), only to find that the County Council or Unitary Authority (or what ever they called themselves) had taken the records for the entire county "into safe keeping". This was again usually about fifty miles away, and the purpose seemed to be so that if a fire or flood or tempest did occur it would destroy the entire county's records rather than just one parishworth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted March 28, 2006 Report Share Posted March 28, 2006 My brother in law has searched as far back as the early seventeen hundreds. This has taken several years, all done by car and bus. It was a long hard slog, but it was the only truly productive way that he could find. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchful Posted March 28, 2006 Report Share Posted March 28, 2006 As others have said, it is better to pay a subscription to Genesreunited but it is very time-consuming. One advantage is that other people can contact you and it's through that that I got some important leads in my own search. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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