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Writing up family history

"PostIts" is a great idea, I hadn't thought of that.

I must say this has knocked my confidence a few times as I have looked at other people's research and doubted my own research only to find that I was right.
I can echo that experience. As it says above you can use clues and even if they are proven wrong it narrows your search down. On one issue it took me five years to find the correct pathway. I have in research put a great deal of work into analysing possible data, found what appeared to be the correct person only to buy certificates and find out I was precisely wrong!!!! It made the final positive outcome all the more joyous after what was a "rap on the knuckles". However remember you need to use Occam's Razor carefully in research. My view is that genealogical research, like all research, should be accurate or its limitations stated otherwise it's potentially a mix of fact and fiction.
If you write/type as you try using different coloured inks that remind to expand later, prepare an appendix or whatever.
It means a continuous edit but every month I refine the document.
Using a standard referencing system such as Harvard or inventing your own helps track data sources used in the text. I have only done this for the last three years after my eldest grandchildren proof read my work and suggested this technique as they both utilised it for their university work and as I hope to pass on my work via them and our younger Grandchildren I thought I had better comply!!! Role reversal in action.
Also I think of it as a letter to future generations, partly about me(!!) and enabling others to build upon it if they wish as more data becomes available.
I hope this helps - just stick at it.
 
Really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I hadn't heard of Occam's Razor until I looked it up and it really makes sense. Loved the identification too about making the wrong assumptions. I certainly identify with that :)
 
Alison,

I am lucky in having two object lessons in my bookcase. I won't go into detail here but I started a discussion in the Forum on this subject many years ago. It's here:
If at some stage you would like to see the contents page of one or two of these documents, to get an idea about how they were organised, please let me know.

Chris
That would be fab. I would love to see the contents page please.
Best wishes
Alison
 
Alison,

I am lucky in having two object lessons in my bookcase. I won't go into detail here but I started a discussion in the Forum on this subject many years ago. It's here:
If at some stage you would like to see the contents page of one or two of these documents, to get an idea about how they were organised, please let me know.

Chris
P.s. Chris did you do a talk called 'When the Lights went out in Birmingham'?
 
Yes, Alison, happy to do so but shan’t be able to pick this up until late next week.

And no, it wasn’t me, I’m afraid!

Chris
 
Reading this thread and going back to your original thread ChrisM has been really interesting.

The phrase 'when do you call a halt' has been something I have thought about in the last couple of days.
I saw a photo of my late mother in law on Ancestry, Steve ,my husband , had never seen it before . He didn't recognise the surname of the poster as being in his family..

I messaged her to find out where she came in Steves tree, she has found out by using DNA that she is his moms 2nd cousin , 4 times removed. What? we joked that she will probably go on until she finds out that poor Brass workers in brum were related to Henry V111.
I love genealogy and have been interested since , pre computer ownership , I spent hours in Stafford records office, but I 'call a halt' at using DNA, this would turn my enjoyable hobby into something far more serious. Alberta.
 
good post alberta and like you i cant ever see myself going down the route of DNA...knowing what i am like for researching my ancestry through the normal channels if i was to start DNA research it would consume my lifeo_O but good luck to those who do...

lyn
 
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...but I 'call a halt' at using DNA, this would turn my enjoyable hobby into something far more serious. Alberta.
A second cousin of mine was contacted by an American who said he was related. This American did a lot of research and 'wrote it all up' and produced and printed a book, sending several copies to my cousin.
Then our American author had a DNA test and a family secret was revealed, he was the son of the proverbial milkman, so none of the paternal line, the core of his book, was his.
 
Reading this thread and going back to your original thread ChrisM has been really interesting.

The phrase 'when do you call a halt' has been something I have thought about in the last couple of days.
I saw a photo of my late mother in law on Ancestry, Steve ,my husband , had never seen it before . He didn't recognise the surname of the poster as being in his family..

I messaged her to find out where she came in Steves tree, she has found out by using DNA that she is his moms 2nd cousin , 4 times removed. What? we joked that she will probably go on until she finds out that poor Brass workers in brum were related to Henry V111.
I love genealogy and have been interested since , pre computer ownership , I spent hours in Stafford records office, but I 'call a halt' at using DNA, this would turn my enjoyable hobby into something far more serious. Alberta.
Alberta, you are right on point! I know we are all very smart but you had better understand your way around Ancestry if yo u want the facts. I am repeating this but a few year’s ago my wife and I took a class (two) at our local library by a historian that did this research for a living. Nothing wrong with what Ancestry shows but you better know how to check what is written. An example was during the US civil war many people crossed over north to south, south to north (birth states) depending on where they were to protect themselves with no checks and balance. There was a way to check family but it was somewhat laborious and time consuming. Be careful!
 
I haven't used DNA yet but I would. Not for a random search of relatives though.

Unfortunately, one of my shortest lines of descent is my paternal line - only 3 x g grandparents. Both die pre 1841 and they were not born in the village, near Oxford, that they married, lived and died.

I've done a couple of family trees of possible families and if I ever make contact with a male line descendant I would hope to use DNA to confirm or reject a connection.
 
I had a DNA test, mostly to persuade my eldest female relative on my father's side to do the same. That follows the 'write it down' principle as once she is gone that marker is lost for ever.

The two tests, submitted from different places at different times, showed the right degree of linkage which is some proof that it works. So far every other 'match' looks too distant to be worth following up. That is not helped by people using 'silly' user names, like 'dadstest', a 'john smith' would be more useful if correct.

One person has contacted me on behalf of an elderly German lady who believes her father was a British serviceman posted to Germany immediately after WW2. His surname dosn't appear anywhere on my tree but then it only takes a couple of steps down female lines to 'lose' relatives.

As an aside, either genealogy will become simple and instant with DNA or impossible as eggs/sperm are banked, mixed, implanted and finally the product signed over to multiple mothers/fathers that are neither. So much simpler when it was only the 'milkman' mixing things up!
 
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Spargone
It depends on what you mean by genealogy. Do you mean the inheritance and tradition of a family group or the biochemical inheritance of genes. For some purposes, usually medical, biochemical inheritance is important, in case there is some inheritantvproblem in the gene line. But surely, from the point of view of the people concerned, the family ties of who brought them up , mentored, supported and encouraged them as a family is more important. As I understand it, the regal families understood this and accepted "deviations" for the sake of the family. Where they did not, the inbred nature of their system produced problems such as the haemophilia inherent in Queen Victoria's family
 
Spargone
It depends on what you mean by genealogy. Do you mean the inheritance and tradition of a family group or the biochemical inheritance of genes. For some purposes, usually medical, biochemical inheritance is important, in case there is some inheritantvproblem in the gene line. But surely, from the point of view of the people concerned, the family ties of who brought them up , mentored, supported and encouraged them as a family is more important. As I understand it, the regal families understood this and accepted "deviations" for the sake of the family. Where they did not, the inbred nature of their system produced problems such as the haemophilia inherent in Queen Victoria's family
OED: A line of descent traced continuously from an ancestor. The word is recorded from Middle English and comes via Old French and late Latin from Greek genealogia, from genea ‘race, generation’.

No adoptions, no first, second or third parents.
 
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Alison, I promised to let you have a bit more detail about the two sets of Family Histories which I am lucky enough to possess.

I won't go into the detail of the two branches of my extended family which these Histories cover. I have summarised them at length previously, on this Forum thread: (see post #1). But they both have origins in 19th-century Birmingham, loosely linked with each other at that time and then one branch of them emigrated to Australia in the 1870s. The other is my own close family, most of whom moved away from the City between the 1960s and the 1980s. The latter was chronicled by my late brother, Graham Myers, up to 1997 before the days of any real computer-based research, it comprises five A5 sized booklets. The Australian work was carried out by my Australian cousin Richard Myers and his wife Joan about 10/15 years later and consists of two A4 books published in 2007 and 2012. Here are the books.

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1. Graham Myers's work
The following images show the front cover of just one of them – my mother's line, the Toveys, which starts very early in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire and continues from the 1860s in Birmingham. Also there is a summary of the titles of all five books, all of them following a similar format. And finally there is a contents list which gives a bit of an idea as to how each booklet was organised. Within the books are detailed family trees and much narrative about the individuals contained with them and their history. (Technology at the time did not readily permit illustrations for home-produced work such as this; but we are fortunate in having, separately, a good collection of family images throughout the 20th century and a few from earlier)

Tovey113.jpg
Tovey114.jpg

2. Richard and Joan Myers's work.
Again just one front cover and a contents list. A not dissimilar format from the earlier work but considerably more glossy and fully illustrated in colour throughout. The benefit of technology having moved on!

OzMyers115.jpg
OzMyers116.jpg

I'm tempted to post more detail – some of the pages of the Australian work are stunning and of considerable interest to anyone interested in Birmingham history – but that's not the point here. I hope that this bit of guidance will help you in deciding just how to make a start on the onerous task of "getting it all written down" I am sure that two of the people concerned, my brother Graham and my cousin's wife, Joan Myers (once a member here) - neither of whom, to my great regret, is any longer with us - would be happy to know that their own work was helpful to other family historians.

Chris
 
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