General Chat

The reason I joined GC is of course to assit me with extending my family tree. I started researching only afew months ago and am well and truly hooked. Have "met" a few distant cousins already, and have been overwhelmed by the helpfulness of the online genelogy community; so thanks everyone (I hope to be able to help people in turn as well, and as an asside am more than happy to do lookups on ancestry). I started the hobby for a variety of reasons, I found myself with lots of spare time and needed something to fill it, and I'd often thought about wanting to know more about my heritage; I only knew one of my grandparents, who died when I was 6, my mother always said she didn't have many living relatives (although in fact there's dozens of cousins)... Have found GC very useful and fun so far, glad I joined !

My journey started with a school project my daughter brought home a few years ago. She was asked to list her first 5 generations, starting and including herself, listing 4 sets of great granparents. We started well, her, me (generation 2), my mother & father (generations 3) my grandmother (generation 4) and thats where we got stuck, I called home to England and family for help.. Nobody knew.. This entreaged me, and took over her project... 5 years later, I am researching my 5th family tree and am just about to embark on taking a course to become a family historian... OUT OF SMALL SEEDS DO GREAT OAKS GROW. {no pun intended - well maybe a little}

I started tracing my roots following the death of my mum in 1996 when I was 38 years old. My dad had already died in 1964 (when I was 6) and so when mum died I felt that all the links to my past had gone. I have to say that although I was married with 2 children, I felt that a hole had opened up which I didn't know how to fill. There was -and still is - so much about my parents early life that I don't know about. I suppose its a case that when you're young, you don't give it a thought about how they met, where they met and when, cos' you're too busy enjoying life. Its only when one of them dies that you start to wonder "Should I be doing something about this?.........." However, when I started to think about putting this all down "on paper" mum had already started to go down with Alzheimers Disease and so all the information she had about her youth, my dad, and my early years was beaing eaten away by this dreadful disease. Mum had never really told me much about my dad (mainly because she was still grieving for him) and I knew that she had'nt really told me much about my early years in Canada (where I was born). There's a lot of "fog and mist" surrounding the circumstances of my parents coming together. I know that dad was a Regimental Sergeant Major (WO1) in the Canadian Army (although he was born and bred in Cockfield, County Durham) and that he was already married to someone else and that I have a half-brother and half-sister - who I've never met. And it was only a few months ago, albeit by accident, that I found out that my first 6 months of life, or so, was spent up at the Canadian Army base at Fort Churchill on Hudson Bay - a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle!! (You might of seen Fort Churchill on a nature programme 'cos is the Polar Bear capital of the world. Many polar bears head for the coastline at Fort Churchill when the arctic icepack breaks up in the summer months) Therefore in order to fill in the "missing blanks" I took up researching my roots. I've now traced my Linsley roots back to about 1750 and other parts back to 1600. I've just found out - via GenesConnected - that I'm the 5xGreat Nephew of Dr George Roddam who was the doctor to King George IV (The Prince Regent to all you Blackadder fans!!) I've also come into contact with 20 or so 4th, 5th and in one case 6th Cousins. These are spread around from County Durham, Manchester, Scotland, Ohio USA, and even New Zealand. All in all, doing my family tree has given me a tremendous sense of belonging in that I no longer feel cut-off from my past. It has also enabled me to hand on something to my 2 children. Patrick G Linsley Dorset, UK.

Why did I join? I hoped the site might be able to help with filling in some of the gaps in my tree and my husband's tree. Shortly after we married (25 years ago), I became interested in looking into our pasts. We asked family members, made a few visits, made a lot of notes, started a tree in a book, put the book on the shelf, brought up our sons and got on with life. Every now and then, I said I was going to do more work on it sometime in the future, so that our sons and their cousins would know something about their ancestors. Sadly, so many of those who could answer our questions are no longer with us, but the internet and GC has made research so much easier, even though each answer throws up more questions. Like so many others, I am hooked!

I joined GC in the hope that it would help fill in gaps in my family tree. It hasn't simply because I have go so hooked on reading the message boards that I have not had time to put many names on my tree. I really must set to and try to get my tree up to date. Through GC I have had people point me in directions I would never have thought of, done look ups I couldn't do and generally been so kind and helpful. So glad I read about this site in a magazine and joined. Jean.

I joined GC because I thought in time it could be a great resource for the UK family history community. It has proved to be just that and more. It has proved to be a resource for the whole family history community who have access to the web. I have received some fantastic tips, which have proved to be very helpful. I have also asked for help and guidance and I have always received knowledgeable replies. I have made a couple of contacts and for that I am very grateful to GC. An added bonus of this site was the pre Christmas get together. I attended the Guildford meet and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you people and GC Kathy

I joined so that I could build my family tree, now just have to get some software for my PC so that I can copy it onto there incase this place goes. Didn't realise that it would get so big, even thou mine isn't as big as some of you

nudged coz theres some great stories,have a read back.xx