Hello everybody and welcome to another Family Tree Talk.

I'm your co -host Nathan Ward.

With me as always is Helen.

Hi Helen.

Hi Nathan.

It's very nice to be here to chat about our favourite subject.

It is.

I've been looking forward to it all week.

Yeah, me too.

And we're carrying on with a bit of a theme because we are the king and queen of waffle, aren't we?

And so...

We have got a bit of a theme.

We're trying to be helpful and instructive to people by having a bit of a topic each week.

This week's topic, following on from last week's, which was birth certificates.

We're going to do marriage certificates and marriage records.

What do you reckon?

Sounds good to me.

One of my favourites.

I think it is.

You know, I loved your little video and it was you.

If anyone hasn't seen it, then hop along to our social media channels.

And there's Nathan standing outside Calverley Church.

And I'm very envious of you.

In lots of respects.

So Nathan has lots of connections, lots of family connections to this parish church because his family comes from one place.

And you could spout loads of data, which I was really impressed about, like how many people had got married there and stuff.

I was like, look at him.

Impressive stuff.

Yeah.

I've done a deep dive on my tree.

The point of those videos is just to sort of test people and see how well they know their trees and, you know, know your data.

So I actually had to go do the research myself.

And yeah, I found that I had.

On my direct descendants line, I had seven marriages just at Carver Church, which is pretty cool.

And like I said, the video, one of them happened on Christmas Eve in like 1865.

I think it's really lovely.

And like, I've been around here at Christmas.

It's lovely.

So I am romanticizing it so much.

It probably was awful, but yeah, it's really cool.

And even like looking off like the main branch, I was looking yesterday and without trying, I found like four more people that got married in Carver Church.

That's wonderful.

It's cool.

I would like to know how many, but because there's so many people on my tree now, I think actually that would be a silly rabbit hole to go down.

But it just keeps cropping up.

And with those, what's so wonderful about marriage records is because it's something we can very much visualise and then there's also so many records to help us build out from it.

So obviously, you know, the kind of go -to record we think about would be marriage certificates, wouldn't it?

potentially we might in more recent you know definitely over the last century we might have a picture of those ancestors at the church or outside the church in their wedding finally so that's a lovely when we can start weaving things in i haven't even thought of that until you've just said that but yeah it's very true isn't it there are this sort of stage picture outside the church with the clocks and stuff and obviously I've seen like I think obviously my parents marriage because they got married there and my my mother and granddad got married there so I have seen a few but I actually haven't bothered to look for them so that's that's an interesting thing to go to I love it because there's so many so many documents we have for our ancestors and we don't have a photo to accompany that precise thing whereas it's such a little wonderful capsule isn't it if you've got the document you've got the photo and you can really put everything together and then there's often there's newspaper reports isn't it kind of back in the day everyone liked having um the announcement of their marriage in there and it might even say you know what the um not just what the bride and groom were wearing but it might say what some of the wedding party were wearing and it would have mentions of wonderful old fabrics and the colors they were wearing because they're describing it in words because there might not be a photo you know if you go back to you know earlier newspaper there's not gonna be photos of the wedding party or the bride and groom so they describe their clothes describe the presents they got given yeah no that's great and actually thinking about it like I could probably like take two generations worth of wedding photographs and like show them to my mum and I bet she will be able to tell me who some of the people in the group shots are that you forget about so like people I don't have images on my tree for I actually probably could find in some of these wedding pictures Definitely.

That's an essential job to do because things like our mums, those generation above us, they're the people who know that that's great auntie Marge in later life.

And if we don't ask these questions, it's precious info, which is kind of in peril.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I felt that with Christmas, I was like, I'm wasting time here.

I'm not, I didn't do anything family history related over Christmas.

And I thought this was a perfect opportunity to start those conversations and things like that.

it needs doing sometimes it's not as easy as you think it was it to strike out the conversations because i always feel as though it should be easier sometimes i can eat it's not what i forget i'll be sitting there but it just feels that as long as it can just be harder than you think to generate the conversation with somebody else because they're not in that headspace or they've got other things on their mind or whatever it is Yeah, I'm pretty lucky with my mum because obviously she started this whole journey like years and years ago before I even got interested.

So she is quite interested.

But now I'm finding out things she doesn't know and she's more interested in that.

So she'd rather talk about those things other than like the random musings that I've got from things that I heard when I was a kid.

I want to find out about that person who works on the Concorde, things like that.

The conversations I want to have, but she's like.

There were extra children we didn't know about.

Who are these?

And it's like, well, I don't know.

So I like that you mentioned that one of your ancestors got married on Christmas Eve.

That's lovely, isn't it?

It really is.

Yeah.

It's actually, it's not to put like a dampener on it, but it's more common than you think.

Like it's, but it doesn't take away.

It's kind of how special it is.

And I think it's because sometimes our family members went back to see their families.

at christmas and so you know if you're working many days a week and you don't have much time off the weddings weren't like how they have become in recent decades where people kind of spend half the cost of a house on on a wedding and you know all that sort of thing as much low -key affair you'd wear your best dress and have a few family members and go home for a cake yeah sounds good to me that sounds great doesn't it yeah yeah we should bring back those sort of weddings So it's kind of quite a practical basis, but it's still nevertheless.

I mean, I'm such a romanticiser.

They get married in Calverley Church on Christmas Eve.

It's all looking frosty and glittery when they walk out.

The first snowflakes are just falling.

I've got it all.

Yeah.

Well, there's like a local pub across the road and it's lit by lamplight and there's a frosting of snow and they all go over to the local pub and there are welcomes and give them free drinks.

It's going to be beautiful.

Fairy lights everywhere.

I mean, I don't know, fairy lights probably didn't exist back then, but whatever.

There'll be little candles everywhere.

And another thing, I've just thought of another thing that you could do, and I don't know when these records start, but you know the weather reports, the meteorological records, and I think they do go back a few centuries.

So we could even find out what the weather was doing.

Okay.

Where do you find them from?

You can find them online.

Why do I do this to myself?

I haven't been on this site for a few years.

I can't remember the name of the website.

And also I do know in Family Tree Maker, it does do weather reports.

And normally I'm a little bit sniffy about these sort of side things.

I'm like, don't distract me, don't distract me.

And I don't actually use them.

I wouldn't even know in Family Tree Maker whether it's US or UK kind of geographic specific information.

It could potentially just be US based in some of the software, which is US based.

So what we could do, we could pause and have a little hunt or we can have a hunt for another day and find out what this useful website would be.

What should we do?

So.

Having had a quick little refresh on Google, then it seems that the best place to go is the Met Office for its historical station data.

So you're looking, lucky old you, with many of your ancestors in Calverley.

So your local weather station would be Bradford.

And that has data dating from 1908 onwards because the weather station opened there in 1908.

So the web address is metoffice .gov .uk.

It's quite long.

I'll read it out.

Forward slash research, forward slash climate, forward slash maps, hyphen and hyphen data, forward slash historic, hyphen station, hyphen data.

Or you can just Google Met Office Historic Weather UK and it'll come up near the top of the list.

And then there was one other one as well.

And it's a royal.

Meteorological Society's weather journal, and apparently that has historic information as well.

So this would be just, it's just fun, isn't it?

It's a little bit of a sidetrack, but...

Do you think?

Well, no.

I think rather than surmising the snow is just starting to fall, we'll know that it's pouring with rain or it's been snowing for weeks.

I think that's important to know.

There's a little part of me that doesn't want to know, though.

I've romanticised it too much already.

Well, it could be like a little side project for another day.

Cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when you've been looking for the births and deaths and marriages for your ancestors, I mean, you sound as though you've been finding out a lot of marriage information already.

How have you found that as you've been building out your tree?

Well, initially, I think when I first started doing my family tree.

I used the marriage certificates a lot more than I used the census it was like my go -to record because you found out the person they were marrying you found out the lady's maiden name and then you found out both fathers so then it gave you that natural generational step back so as a quick win when I was starting out that felt like my go -to document it just gave me so much information that as obviously we know I like things to be concrete everything felt concrete and it it gave you a pass, so you could get quite a few generations back if you followed a wedding certificate and a wedding certificate and a wedding certificate.

So that was really cool.

That is really cool.

And it's interesting as well, so you're mentioning wedding certificate, wedding certificate, and to be super nitpicky, so let's say the context of your research would be the late 1800s, so civil registration has come in then, so that's the marriage certificates that we can order from the General Register Office.

I suspect what you were probably using was the marriage...

The parish marriage registers, which have been digitised and potentially available, I know that you use Ancestry a lot, so potentially available for your county of interest on Ancestry.

And what's nice for this period is those parish marriage register entries, you get the self -same information as you get...

from when you order a marriage certificate from the GRO, apart from you're not having to spend any extra time or money to accomplish that research goal.

Those parish marriage register entries, once we get to the era of civil registration, even though they're kept by the parish, so imagine it's the wedding day, you go into the church, the wedding gets recorded there with the, as you say, the names and ages and occupations for the bride and groom, the names and occupations for their two dads.

And that all gets recorded on the parish marriage register entry and similarly on the certificate.

So you don't need to.

It's a really good handy research hack, isn't it?

You're saving yourself time and money by using those digitised parish register entries.

Yeah, and I hadn't even clocked that.

I probably actually haven't looked at a single marriage certificate now that I'm thinking about my research.

I've definitely not ordered any.

I've only got a bit of death.

But yeah, I'm using the parish records every time.

And that's fine.

That doesn't matter at all.

It accomplishes the same goal, doesn't it?

It does, but I've got no clue what's on a wedding certificate now.

Well, it's on the same thing.

And so people call it a wedding certificate because it says certificate of marriage at the top.

But strictly speaking, when you order a marriage certificate for one of your ancestors, what you're ordering is a copy of the register entry.

So the parish priest.

for instance, would record down, write down, you know, what was happening, who was getting married, who the witnesses were, everything else.

People would sign it.

And then periodically copies of his register would get sent to the local.

register office and then they get sent to the general register office of whichever country so it could be the general register office of england or wales there's another general register office for scotland there's another one for ireland then an island space in two there's one for northern ireland one for southern ireland so it's kind of a system but essentially there on that day in the church from once you get civil registration established it's the same thing so You call it, we all call it a certificate, but it is just, you're ordering a copy of the register entry for your ancestral couple.

It's the same deal.

It's like nitpick alert, but you've got the information you need.

You don't need to buy any of those marriage certificates for that time period because lucky old you, the area that you're researching has been digitalised and made available online.

Right.

That's cool though.

Is that confusing or helpful?

I think it is helpful, isn't it?

Excuse me, it's terminology, isn't it?

I literally have looked at these and never once thought this isn't the certificate.

But I feel a bit weird actually having now, just thinking that I haven't looked at a proper wedding certificate.

That's really funny.

But you're not missing out at all.

I'm really not, no.

No, you're just saving.

I mean, obviously when you go back in time, you have that kind of cold.

hard shock that you go back in time before civil registration has started and you're back into parish registers as they were back in the day increasingly less informative as you go back in time on the whole sounds terrifying yeah so parish registers don't not all through history but In more recent times, they're as helpful as what we would call a marriage certificate.

But when you go back in time, you haven't got anything else to work with.

The state registers, those civil registers don't exist.

So you have to just work with the parish registers of marriage.

And that's as good as it gets.

You have to just use it.

So it's still all relevant, isn't it?

They both do the same job.

Yeah, and I think it's worth bearing in mind because we might just kind of say marriage certificates as like a catch -all phrase for the records, but there's lots of different marriage records as well, aren't there?

There's indexes, like what you were talking about, Free BMD, yeah, Edge.

Oh, that's got to give a shout out to Neil, lovely podcast listener, Neil.

He got in touch and he was like, I can't believe you haven't told Nathan about Free Reg.

And this is to do with...

It does all fit in.

It's getting a little bit off topic for marriages, but not really.

So free reg is like free BMD, but free BMD is the indexes for the civil birth, marriage and death records, as you know.

Then free reg is the indexes of parish register entries.

Yeah.

So for baptisms, marriages and burials.

And it's a work in progress, but it's got 64 million records there.

So it's worth looking at, isn't it?

That's a big work in progress.

A really big work in progress and millions of marriages.

Anyway, he says what's really handy for you is you go in, put in the dad's name and then you tick other family members.

I think that's what he said to do.

And then you'll be able to find all the children that are born to that dad as part of your missing children quest.

So thank you, Neil, for that shout out about fruit mix.

That's very interesting.

I'll come back to that later on then because I've got a few questions about my...

Oh, have you?

Yeah, yeah.

We'll discuss my progress later on.

I've got a quirky thing on my tree.

It's not quirky, but I love it.

Like the marriage...

I'm still going to call it the marriage certificate, so you can't stop me.

The marriage certificate that's got the Christmas Eve thing on.

I love that.

That's like one of my favourite records because, again, I've painted this cute little picture of this cute little village and it's cold, blah, blah, blah.

But I've got another one and I did mention it months ago and I couldn't find it, but I've recently found it again.

I've got...

All right, OK, it is a register.

I've got the parish register for a church, but the following entries are a couple of months apart, but it's for two brothers.

So on one page, I've got two marriages from the same family.

And on the first one, the witness is actually the groom in the second one.

I just really like the tie because I was researching one person and then I looked down randomly and glanced at the other one.

I was like, wait a minute, I recognise that name and that name and that name.

So it was just really cool.

So I've got Joseph Wood married in September the 27th in 1919.

And he was 18 years old at the time.

And then it says Father Thomas Wood deceased mechanic in the presence of someone I can't read.

And then Priestley Wood.

And then the next one down is on the 25th of October.

And it's Priestly Wood getting married.

And again, Thomas Wood, deceased, mechanic, blah, blah, blah.

So it all ties together.

It's all just linked.

And I just think it's really cute that they're both on the same page.

It just seemed like a nice little anomaly.

And also, it's a bit odd that maybe nobody got married for a month in that church.

Is that a weird thing?

Well, that's fine.

Imagine it's your local village.

And there's not marriages every weekend, are there?

There might be a couple through the summer, is there?

God, the church.

You're kidding.

Every single day, it seems.

They're all in my tree.

These are really interesting insights that you're pulling up.

So partly it's interesting for your own family research, and that's a great connection to have those two brothers.

I mean, sometimes we come across strands where we've had heartbreaking reflections, haven't we?

We've gone, oh, I can't believe this person's died and then that person's died, but then a small bit of a family.

Whereas this is a really happy occasion, one brother getting married and another one.

I mean, this is nice.

Let's take these happy bits of our family history.

It's fantastic.

It's just nice to see that they're all there together doing this.

And then a month later, they're doing it again, but flipping it around.

It's cool.

On my marriage certificate, then one of my brothers was a witness.

And the other one couldn't be.

I wanted them both to be.

The other one wasn't old enough, wasn't an adult.

So he couldn't be.

Yeah.

He was a kid.

Yeah.

Otherwise, I would have had them both.

Or voice.

Yeah.

Also, what people always say, people like David Anil.

I think he probably mentioned David Anil every month, but he has such, or every week, he has such good research insights.

And he will say that, you know, back in the day before the internet, you might be looking, or you back in the day when your mum used to go and be scrolling through microfiche and microfilm.

you would inevitably have to look at what was happening in that parish, go page, page, page through the whole year to find your ancestor's entry.

Whereas now, when we search online, we search precisely what we want for, ping, we land on that search result.

Whereas by paging through what's happening in the community, going through all the marriages that are happening that year, for instance, you do get that sense of how many marriages are there happening in that community?

How big is the community?

And you wouldn't have spotted, you know, that family connection if you hadn't happened to just browse around.

If you'd just strictly stuck to what you were hunting for, you'd have completely missed that other one, wouldn't you?

I would, yeah.

It was just, I think it was the deceased father that got my attention because that was the one, I was like, wait a minute, that's got the same name and the same occupation.

So then you scan through the rest of it and oh yeah, it is the same family.

It's the same people.

It's really cool.

I've just literally flicked backwards on this registry and it looks like there was one marriage every week.

And then for some reason, between September and October, there were no marriages until the other brother got married.

That could be a rabbit hole.

What happened in that month to the church?

But I do not need it.

Yeah.

Well, the priest is on holiday.

Maybe, maybe.

Yeah.

As well as Free Ridge, I don't know.

I know Lancashire online parish clerks.

I've got Lancashire ancestors.

And so that's a fantastic website as well for getting marriage details and other details as well.

But that's another good place to look.

Just Google if your county of interest has an online parish clerk.

And what it means is it's a group of volunteers who will make transcriptions of...

and put those details up online.

So, okay, you're not going to see the beautiful digitized old image, but it's a great way of getting free information.

And like how you said before, yes, obviously it can be really hard to read the handwriting, can't it?

So if someone else has made a transcript, you're like, go on, help me then.

Definitely.

I love a transcript.

Yeah.

I'm all in.

Yeah, I am as well.

Yeah.

Unless they spell my name wrong.

Yes.

Which they do.

They do.

Still helpful.

Yes.

So how's your research been going this week then?

It's been going well in a I'm following a rabbit hole well.

So I have stopped my progress of finding out the third time great grandparents and I'm fully invested in the 1911 fertility census.

So I went through my entire tree.

So there were two generations.

It was quite interesting, actually.

There was like one generation in particular where obviously the 1911 was when they were, this is a weird phrase, active parents, you know, they were still producing children.

But then the generation back also, if they were still married or still alive, they got the information as well, didn't they?

So there were two generations of families that were giving me the 1911 information.

So I went through two rows of all them and...

It was quite cool, but equally, every time I clicked on the census, I was like, come on, guys, let's just have the numbers matching.

I didn't want them to be missing numbers, despite it being intriguing.

I actually sort of got a bit emotional about it and was like feeling it every time and feeling the relief.

Like, OK, phew, they all survived.

They all lived.

So I went through it all and it wasn't that many families that had the issue.

I found one with four children, but only two on the census.

I found another with three children and only two on the census.

And another with five children, four living.

And then one in particular.

Oh, I've got two in particular.

I've got David and Sarah Lupton.

They had eight children, but only four of them lived.

And Grace Turner and Benjamin Ward had 12 children and only six lived.

So I've got some searching to do there.

So I did all that, which didn't take too long, but obviously you've got to go through it all.

And then I've started, I've only looked at one set of families and started the process of trying to find the children.

So James Maxwell McKay and Mary Jane Rowden had four children, but only two are on the censuses regularly.

And I managed to find details for a little girl called Mary McKay.

So I did the searches in Ancestry looking for births, charting the parents, rough date range of when I thought it would be.

How did I find that out?

I can't remember how I found out what I thought the date range was.

Anyway, I found out that she was born on the 22nd of July, 1897, baptised in October the same year, but she died on the 17th of March, 1898, from, I'm going to pronounce this wrong, larynginomus stridulus.

Totally spelt, I said that wrong, whatever.

Apparently it's something to do with involuntary spasms of the vocal cord that often happens in children.

Awful.

So she died of that less than one year old.

And I bought the death certificate for her to find out all that information.

So it was good to find her because she isn't charted.

So I'll be getting her on my tree and, you know, she's going to get a reference.

The second child in this family I can't find at all.

There's no birth certificate or any registry of anything.

But in the 1901 census...

James Maxwell McKay is at home with two children, but no wife, but he's still married.

So I went to search for Mary Jane and I found her on the 1901 census in a hospital.

So I'm guessing it's probably related to giving birth or having miscarriage or something.

It's terrible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's really sad.

Good research though, Nathan.

I like all your deductions.

Thanks.

It was hard work, actually.

You forget.

But when you're just doing certain paths, like the census searches, I get into a routine.

But then when you go back and you're like, how do I research a birth?

And how do I find somebody that I don't know?

It was a different challenge.

I enjoyed the challenge of it.

Obviously, it is a bit gut -wrenching because it is largely, I am literally looking for sad information, aren't I here?

So I'm pleased to have found one to have given her a place on the family tree.

I feel quite chuffed about that.

I think that's a nice way to honour the memory of somebody who obviously has been forgotten about.

I just don't think I'll find a reference for the second one.

I might be wrong.

I'm guessing it was a stillborn baby.

I don't know.

I've made a start on that and who knows what I'll turn up with the other ones.

With the eight children and four alive and 12 children and six alive, that seems like a lot of hard work.

Definitely, yeah.

It was an interesting challenge as well because it kind of reacquaints you with your tree because obviously you've got so many strands and then it's easy to know your mainline names.

But then the children, I don't know the children's name off by heart.

So it's like I need to then go back into this family and find out who the children are and obviously which ones do appear on the census in different years.

Because obviously they move house or get older or they're not born yet.

So it's just working all that information out in between.

So it's quite a nice refresh in some ways.

It's good.

It's good.

I do take my hat off to you.

You're very thorough.

Yeah, I've been pressed.

I've developed a new word, a new phrase as well.

Oh, yeah.

I've actually, I've been such a good boy.

I went through, I mean, I have been good, but equally it shows me how bad I've been.

My last, this is awful.

My last official research log entry was at the end of August last year.

So as much as I proclaim to use it, I'm a bad boy.

So starting, starting 2000.

What year is it?

2046.

I thought, right, I'll get back to the research log, so I'm going to really be good.

So it's all gone on my research log.

I've got a nice little thing, January 2036, fertility census, and then the list of the people, people that are living, people that are dead, people that I've found, people that I'm after, blah, blah, blah.

And then in and amongst that, obviously, you can never do one thing without finding something new to do, which obviously we now call rabbit holes.

But on my research log, for some reason, that day I wrote the word side quest.

That's it.

That's my excitement.

So now I've got side quests on my research log.

Side quest one, find Mary Sharp on the 1911 census.

I love the word side quest because I think that you're an avid gamer, aren't you?

And I think it makes, it's almost turning family history into this detective game, like challenge, got to get to the next level.

And it's funny.

It's just your mindset.

It's good.

It is.

Who knows what I'll unlock?

It's definitely that gamification of it all.

Yeah, I gave myself two side quests.

One, I've got to find Mary Sharp on the 1911 census.

I guess I don't have her on there, but George Cole has died in 1910.

I should have fleshed this information out.

Clearly, I don't know why.

Again, it must be because of the fertility census.

She won't officially be married on the 1911, so the information of how many children they had might not appear.

I think that was my logic there.

And then side quest two was locate all...

Oh, no, never mind.

Side quest two actually was my main quest of locate all my third time great grandparents.

Because now I'll be a side quest.

Now I've become a side quest, yeah.

Find the death records.

I think I just wanted to flesh them out.

I mean, that's massive.

What am I thinking?

Anyway, it's on my research log.

I'm quite happy with that.

So just to recap, in case somebody's dived into the podcast and hasn't listened to it before, when we're talking about the fertility census, we're talking about the 1911 census and the fields, which...

say married women should record how many children they've had within that particular marriage how many are living how many have died and so obviously that's we and Nathan have been looking at over the past few weeks it's flagged up loads well not loads but an unfortunate number of babies who we didn't know about in our family trees and we're on a bit of a mission to try and reinstate them and get them onto our family trees that's kind of fair enough some reason that Nathan it is yeah I quite like it said like that as well.

It is sad, but it is kind of honouring them, isn't it?

They deserve a place on the tree because they were people and they're part of our fabric, even though they might not have lived.

Definitely.

They deserve a part on our family tree.

And then also just showing that they're important to our aunts and uncles and our direct ancestors who did live and their parents because their family home saw those tragedies, didn't it?

Yeah.

That's part of their lived experience, that they had some really, really, really tragic times that they had to get through.

So for everybody's sake, we need them on the tree.

Yeah, it shapes everything, doesn't it?

And shows you the sort of turmoil or whatever they've gone through.

Yeah.

The one where I've got 12 births and only six living children.

Absolutely.

That must be really hard.

And then the interesting thing for that was going to be chronicling.

when these children died in between the children that survived working out that sort of side of it.

Like you said, it paints a bigger picture of how the family will have been and reacted around each other.

So if anybody has ancestors in England and Wales, Scotland or Ireland, then those fields are included on all of the censuses because sometimes the censuses vary a bit, don't they, between one country and another.

So it's nice to know you can get it on any of those ones as long as you've got ancestors in 1911.

Yep.

How's your research going?

So my research is going slowly, but surely.

So I'm sticking with my, so Nathan and I were both on with our three times great grandparents.

Nathan's finding all his three times great grandparents.

I found mine, but I'm doing the researching them forward to get their descendants, not just my direct line descendants, but build them out like the out and down, down and out ancestors to help me find out who my DNA matches are.

I've done one three -time great -grandparental couple, which has taken me quite a long time because when you go backwards, you think, oh, each generation, it doubles up, doesn't it?

So you have, you know, one parent, you, two parents, four grandparents, eight great -grandparents, et cetera.

So you go, it gets bigger and bigger each time.

But when you go forwards, it gets even bigger because, like you said, one of those couples there had 12 children.

So when you're going forward.

You can not just double, you can exponentially get bigger.

So it's a bit of a, I don't know what the word is.

Undertaking.

A bit of an undertaking and a bit of an uncontrollable beast.

And I am really enjoying it.

So I've done one of my three times great grandparental couples.

So how many three times great grandparents do we have?

We have, oh my goodness.

So we have eight great grandparents, 16 two times great, 32 three times great.

So I've done.

a 16th of them.

I've got 16 of these pairs of three times greats.

I've done one of them, one down, ding, 15 to go.

That's a good start, isn't it?

Yeah.

And I am using my little tags on Ancestry.

That's been really helpful to help me keep track because then I've been tagging them saying, right, I've added their children, I've added their spouses.

I can keep methodical.

And I'm using the little button on Ancestry, which is saying that your last person I researched, that's finding that really helpful to pick up.

Then I like using Family Tree Maker and I just noticed only yesterday I had an update which I need to install because it says the update will mean that any notes you include on Ancestry, when I sync between my Family Tree Maker tree and my Ancestry tree, it's going to sync those notes on my ancestors on Ancestry or sync through to my notes on Family Tree Maker, which I didn't think it did that before.

So maybe it did, but I think it's a new thing and that feels very exciting to me to have, I want the maximum.

possible mirroring of these two trees, didn't I?

Yeah, that's really useful.

It stops you having to manually duplicate information.

Which I wasn't, so it's very good.

Because it was just in Ancestry and I was dating little note entries.

And like you, my research log, it's taken a bit of a hit because I keep using these little notes fields on Ancestry and going, oh, I'll copy them out later, I'll copy them out later.

But to date, I haven't actually copied them out later.

So anyway, it's coming along.

So I've got to move on to the next couple and start moving forward with them.

Nice.

That's good.

It's good that you're making progress.

It sounds terrifying to me that, I mean, do you have like, I guess for me, I'm being weird now, but I've got like trepidation about going forward because you then get into the realms of real life living people who you could potentially meet.

And that just seems weird.

Is that like a goal for you?

Are you just not bothered about that?

No, I do want to be able to.

I like that, having a connection with living people.

Like I've only had it a few times.

When I've been to RootsTech, then every time I've been to RootsTech, I've been three times.

So it's RootsTech in Utah.

And each time I've met living relatives and it's been fantastic.

Yeah?

Yeah.

It's been so exciting.

And they're so distant.

And there was even one woman.

The last time I went and we were just chatting and we got on brilliantly and we jokingly said, we've got to be related.

We just get on so well.

And then she went away and came back the next day and she'd found out how we were related.

But it's fun.

I do love that connection thing.

What's the terrifying bit is?

So this is the main difference.

And I think I talked a little bit about it last year, last week.

When you research back in time, you know you're going to find at least one parent, potentially two parents, normally two parents.

for each of your ancestors.

So you're researching your dad, you're going to find a mum and a dad for him.

Sometimes one or both of the parents are unidentifiable, but usually you find two parents, don't you?

And so there's a certainty with what's going to happen.

You are going to find these people.

Whereas when you're building your tree forward, you've got your ancestral couple, let's say a pair of your three times great grandparents.

You're building forward and you don't know what you're going to find.

You don't know how many children you're going to find.

You know they've got at least one.

That's your direct line.

But you don't know how many other children you've got.

And then you have the brutal thing that you find as many of their children as you possibly can do.

And you research them forward.

And that's when you have how it feels to be a family.

Some of them don't make it to the next to have kids.

Some of them don't have kids, which is fine if that's their decision.

But some of them die too young, which is a tragedy.

And so it's much more of a rollercoaster, emotional rollercoaster going forward.

Oh, sounds quite heartbreaking.

But it's a fun subject to do.

It is really interesting.

And also, you know, when it's your own branches of the family, you know what everyone in your family is called.

So in our family, you know, the first names, they crop up time and again, even like four generations apart.

Like you might get a name which is cropped up again, keeps coming in your family.

Whereas when you get onto these side branches, you're like.

we don't have anybody called that.

And they just feel a little bit, not quite so much like your family.

Because they are more distantly related, aren't they?

Like, I don't have anyone else called that.

Yeah, I enjoy a unique name.

I love it.

That's one of my favourite finds.

Yeah.

Although for me, it always seems to be with lodgers.

And then it's like, don't get distracted by the lodger, just because he's called Titus, which is an awesome name.

But yeah, it is cool.

I think it's worth keeping a note of these lodgers, though.

Oh, I will do, and I have done, and I will go back to them.

But they're a side quest for sure.

Just in case anybody in your DNA match list turns up with lodges, because it happens.

What was that lodger up to exactly?

Yes, yes.

Things they never thought would be traceable, but are.

Oh, boy.

It's funny, isn't it?

There's definitely funny sides.

I can imagine in some circumstances that's going to be traumatic information, but not the other part of it.

But yeah, I mean, obviously, the closer you get to living times, yes, it's harder.

But going back in time, it is what it is.

And you just have to roll with it, don't you?

It's a story.

Shapes your family.

Yeah.

You know, I've been having a completely separate topic, but it's been very exciting.

So just at the beginning of January, you started an AI boot camp.

And Nathan, you know quite how terrible I am at anything to do with tech.

It's not a natural area, is it?

It's definitely, definitely not.

Anyway, we started doing this AI boot camp and it's absolutely brilliant.

And so even if somebody isn't a techie person and you're wishing to start to see how you could use AI to help you do your family history better, faster, more fun, differently, then you can still enroll on our AI boot camp because we have many, many handouts for each week.

And we also have, we record each session.

And what I'm loving about it is.

Like I will admit, I have a bit of a love -hate relationship with AI because I am very, very keen that we stick to the facts and don't flower something and get something kind of unfactual and make it up.

But there's so many practical ways.

So what we've done in our first week is we made a...

really detailed four -week plan, breaking it down into little 30 -minute chunks.

So this is AI helping you plan how to use your research time and then come up with a little checklist that you can tick when you've completed each of these little mini jobs.

You've got to love that, haven't you?

Yeah, that sounds good, doing the boring work for you.

Yes, and also making the boring work, because me and you are both busy, we both have to sneak little bits of family history time in and around our working life and our family lives.

So having a checklist that you can just dive in, do a little bit, mark it that you've completed it.

It's perfect for somebody like me.

Does it tell you off if you don't do it?

You probably could set it to do reminders.

Yeah, it'll tell you off.

Yeah.

I haven't done that, though.

I don't want to be told off.

No, it's got to be an enjoyable thing, doesn't it?

Yes, yes.

I'm all about the carrot, no stick.

So.

That was just a little bit about the boot camp.

So you can still join it if you wish to.

If you go to our website, which is www .family -tree .co .uk, go to the webinars bit and look up the AI boot camp tutored by Carol McCulloch.

then you could sign up there.

And then otherwise, if you just want to keep in touch with what we're doing and what we've got planned and in the pipeline, because there are lots of exciting plans coming up with Family Tree, then just sign up for our free e -use letter and I'll just give you the URL for that.

So it's www .family -tree .co .uk forward slash information forward slash newsletter hyphen sign hyphen up.

You can sign up to that and we'll email you about.

once a week, sometimes a little bit more, but honestly not too many times.

And every Monday we have a really informative email and then other emails will just be to remind you of cool things that are happening to help you get more out of your family history.

So that's all great, isn't it?

So have a great week then.

Nathan, what are you going to be doing over the coming week?

I'm going to carry on with my 1911 rabbit hole, see if I can get some side quests added into that as well.

Yeah.

Just keep on with that.

I think that's quite enough to be going with and see what comes up.

I'm just going to be doing my next ancestral couple with my down and out project.

Lovely.

Down and outs.

Yes.

Have a good week then, everyone.

Happy researching.