Whatever Happened Here?

[DJHawkes]

Is no one interested in this sub- topic at all? I spend 7 days a week now heavily involved in family and local history and it is thriving in the real world.

[Old_Geezer]

Hi Dot. I think it's always an interest but queries are sporadic rather than continuous. But you'd know that ;-) Plus folk don't always post in the right forum. Especially since the makeover now that sub forums are a pain to find.

My own interest somewhat waned when the Royal Mail started charging on size rather than weight, and the records folk decided it'd be fun to fold certificates instead of sending them undamaged. (I'd got about as much as I could from the Net, and needed the certificates to progress. And had no intention of running around the country looking an ancient church records and graves. That would be a bit too much of a commitment.) Still daft enough to subscribe to two genealogy sites though. Unsure why.

[KARL]

I can certainly understand why genealogy is a task taking up so much time, effort and emotion among some people. If records were both better and more accessible in the UK things would be altogether different. There are places where you can register, for free, to access a central record which is digitised and available on the internet. There anyone (signed up) can simply enter the name and date of birth of anyone else ever resident in the country, or entered into the record from abroad as related to someone in the country, and see if that person is related to them (the "looker-upper") with a full listing of via which individuals going back centuries if necessary. If you don't know the date of birth you can choose from a list of people with that name and have a guess, especially if you know which decade or two is relevant. Of course the records of/for foreign immigrants are limited to the immigrant's arrival in the country going back as far as information submitted to the system but no further (perhaps parents or at most grandparents). In such cases, for example of a Brit, anyone wanting to trace further would have to go back to the limitations of the British records and the access to them. Conversely, anyone knowing of an ancestor in/from such a place would find a treasure trove of information utterly beyond belief - by comparison it's like being blind but suddenly acquiring sight.

I am full of admiration for such foreign wealth, foresight and initiative and those there being able to enjoy the results of ancestral care in establishing the record and for people in our time having the vision to digitise them in full and making them entirely openly accessible. An interesting comparison which says it all really.

[Zacs-Master]

The charges made by Ancestry.co.uk are getting a bit steep. I think they put a lot of people off.