I must apologise
for any sometimes odd and/or seemingly miscellaneous bits of
information which I include
in my working notes but these often prove invaluable at a
later date when I am trying to connect a family
together.
There are some
people included in the tree who have no currently proven link to
my family members but I use the strategy that all information I
obtain is is filed just in case I may need it later.
I have not included on this website all the notes in my tree – only those which are recorded as ‘Events’. If you have any queries on specific individuals it is quite possible that I have more information available. I am always very willing to extract a Gedcom file of a family line to send out by email.
My email address as used on this website mailto:JOYBOBTREE@JSALT3.FREESERVE.CO.UK is specific to this family tree site which will allow me to identify Emails which are Family tree / website related. This is necessary as I receive a lot of Spam mail and I have set up my Email so that 95% of this are deleted unread. Oh to find a way to stop Spam coming in at all >
I have most
recently, just before reloading the website, spent some time
going through the tree
to ensure that names are to a more consistent format than
previously. This makes it easier to group families together
especially where there are different ways of spelling a surname.
(eg Brining / Bryning or Fernyhough / Fernihough). It also
helps me avoid duplicate recording. My recent exercise to
tidy up the tree revealed several instances where a wife married
the same husband twice with just a slight difference in spelling
of their names !
I have also, for
ease of reference, made sure that everyone in the tree has an
approximate date of birth.
Where dates are unknown I have had to assume that husband
and wife are born in same year,
that first child is born when parents are aged 25 and that
subsequent children are born 2 years apart.
This strategy appears to have a reasonable validity but
please 'shout'
if I have made you or your relatives far too old or too
young and I will make the necessary corrections.
Since the website
was last updated I have had little time for new research so this
is a tidier
rather than a much expanded tree.
One area where I have added more detail is in the Royal lines
where I have attempted to include all the
English and Scottish Kings. This is in addition to those
who are in my direct line of descent.
I used data from the official Royal Family website http://www.royal.gov.uk/ as a
reference and apologise for any errors I may have made in
transcription.
.
I hope in the
coming months to concentrate on more research on my immediate
family lines and
will update the website as new data becomes available to me.
My research to date
has been mainly carried out from home.
As we now live in
the lovely Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire access to the
records from our original home areas of Lancashire and
Staffordshire is not very easy. My PC however gives me access to
the growing volumes of genealogical information on the internet,
contact with fellow researchers by Email and also to my genealogy
related CDs. It also allows me to scan in old photos,
certificates and to download more recent pictures from the
digital camera. When I have collected all the information
it then provides me with software facilities to enter the data
and present it lots of different formats.
I also have a
very old Bell and Howell Microfiche reader on which I can read
old parish records.
Isn’t
technology wonderful !
Now I am retired it
should in theory be easier for me to get out and about to the
record offices. That has not yet proved to be the case as we have
been far to busy ‘holidaying’ in our motorhome. The
coming winter months should hopefully find me bent over a fiche
reader in my local LDS centre.
I use FAMILY TREE
MAKER (had to buy it) to record all the information in my family
tree file. This is the software I started with and with which I
have become most familiar. I find FTM better for data entry than
the other software I have tried. It has a brilliant
relationship calculator which means I can immediately work out
how I am related to anyone else in the tree.
I do not use FTM to build my famly tree website or webpages. My family tree is just too big for Family Tree Maker which tries to upload the entire file in one go and the two hours uninterrupted connection time allowed by my ISP, Freeserve, does not give sufficient time to upload the file. FTM is also not too good when it comes to selecting specific family lines for export to someone else.
I use LEGACY (downloaded free from the internet ( http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/ ) to build my website. In order to do that I export my Family Tree Maker file to GEDCOM format and then Import it to LEGACY. Legacy provides a simple to use website builder which gives various options of format (I use Pedigree view) and also provides Name and Surname indexes – as found on this site. Legacy also provides an excellent ‘people’ selection facility via tags so it is easy to create files containing only members of one particular line – this allows me to create, send out selective Gedcom files where requested.
I do have problems
incorporating photographs as Legacy converts lowercase photo file
names to upper case in its hyperlinks (and the internet is case-sensitive
so will only find links in the correct case). It will also only
allow one photo per page so I have to use Front Page Express to
add in any others. I also have to be very careful where I put the
photos to ensure that a simple 'same folder' link is created.
When the web pages are viewed on my PC all can appear to be OK
but if I have made any mistakes once the pages are on the web the
link errors are revealed !
I also use PAF (downloaded
free from the internet ( http://www.familysearch.org/ ) to build charts,
export to Excel spreadsheet format etc. I use the Gedcom
file out of FTM and import it into PAF the same as I do with
Legacy.
I am very computer
literate as I should be as I spent 30+ years of working life in
IT though on Mainframe computers not PCs. This makes it easy for
me to use the PC for my Family Tree ‘work’. I have not
yet learned (lack of time) HMTL but a bit of confient trial and
error goes a long way I find. I do have great admiration
for those who have no such IT experience yet successfully
meet the challenge of the foibles of home PCs.
I do not make use
of Source references in my tree.
It would
probably be better if I did but as a beginner I did not do so and
I have rather too many people in my tree now to start again !
Some data is source
referenced but most is not. I do keep all emails relating
to family tree matters filed by surname so can generally answer
queries. I do have a full copy of the English 1881 census, a
number of parish record microfiche, various directories (Pigots
etc), Memorial inscription transcriptions, Vital record CDs etc
etc and spend many hours checking through these in addition to
the time I spend on the internet. The most obvious sources of
information on the internet are IGI and FreeBMD but I have also
made use of the 1901 census and the Scottish GROS service. See useful website page
One of my most
valuable sources of information is the genealogy mailing lists.
Members of these lists are generally only too happy to assist
someone else in their research – and it is of course
essential to reciprocate by assisting others where one has access
to requested information.
I have tried to
ensure, with this latest version of my family tree that everyone
has a reasonable format name and an approximate birth date.
This makes it far easier to identify people when I have a query.
An undated entry of ‘John Smith’ is not very helpful
especially when there are 10 such entries !
I am also
correcting any entry I find, as I come to it, which has
incomplete location details – as it was suggested to me that
all entries should include country, I have not yet amended
all the entries but will get it done in time.
Last and not least
I have AVG virus scanner installed and
running on both my PC and my laptop.
This is free
software which can be downloaded from http://www.grisoft.com/ I download
very regular updates and run the scanner at least once a day.
More if there are any particularily evil bugs doing the rounds.
I NEVER open
attachments unless I know what they are and where they come from
and I generally ‘preread’ all emails, before opening
them, using right click to Properties and then selecting Details,
Message Source. I have come across some pretty nasty little
viruses in this way and managed to throw them away without
catching them.
I also have a Zone
Alarm fire wall and its astonishing how many unsuccessful
attempts to get into my PC are logged every hour. Again
ZALOGS software is free from http://www.zonelabs.com/
and Finally
GOOD LUCK with your
Family Research
enJOY
