Genealogy anyone?

frimble3

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I very much doubt it, else I'd have been aware of a connection between the families. I'd be surprised if members of the family never met or at least knew of each other back in Cornwall, but there's nothing to suggest the emigrants were friends to the degree they'd decided to emigrate together.


It might be that they didn't personally decide to emigrate to New Zealand together, but that they were recruited by the same firm of immigrant recruiters, trolling the area for likely candidates. Did a lot of families sudden turn up locally at the same time as your grandfather?

Here, in my father's hometown, (Nanaimo) a lot of the locals were recruited by the Hudson's Bay Company to work their new-found coal mines. So, they recruited from coal-mining towns in England. (Sadly, they hired guys who were used to working in mines, when what they should have brought over were workers skilled in starting mines, which is apparently a bit more technical than 'find coal face
and dig'.)

Also, the company put the families up in the fort for a while, but then sent them forth to build their own houses: "But we're miners, dammit, Jim!"
The immigrants literally built this country.

On the other hand, somewhere between the tip of South America and Vancouver Island, my forefathers mutinied on board the ship that was bringing them to the new job. They were settled back down, but, way to go, Ancestors!

 

SAAM

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I have always used Family Tree Maker- which I really like. Which reminds me that I have to buy the newest one.
I have found a few distance cousins through my searches- which is cool. A fifth cousin came to our family party this past summer!!

Around 20-25 years ago I started poking around in family history (for an entirely ulterior reason). I have continued sporadically and have easily 4 file drawers of unorganized print-outs, original documents, old photos, etc.

I now have a scanner and have decided I want to put it all in a family tree program. But which one? I have one relative who uses the one on Familysearch.org. Another who uses the one on Ancestry.com. And a family acquaintance who uses Family Tree Maker. My concerns about Familysearch and Ancestry are that they are web based and searchable. FTM lives on your computer. I think I like that better. Anyone have pros or cons or other suggestions?

MM
 

MaryMumsy

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Thanks, SAAM. I had already decided on FTM, I just need to wait till I get my new laptop. I need a boatload more storage. Just the ancestors I already know about looks like the cast of a Cecil B DeMille movie :ROFL:

MM
 

Iain2

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Anyone writing Historical ‘Fiction’ is just about obliged to have access to genealogical sites. Mine is Ancestry !
During my 6-years of research in relation to the Battle of Waterloo, the soldiers involved have descendants. These proud family members have for years been researching their 3xGr Grandson ‘Willy,’ and as such, he/she knows more than you.
 

porlock

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I joined ancestry because my wife (who's adopted) wanted to find out her birth history - she did DNA and she's 2% native American, which pleased her. The writer in me wondered though we know they died and married and so on, but we really don't know the details (although with money we might have found out more). For example I found a relative who left around 1650 for America from England and wondered if it had anything to do with the English civil war. I kidded a friend that I was disappointed that I didn't find any highwaymen or horse thieves - although there were a few lawyers (grin).
 

PorterStarrByrd

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Anscestry and Rootsweb (a part of the same but different) are go-to. There is often much more info available than is there so I use both rootsweb and google when building my tree. I have 120K+ decendants of Coenradt Ten Eyck who was one of the first thousand or so in New Amsterdam (Manhattan, NY now)

My tool which is extremely flexible is excel. You can add whatever bells and whistles you want but freedom to build what you want and need is much greater than with the packaged programs. The caveat is that you have to know a bit about excel to do so ... not a diffcult process. Be glad to send you a short sample of how I am set up. drop me an e-mail addess via PM if you are interested
 

Thurpa

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I use MyHeritage, Ancestry, FindMyPast, PAF, Family Historian, Wikitree and I'm pretty sure a few others. My most serious stuff is with MyHeritage which was good when it started but honestly, I couldn't recommend it today. Ancestry is my go-to when writing genealogy and local history blog posts, it sets out the records so beautifully in chronological order. But Family Historian is what I use for a complete record, it's on my own computer and I can put details of living people there.

Family Historian is also the one I use for fictitious family trees for my stories, if I need them.

That's also what I use for 'character sheets' if need be. So easy to create a life profile, and I can put their life events in with notes and little stories as needed.
 

UchronianSteve

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Hi Mary. First became interested in genealogy back in 2011-12 myself, and while I've used several sites.....Ancestry Dot Com proved to be my go-to for my own research: the only downside being that much of the material on there is something you have to pay for a subscription to access.....which is why I haven't done so much research for the past year and a half or so, but maybe I'll get back into it soon-I've found so many goldmines of fascinating information in the meantime that it may just be sooner, rather than later!

Anyone writing Historical ‘Fiction’ is just about obliged to have access to genealogical sites. Mine is Ancestry !
During my 6-years of research in relation to the Battle of Waterloo, the soldiers involved have descendants. These proud family members have for years been researching their 3xGr Grandson ‘Willy,’ and as such, he/she knows more than you.

Hello, Iain; I'm a writer myself and I absolutely agree: not just for historical fiction but allo-historical (or counter-factual, alternate, etc.) fiction as well.

Anscestry and Rootsweb (a part of the same but different) are go-to. There is often much more info available than is there so I use both rootsweb and google when building my tree. I have 120K+ decendants of Coenradt Ten Eyck who was one of the first thousand or so in New Amsterdam (Manhattan, NY now)

My tool which is extremely flexible is excel. You can add whatever bells and whistles you want but freedom to build what you want and need is much greater than with the packaged programs. The caveat is that you have to know a bit about excel to do so ... not a diffcult process. Be glad to send you a short sample of how I am set up. drop me an e-mail addess via PM if you are interested

Y'know.....if my memory serves me correctly, I myself am not only a descendant of some of the early Dutch settlers of what's now New York, but I may actually be descended from one of the men who founded New Amsterdam(A fellow by the surname of Van Der Worken, IIRC).

I use MyHeritage, Ancestry, FindMyPast, PAF, Family Historian, Wikitree and I'm pretty sure a few others. My most serious stuff is with MyHeritage which was good when it started but honestly, I couldn't recommend it today. Ancestry is my go-to when writing genealogy and local history blog posts, it sets out the records so beautifully in chronological order. But Family Historian is what I use for a complete record, it's on my own computer and I can put details of living people there.

Family Historian is also the one I use for fictitious family trees for my stories, if I need them.

That's also what I use for 'character sheets' if need be. So easy to create a life profile, and I can put their life events in with notes and little stories as needed.

Ah, interesting! Never heard of Family Historian myself until today, Thurpa, but I may just seek it out for myself!