Family History Results

[Phoenix]

I have volunteered to research a cousin's tree. She and her partner intend to visit the UK, to explore where their ancestors lived.

They were planning on hiring a professional genealogist.

My guess is that they want something light touch: not William married Sarah and had seven children, complete with dates, or the names of all great great grandparents, but the ones who were famous, or did exciting things, or whose homes are still standing.

How would you set out the information? I'm creating an Ancestry tree, but that does rather bog you down in detail.

[Merry]

How long do you have?!!

I'd say you need to connect the ancestors to places and/or famous historical events if they are not going to be that interested in the tree itself. The trouble is you still have t do the tree to find out what you can work in!

I did one like that, but I was lucky that the tree was London based so there were lots of places I could link up to - the site of your ancestors house is under St Pancras Station - your ancestor would have seen the houses of parliament burn - your ancestor lived in this street before the houses were worth £100 million!! They liked the 'historic and today' photos of houses and streets too - lots of googling required!

[Olde Crone]

Time line with narrative to flesh it out as Merry suggests.

I once spent absolutely AGES, drawing a tree supported by family sheets, with numbers linking the sheets to the tree, which I THOUGHT made it ridiculously easy to follow. The recipient thanked me but asked if I could do it "a bit more simply". I haven't got around to it yet, but keep giving her little snippets of interest - "he was a milkman" "they emigrated" and she seems perfectly satisfied with that.

OC

[Phoenix]

Yes, it does sound a question of how long I want to spend on it!

Visiting Tate Britain recently, one mutual ancestor lived there when it was the site of Millbank Prison (and she was the only ancestor anyone was interested in) while one of theirs lived in the building's shadow, and from the style of the street, the house seems to have survived.


I need to go through Gwynne's posts, to see what happened on birthdays etc.

[Janet]

Good luck with your project, Phoenix! When you've run through all Gwynne's good stuff, you might try something like

Britannica's 'This Day in History' (https://www.britannica.com/on-this-day).

(You can use the 'What Happened On Your Bday?' button to play around with dates.)

[Merry]

If they are normally not all that interested in history, be careful you are not offering them the 'surprise' that their ancestor lived in the same street as say, Spencer Perceval, if they don't know who that is! This was a type of mistake I learned about very quickly when my tree target audience had never heard of the battle of Waterloo :o

You might do better with comparing their ancestors to people/places/addresses they are more aware of, depending on their interests - actors, singers/musicians etc etc. My friend's husband was excited when it turned out his wife's ancestor lived very close to the site of one of the earliest London McDonalds in South Kensington!!

[Phoenix]

Sound advice, Merry. As their mum was a GI bride who died young, they will have a different slant on history.

[Phoenix]

Thanks Janet. That looks useful.

[Kit]

If you can find out exactly what they want. I was asked for a copy of my tree but once I got them to be a bit more precise they wanted the direct male line back to the 3g grandfather, nothing maternal at all.

[Merry]

The annoying thing is, you are still going to have to do the whole thing, just to find the snippets they deem interesting. I'm feeling a bit irritated already and it's nothing to do with me! lol

[Phoenix]

I enjoy the chase, Merry, so that's no problem.

I've already "done" our mutual ancestors, and it has been easy enough to take their other English ancestors back to the start of civil registration.

Having helped at numerous fairs over the years, my experience is that you often get responses like "I already knew that." or "I'm not interested in that branch of the family"

You are right, Kit, I do need a precise brief.

[Olde Crone]

I have several times fallen foul of the "I already knew that but didn't want anyone else to know" reply!

OC