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  1. #1
    LynneOz
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    Default Two books down, two more to go

    Hello

    I am a Mancunian-born Ozzy and even though I have visited England several times since emigrating with my family, I have had little opportunity to do any "hard" research in societies or libraries. My principal research tool has been the internet and at times I have thrashed it to death.

    I have just finished a book on my father's paternal line and am almost finished another on him maternal line. This has been done via computer but checking and double checking census returns and parish records wherever possible. Unfortunately, my lot were not into writing wills, which has been a pity.

    I have my dad's male line back to 1770s in Hadfield, Derbyshire but can take it no further despite help on this forum and others and with assistance from several others looking for the same family. However, what I do have is fleshed out with relevant bits of history and newspaper reports wherever possible as well as the decade procession of census reports and all the marriages and births. So some 300 pages later, I am happy with what I have done.

    My dad's female line comes to a grinding halt about the same time. This line went back to a family of tailors, drapers and habit makers who had premises in King Street Manchester at the turn of the 18th century. Parish records back then were, of course, not very descriptive and I had hoped to be able to look at some kind of property records when I was in Manchester a couple of years ago but found nothing at all in the Central Library in Manchester. What I do have will make a fairly solid story. Yesterday I had my head in the Scottish clearances, the Irish potato famine, the hatting industry in Manchester and multiple parish records.

    I haven't followed any prescribed plan with my books. I just devote a chapter per couple and go down through the various generations weaving a story out of what I have found and any additional historical facts I can find. I figured if I didn't get on and do it, many years worth of work would just be lost and forgotton about. Hopefully some of my extended family will find it interesting.

    So all those of you plugging away: please do something with it and don't let it just be sidelined and lost.

    Cheers

  2. #2
    Valued member of Brit-Gen emmteeyess's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LynneOz View Post
    ... So some 300 pages later, I am happy with what I have done...
    ...So all those of you plugging away: please do something with it and don't let it just be sidelined and lost.
    That's an impressive achievement. Well done.
    I've written a few (very short by comparison) pdf documents to distribute to my cousins about various family members, but wonder - how did you decide it was time to publish a 'definitive' history?
    I've obviously not reached that stage as I keep finding new and sometimes contradictory info from new sources, despite thinking I had all there was available, at the time.
    Also - How much did you publish of general history of the period? - eg A relative of mine was at the Battle of the Nile and I got sidetracked into pictures and accounts of the battle and then of conditions of service in Nelson's Navy etc. General history did explain lots of the motives for my relatives actions tho.
    How did you draw the line between personal and general history?

    I'd be interested in your thoughts

    Cheers, MTS

  3. #3
    Loves to help with queries
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    Congratulations, Lynne, you have worked very hard over the years, cicilysmith

  4. #4
    LynneOz
    Guest

    Default Two books down, two more to go

    Thanks for your replies. Cicilysmith, you know the story.

    Emmteeyess: All of this started at least 20 years ago. My mother was the genealogist. She had been collecting info on and off but really got into it when she retired. When she died, I promised her I would continue what she started. In the meantime, I had been bitten by the bug too but rather than stomp on her patch, I began researching my husband's American family.

    My push started when my sister-in-law (who was over 20 years older than my husband), reached 80 then 95. I figured I had done so much work on one of their maternal lines I just had to put it in a book. I had promised originally to trace their four lines to find out where each line had originated. (Little did I know that would take me to the beginnings of Maryland in the early to mid-1600s.) That book just had to be written to a deadline because we were visiting and I needed to take it with me.

    Once I had finished, I promised a cousin of my husband that I would write up the paternal side. I have just finished that one and we are visiting in 3 weeks to deliver that one (hopefully hurricanes and North Korea allowing!!!!)

    My father is still alive and is now 95. His request was that I find out what had happened to his father during WWI. So I have now finished that one and we collected it from the printer yesterday. That one goes back to about 1777 but, as Cicilysmith knows, we have been unable to push that particular date back conclusively for years. I am now almost finished the other side of my father's family and that one, too, only goes to the mid-1700s. I wanted to be able to actually put these books in his hands (he is functionally blind) so that he knows I have done them.

    Researching from Australia has been done via computer. As increasingly more digital records have become available, it has been easier to verify connections. Assistance from and discussions with other family members has been helpful but much of the acquisition of references to verify information has been done on the internet.

    To further the research already done, at this moment, I would have to spend much time in England digging in Archives and libraries. That is not going to happen any time soon. So rather than let the interest level drop and lose those details you acquire when really into "heavy" looking I decided to commit to paper. I am glad I did.

    Cheers

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