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How Far Back Have You Been Able to Research in Your Family Tree?

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Researching into my family history is something I’ve been interested in for a while. The furthest I’ve been able to get back to so far with direct relatives is my 4th great grandparents. A lot of my family records were lost in a fire so I think it’s pretty good I’ve been able to get back this far, but I’ll keep looking and hopefully find some further back too. (Although the Smith side is definitely difficult to trace!).

What’s the furthest you’ve been able to get back to in your family tree?

cocolgooh
over a year ago
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lilyflower

cocolgooh I've been researching for a while and I'm back to 1490 on my maternal side. Recently decided to trace my Partners side and imagine the surprise when names from my tree popped up showing we share relatives from 1650 my 7th gt grandparents are his 8th gt grandparents and neither of us have ever lived in Cumbria.

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Ann1984

lilyflower any useful websites whice are free and do you need to know dates of birth etc. I don’t have any relatives living anymore but would like a tree

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lilyflower

Ann1984 The largest sites are Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage and TheGenealogist. I've mainly used Ancestry but only when I could sign up with a 50% off at other times I've dipped into all of them and Familysearch, or you could look at freeukgenealogy. It helps if you have a few names, dates and place of birth/lived, even just yours/parents. Alternatively try the local/county records, I got a lot of information for ex's family from free Cornish records. I'd love to get the info for you but we can't communicate 😞

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Ann1984

lilyflower thank you I will try some of the others you mentioned we gone back 100s of years on husband but then the 20 a month was hitting pocket.

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lilyflower

Ann1984 I paid £89/year worldwide on Ancestry with discount. It's just finished so I'll give it a month then sign up again with another 50% off they seem to do the deal quite often on all the levels. Just looked they have £48 off one deal and 50% off another for June.

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cocolgooh

lilyflower That’s happened a few times in my family tree too - people pop up twice. I think it’s interesting to think the same families were drawn back together again years after they were the first time!

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cocolgooh

Ann1984 I’d definitely recommend Family Search. I’ve been able to find additional family members using the census search on there because it lists people by relation to head of household. I found nieces and nephews that way which allowed me to locate the siblings of my ancestors, and then because I had sibling names I eventually managed to locate their parents through marriage records. And everything on there is free, so it doesn’t matter so much if it takes a while to trawl through the results.

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littlecactus

erm only up to my great grandad. I have no idea where to start lol

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cocolgooh

It can be difficult if you can’t find people for sure. If they were alive when the 1901 or 1911 censuses were done, they might appear on those along with family members.

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beccatavender

My husband has traced his father's family tree back to 1785 & his Mother's back to 1600s

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cocolgooh

That’s a long way back! He’s done well to get back so far. It’s always exciting when you find another family member.

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beccatavender

He retired and he really likes the research and has done also help friends with their family trees. The only thing is it can quite pricey getting birth certificates and then finding out whilst they have the same name they are not related to you 🙂@cocolgooh

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cocolgooh

beccatavender Yes it can be! There’s two families with the same set of names, one related to me and one not, and it can be almost impossible to tell which is which sometimes. I find checking baptism records for any that are baptised can help to rule in/out some people (such as I found one was baptised a few days before my relative was born so I could rule them out) before I order anything, but it can still get pricey!

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beccatavender

He has spent hours research the wrong person 😊

The problem he had is his family is from London but we live in Yorkshire, so most of the research was done online cocolgooh

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cocolgooh

beccatavender I can see how that could happen! I’m glad it’s possible to research online though - I think it makes it a lot easier for anyone that has family that has come from other parts of the country, or abroad.

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sunny101

I started last year in the middle of lockdown and really enjoyed the search. I had a real problem on one side of the tree with recurring names that made the journey an absolute nightmare. (Father to Son names) I also made some pleb errors by taking in the hints and believing them - that caused a lot of backtracking and correction. I haven't touched it for a few months but you've jogged me into action - Thank you. 🤣

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cocolgooh

sunny101 I have a lot of recurring names in mine too - one family named 4 out of 5 of their sons John... but the one that isn’t named John is the one I can’t find! 😂

The hints can sound so believable that they make you assume they’re correct when they aren’t, that’s for sure. I try to check hints across multiple sites now, but sometimes I just end up more confused!

Good luck with your search!

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