Why and when did you start on family history? (General)

by Ralph Cook, Saturday, January 10, 2009, 21:45 (5868 days ago) @ admin

Hi

I'm 49 years old now but my interet in family history began in the 1980s when I was in my mid twenties and competed with a compelling interest in women and the animal rights movement of which I was a part. I studied history at university but as at school always found it difficult to place what I was learning about the famous and the royals in context. Being a socialist I was more interested in how ordinary people lived and the part they played in the events that I studied.

When I became more interested in modern history (as opposed to Roman, Medieval, Tudor and Stuart etc.), it was possible to see the role of ordinary people relayed through film, photographs and original written documents (letters etc.) I talked a lot with my grandparents who were then in their 60s and 70s and found that they had lived through many of the events I was studying such as the end of the British Empire and the Second World War. Through them I heard about ancestors who died before I was born, killed in the London Blitz and taken as POWs in North Africa.

I reaslised that my ancestry was quite complicated with Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English blood running through my veins. Family legends finally prompted me to begin proper research in the mid 90s when I was in my mid-thirties. In 1996 I put my findings into my first hand-drawn family tree which included people born in the mid nineteenth century. Then I subscribed to Ancestry and have constructed a tree with some branches including 10 to 14 generations.

Being trained in history I am very particular about being able to evidence all additions to my tree and I find that most of the parish records further back than 1800 provide insufficient proof of descent. As a member of Genesreunited I now spend quite a bit of time demonstrating to contacts that they have made errors. This weekend I showed that a distant relative who sahred an ancestor in Tewkesbury with me had decided that ancestor was born in Newent and had moved to Tewkesbury. Using your website I was able to show the person born in Newent most likely remained there and married there. Our Tewkesbury ancestor must have come from somewhere else, or the record of his birth/baptism has been lost.

Yours

Ralph Cook