Hello there and welcome to Family Tree Talk.

I'm your co -host Nathan Ward and with me as always is Helen Tuffy.

Hi Helen, you alright?

I'm very, very well, yes.

I've been having lots of fun doing our AI boot camp with Carol McCulloch.

So fun, so inspiring.

That's great.

I was thinking about it.

I could do it all day long, yeah.

If only.

If only, yeah.

Well, do you know what?

Other things which make me very excited.

We've had some lovely comments from some podcast listeners as well.

Oh, lovely.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you want me to kind of give you a little taster?

Always.

I like to hear what people are thinking.

Okay, so...

I love it when we get connections with people.

It makes the world feel smaller and it's just exciting to think of the family ties, even if they're sometimes obscure and kind of round the houses that we share with other readers and with each other and things like that.

So, obviously, St Wilfrid's Church, Calverley, is big in your family history, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

And the first L is silent.

Yeah?

Yeah, Calverley.

Okay.

I'm lost.

Do you want to explain to me?

I don't know, Pavlo.

We don't pronounce the L and it's an R instead.

Oh, weird.

Okay.

I'm born and bred, so it is true.

I believe you.

If anyone wants to fight me about it, I'll meet them in the park at four o 'clock.

No, I totally believe you.

So I'm just basically being like the sat -nav or whatever, which just says the name's all wrong.

But anyway, so this lovely podcast listener, Nick, he's been in touch.

Because he says he's been listening to the podcast, which he looks forward to eagerly each week, which is great.

And his ears pricked up when you, Nathan, mentioned that your relatives were married in St.

Wilfrid's Church.

How do you say it again?

Carveley.

Carveley, just to confuse me.

Because his four times great uncle, Samuel Redhead, was the vicar there from 1822 to 1845 and was buried there.

Right.

September 1845, yeah.

And Nick goes on to say that he believes that his four times great uncle actually has a stained glass window dedicated to him, as well as a monumental inscription.

And he also believes, these are all things you've got to go and check out and see if you can actually see, that the oak pulpit was erected in his memory.

He says that he's not sure what period Nathan's relatives were married there, but perhaps Nick's...

Four times great -uncle Samuel Redhead married some of your ancestors.

Perfectly plausible, isn't it?

Between 1822, 1845, what do you reckon?

Wow, yeah.

I'm going to have to go dig in on some of these records now, aren't I?

So I'm just trying to think.

That'll be like my probably fourth or fifth great -grandparents, I guess I'd have to look at, if it goes with that date range.

There's a chance, isn't there?

I feel it's more...

It's more recent.

Oh, my God.

More recent to me is now 1846 onwards.

That's weird, isn't it?

Anyway.

Yes.

Yeah.

So people were coming into Calvert at that time, from what I can remember.

I'm speculating here.

I'm just guessing that people have come from further afield and got married later on.

But that's going to be interesting to have a look at and see if I can find a relation that has been married in that time period.

Yeah, that's cool.

I'll definitely have to go down and have a look as well.

So there's going to be a gravestone, is there, with...

With Samuel Redhead's name on it, dating from 1st September 1845.

Interesting.

I might have to make a video and go for a search.

Go for it.

Go for it.

And then another reader, not reader, listener, Kath, she's also...

got a little job for you.

And she was very interested to hear about your ancestor who was in the asylum for all of those years.

And Cass says that her three times great grandfather was missing from the census where he should have been with his wife.

But instead, he turned up.

in the Porpoise Asylum and Kath has done some research and he was there in the Porpoise Asylum in Wakefield.

So we're kind of not a million miles away from you.

We've got some amazing records there in the archives.

And so she went to Wakefield Archives and saw the admission records and saw his medical records for the whole 30 years he was there, including details of a visit from his wife and the statement she gave.

So what a lot of...

wow textual information is really amazing so that is potentially another avenue of research for you yeah that sounds quite intriguing um i'm a little bit scared of it all i found it a bit depressing but yeah oh boy you guys are keeping me busy um ah they are it's a lot to contend with you know and then there's another piece of podcast feedback as well and this time it's Kevin don't worry it's not another task for you to add to your to -do list okay so Kevin is scrolling back and last year we were talking about like the way it's really interesting to build out a picture of those other people who are living in the household that you sometimes see on the census records so they could be boarders lodgers servants things like that and I said I was going to try and find out and research into some servants I'd found on one of my ancestors family trees and kind of Put them there on my blog so actually someone in the future could find the photographs of those servants and then be, well, hey, they've got a picture of their own ancestor.

Anyway, Kevin's been doing this and he has been researching the place where his three times great grandmother, Eleanor, worked.

And she worked as a charwoman, a laundress and a domestic servant.

And he found her in the 1881 census.

I'm probably going to say this wrong as well, Seneth Mill or Kenneth Mill in Carmarthenshire.

Anyway, he looked up a photograph of it.

So he's been going all about getting those visual elements to help us see where somebody lived, not just when they're living at home with their family, but where they worked as well.

It all adds to their life story and our understanding of it, doesn't it?

Yeah, it flashes it all out.

It's lovely.

Being fun.

It's been fun hearing what people have been getting up to.

And I find that they've been giving you jobs to do, not me jobs to do.

I disagree.

I do not need to be invited to find a rabbit hole.

But I'm already very interested about this vicar guy.

That's cool.

I can literally look at that on my own tree, potentially, and then do my own little bit of research onto him.

Amazing.

That might not actually have anything to do with my family.

But even just tramping around a graveyard is interesting, isn't it?

Even if you don't have anyone buried there, the inscriptions on the gravestones just tell stories.

Always that potential for sad things, but also happy things because you've got people caring about each other and memorialising each other.

People getting buried in churches, they don't always have headstones, do they?

No, no.

I found somebody on my tree who's buried it called the church.

I'm sure I've got more, but I don't know if they've got a headstone or a memorial or what.

Is there a way to find that out?

Yeah, there are ways to find it out, but definitely you're right that you don't necessarily expect to find a headstone by any means at all.

And there could be any number of reasons.

It could be that they were too poor to ever have a headstone.

It could be that headstones have been in the meantime deemed dangerous and been flattened and got covered over with grass and moss and things like that.

It could be that sometimes the headstones, when they get dangerous and wobbly, get cleared to the edge of the, you'll see them, don't you, along the edge of graveyards.

It could be that people were cremated and then they have a small plaque in a cemetery.

Or it could be that they just never, a memorial was never put up for them.

I've got a list in Family Tree Maker of family members within the last century.

who just haven't got memorial.

They haven't got a plaque anywhere.

They haven't got anything.

And their ashes have been scattered in a place which our family know and remember.

So I've written it down because I feel scared because as each generation gets added to, they become more and more distant people.

It gets harder to remember.

The people who are there can remember being when the ashes were scattered, can't they?

Whereas I can remember when we scattered my granny's ashes, but my children weren't there.

They won't have a memory of that.

So unless it's written down, they're not going to know.

Anyway, so yes, there's lots of reasons why you might not find a gravestone and a memorial inscription.

Things that you can do is, first of all, family history societies are fantastic because way back, lots of family history societies got established in the 1970s, 1980s.

So that's 50 odd years ago now.

And they made a massive effort to go around and transcribe what was said on these memorial stones.

The reason why that's good is because in the intervening 50 years, they've suffered further weathering and become more and more illegible.

Then if you can at least look up the typed up versions of transcripts from the Family History Societies, that's good to do, isn't it?

Yeah.

Then there's a great big index called the National Burial Index, which is a compilation of lots of Family History Society information.

That's obviously...

Burials, necessarily memorial inscriptions, I guess, though.

And what else?

Deceased online.

That has lots of municipal cemetery information.

So that's good.

So there's lots of places to look.

But I wouldn't necessarily expect to find one.

And it's fantastic.

For me and my family, I don't find that many gravestones.

So when I do, it's very moving and exciting, worthwhile.

As long as you find...

And expected family connections mentioned up there as well.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

I'll go out my moochie around the graveyard anyway.

I've got like a few things to do now, don't I?

So I'll go look for my family member and I'll go look for Mr.

Redhead and look at the older looking gravestones and see what's what.

Yeah, that will be fun.

So, you know, on Ancestry, have you filled in the bit where it says, are you willing to help other people?

Because there's a bit that you can fill in there and it says, yes, you're willing to help other people.

And so your job could be that you're willing to go around St Wilfrid's and look for gravestones.

Yeah, I could be the new custodian of the graveyard.

Yeah.

And I mean, it can also feel a bit of a wild goose chase just wandering around a graveyard on the off chance.

So the more you can do to try and...

equip yourself with knowledge of whether there is something there by using you know researching it up first is better than just wandering around like i've done the wandering around thing before and it's yeah i don't think it's ever been ever wiped out for me no but it's the thrill of the chase though isn't it it is imagine just stumbling on a great not literally stumbling but stumbling on a gravestone and it's like oh i recognize that name it's my great great great granddad yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely So what have you been getting up to this week anyway?

Oh, I mean, where do I start?

So last week we discussed a bit of Scottish stuff.

I can't really remember what I said I'd do for my homework, but there was the Scottish stuff.

There was the find the children thing on the 1911 census.

And then there was my urge to flesh out my third time great grandparents.

So I'm having a bit of a blue January, so I thought I'm giving up on the finding the dead children.

It was quite depressing.

It's interesting and I want to sort of memorialise these people that I've forgotten in between the censuses.

I think that's a really worthwhile thing to do.

But it is all very dark and depressing, isn't it?

young deaths and then obviously a lot of dead mothers as well because of dying in childbirth etc so it's been a bit bleak so I've packed that and I thought I'll go back to the third time great grandparents and try and flesh that out so before my recent research I think I had nine people left to find on my third time great grandparents list it's now down to seven so I've found two more really good really good but I am once again deeply involved and lost in this um this setup it's going to be quite hard for me to untangle this so just bear with me basically I've spent a lot of time with my favorite um ancestor George Horatio Nelson which if you've listened to the podcast before you've heard me prattle on about him all the time and I've adopted him he had like a really hard life from sounds of it his wife died some of his children died he remarried and it just I don't know I've got a lot of care for that guy Anyway, it turns out I didn't have his parents, who would be my third time great grandparents.

So I was like, he's a natural place for me to start because I know him really well.

When I went into it, it turns out I didn't actually have that many details for him.

I had a weird phrase, but I had his more recent history, like when he got married, when he's having children.

But I had nothing about his parents, nothing about his childhood.

So I started there.

This is probably not hard to unravel, but basically he was brought up by his grandparents.

So his mother's mother brought him up.

So on the, oh, can I remember?

I'm going to say 1871 census.

He's down as a one -year -old living with his grandmother.

20 years later, he's still living with the same grandmother.

So that obviously raises questions.

Why is he living with his grandmother?

I then did a bit more research.

Again, I'm sorry, this is really confusing, but I found my fourth time great grandparents before I found my third time great grandparents because of this.

Mainly because, oh my God, I'm going off on a tangent here.

This is a different string of grandparents.

It's making sense.

It's making sense.

It's not making any sense.

It is.

Don't lose your train of thought.

Yes.

So.

The fourth time great grandparents that he's living with are his mother's parents, George Proctor and Jane Roy.

But at that time, when I found all this bit out, I found his father's parents.

And the main reason I knew this was because the father's called Horatio Nelson.

He was a sailor, apparently.

He wasn't.

He wasn't.

That was a joke.

So obviously I knew the connection.

So he's been named after his great grandfather.

Anyway.

Has he been named after his grandfather?

Yes, sorry, his grandfather, not his great -grandfather, yes.

I find his mum and dad, William Nelson and Sarah Ann Proctor, and there was obviously a bit of confusion, a bit of bafflement.

Why is he living with his grandparents?

His mother died at the age of 34, but that was long after she'd had him.

She had her son, George Rachel Nelson, at 22.

And then the child goes and lives with the grandparents straight away.

She then has another child at the age of 26, a Francis Nelson.

And Francis Nelson lives with William and Sarah.

And then they have another daughter and she's 27.

So the following year they have a daughter.

She lives with them as well, but still George H.

Nelson isn't.

And yeah, then they have another daughter and she lives with them called Lucy.

And then they all move to Derbyshire.

And they have another daughter.

Oh, sorry, a son this time, sorry.

When she's 33.

And then she dies later that year in Derbyshire.

William Nelson then remarries.

Oh, I've done a lot of research.

William remarries someone called Marsden and they have more children and they live in Derbyshire.

And still George Horatio Nelson is in Yorkshire with his grandparents and then obviously with his family after that.

So, um...

It's just intriguing.

Part of me wonders if he was an illegitimate child, if he wasn't actually the son of William Nelson.

That's where my thoughts...

Strange his paternal grandparents would take him in.

You think in that circumstance his maternal grandparents...

Oh, no, it is his maternal.

Oh, it is his maternal grandparents that take him in?

Yes.

Okay, well, that makes sense then, yeah.

So his mum's parents...

So what does the birth certificate say for him in 18...

When was he born again?

George.

George was born...

1869.

So what does his birth certificate say about him?

I'm not even sure I've got his birth certificate.

Everything in theory is always easily sortable, but then when it comes down to the records, sometimes it isn't, but...

His birth certificate and his parents' marriage certificate, and they could show you some clear clues.

Right.

I don't have his birth certificate, so I don't know why.

I've got his date of birth because I've got him on the 1939 register, so that's obviously giving me his date of birth.

So I guess I need to get that to find out more information.

So she had him, his mum had him when she was 22, and they didn't have another baby until she was 26 years old.

Is that right?

And so there is a bit of a gap.

And then he's living with his maternal grandparents.

So it all fits really neatly that he's an illegitimate baby who gets taken in by the grandparents and she subsequently marries her husband and has her children and they stay together as a nuclear family.

But your direct ancestor ratio always has to keep getting brought up by his grandparents.

They got married literally one year before Joshua Nelson was born.

It's like there's three days difference.

They got married on the 30th of August, 1868.

And he was born on the 27th of August, 1869.

So that's interesting.

So it's not an illegitimate baby.

Or it could have been, but then still, I don't know.

it would be quite sad and extreme, wouldn't it?

But it just makes me sad.

Like, why has he been brought up by his grandparents and then all the other children that they have stay with the parents?

Through some of the records, there's a suggestion that she's quite sickly.

Or maybe I'm projecting here, but it seems that Sarah Ann Proctor might have some sort of illness.

I mean, she dies young.

She dies at 34 or 33.

I think on one of the censuses, her occupation is called sick.

But, yeah, so it created a few mysteries.

It made me feel even more sad for George.

It's like, poor lad.

Nobody wants him.

And what does her death certificate say?

Have you got that?

Does it have a cause of death?

No, I haven't ordered that either.

I'm going to be spending some pennies, aren't I?

You are, yeah.

They're all going to have answers, aren't they?

They are, yeah.

I'm just, I'm a little bit biased and I'm not liking them at the moment.

So I don't want to spend money on them.

I'm like, what are you doing, my judge?

Yes, why didn't you want him?

Yeah, so I thought, I'm going to ignore these two.

Conversely, do you feel extra loyal towards his grandparents who looked after him?

I haven't felt like, yeah, I guess I've got a soft spot, I guess, for his, yeah, for his grandmother.

Because in the 19, I can't remember.

Is it 1921?

I'm not sure if it's 1921.

Whatever.

Anyway, she's a widow and he's still living with her at that point.

But also at that point, one of the daughters has moved back to Yorkshire and is living with them as well.

So there was still some family ties and connections going on.

George was just with the grandmother.

Fascinating.

It is.

So you've got that never -ending thing.

You're finding out information and then you know always more information.

I said I just wanted to fact gather and get this.

This line of all the third -time great -grandparents gone.

Well, you're doing well with it, aren't you?

You've only got seven left to go out of your 32 three -time great -grandparents.

Yeah, but I wanted to do more quicker.

I didn't expect to get bogged down in George Horatio Nelson again.

I thought I knew everything about him.

Turns out I know nothing and clearly I've not ordered any certificates.

Yeah, it's bonkers.

It is bonkers.

Everything, everything takes longer.

It's that thing though, isn't it?

Once you're drawn in and the names start flowing, you've got to sort of follow it.

And like I said, I've now got back doing my third time great grandparents.

I've found four fourth time great grandparents.

So I'm starting on that.

I'm already on that layer with a few people, but now I've added to it without intentionally getting there.

But I'd have been daft not to add them whilst I'm doing that part of the research.

Oh, yeah.

I don't like some of these people.

So you've got some nice loose ends there.

And I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but so how are you going to keep track of what you might want to follow up?

Have you got like a little summary that you've written or like how are you keeping track of all of this stuff that you're finding out?

But you told me that's good to kind of clarify it in your head, isn't it?

The answer is very badly.

If I was sensible, I would still be on my research log and writing all this up.

At the moment.

I feel like this is wrong and I know this is bad practice, but I feel active with my research.

So I'm like, I don't need to write this down because I'm doing it all the time.

Like literally I've gone in every day and had a little nibble at a few bits and put a census link into somebody or finding a brother or a sister.

I should probably keep track of it on my research log.

I don't think you're wrong.

I think it's really natural what you're doing.

And I think that's probably what even most of us do.

Because I'm full of the joys of spring.

Carol McCulloch's amazing tips from her AI bootcamp.

There were two things she said, which are kind of relevant to you, so I'm going to say it.

And they're relevant to me as well.

They're probably relevant to lots of us.

One, she said, just keep your research log open next to you the whole time.

And then you're kind of increasing your chances that you're going to quickly copy and paste something into it if it's a digital one or be able to jot down something if it's a paper one.

Just keep it there the whole time.

And then if it is a digital one, this is a big...

reason to have a digital one she said that what can be really good so what i end up with my research dogs sometimes end up too detailed and they end up a bit overwhelming and i they're actually quite off -putting but she said what you could do is paste in your research and then ask an AI tool to write a summary and say, can you write me a 200 word summary of what I've established so far?

And what's the key point I need to do next?

You can just use it as your research assistant.

That's really good, actually.

A really good idea, isn't it?

I mean, I like the idea of it working, but I'm actually also quite intrigued as to the quality of my notes, because that will flag up how good your notes are.

Like if your notes are terrible and a 200 word summary just comes back as utter nonsense, you'll be like, OK.

Probably need to add a bit more information.

That's cool.

I might try that, actually.

It is cool, isn't it?

Anything to help us, to help streamline things for us.

I guess you could paste your entire login and say, pull out all facts about George Horatio Nelson and make a quick summary.

So it's literally isolated to that one person.

You can.

Honestly, what we've been learning on the bootcamp is incredible.

You can ask it to pull out just narratives for one part of their life to talk about just their occupation, for instance, or you can paste it in and go.

to summarise three sources which would be useful for me to look up next.

So I did that for one of my grandpas who's in the RAF and it gave me leads to things on the National Archives that I'd never found before and could download for free.

So you can use it.

It's not just for kind of colouring in old photos.

That is just a sideshow, which is the most difficult.

I don't know why it gets so much press because there's so many really useful, factual, hardcore nuts and bolts things that it can do to help us.

to your family history more thoroughly, more slickly, more interestingly.

Yeah.

So exciting.

That actually feels like it keeps worth a go.

I'm very cynical about AI.

I'm also very much a control freak, so I want to know that I've done it.

But that does seem useful.

Even if you're just pulling out the details from your own research log and then you can say, right, I put that down.

I'll go check all those facts myself.

That does seem valuable.

You're not right to be concerned about the facts.

I mean, you do have to watch out with AI hallucinating and you do have to, when you prompt it, say, stick to the facts, stick to these facts.

Using only this source, analyse whatever.

Just give it direction so that it doesn't go off and ad lib and cause you confusions that you really don't want to have.

Nice.

I'll give it a whirl.

I'm just looking at my tree now and I've just done a quick count and I actually only need five of my third time great -grandparents.

You are doing amazingly.

So this is another train of my thought.

Two of them are a couple that I've not got to yet, so whatever.

But three of them, I have the husband but not the wife.

So clearly I've got a marriage certificate for the children and that's how I've got that name.

So I need to dive into those and work out how I find the wives.

Which is fascinating because off the top of my head, I actually don't know.

It's a different type of research then, isn't it?

I guess I'll start by looking for those people's names on the censuses, finding the children.

Then I'll find the mother's name, but she'll have a married name.

And then I need to find the marriage certificates.

Right.

And depending on what period you're in, sometimes, let's say you found them on the census.

then it could be useful.

Let's say your ancestor was born before 1837.

If you're researching a family which is having children before and after 1837, it can be useful to research the younger siblings if they're going to give you any birth clues which are going to help you with any identifying correct marriages, things like that.

Okay, cool.

I feel like I'm actually going to have to order some marriage certificates which I haven't done before.

They're a bit more expensive, aren't they?

But you might not, you might not do if the ones that you want have been, if the parish registers have been digitised.

So the marriages, even before 1837, they can be pretty detailed.

So before you, make sure you search online, yeah, before you do anything.

Yeah, I think I might be at that point though.

I think that's the...

reason I only have the fathers I think I got stuck it was a early on it was a quick brick wall where I was like I don't know how to get further now on this so that's when I moved on to somebody else I do know that George Horatio Nelson's wife his first wife Margaret Gamble I've got a few well the hints obviously um and also census records where I can see the parents and there is a Like there's a potential marriage, but it's not actually a marriage certificate thing.

It's just a listing.

And then it's got like the reference like 9902.

But I found on the two potential parents, I found the same reference.

So it's like, sensibly speaking, because they match, it should be them.

But I feel I need to actually order that certificate to 100 % have the facts correct.

Yes, because you've just got the talking at the register.

And the index to the register.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But there's no bands or anything like that.

I've got nothing else that ties the marriage together.

So I've just got this reference number.

Yeah.

And it's in 1893.

So I feel like I, that's not right.

I'm lying to you.

It's not 1893.

I feel like I need to order that one.

Yeah.

Put it on your to -do list.

Oh, wow.

I'm going to spend money.

Lots and lots of money and lots and lots of documents.

It's so funny, though.

I'm still really amused at how little I actually knew about George Horatio Nelson, like, his childhood and, like, not even having his birth certificate.

And I thought I was, like, all in with that guy and I knew everything about him.

Here I am, 60 -odd podcasts later, still talking about him.

We'll scroll forward to the future and be like, episode 600, okay?

Will you be George?

Yeah.

George's favourite toy that year was...

Yeah.

I've actually got a few fifth -times great -grandparents now on my list.

Am I being daft?

That's seven generations back.

Yes.

Yeah, see, yes.

We're pretty sure for that.

It's good.

It's really good.

I do think this is my favourite part of the research.

I'll change my mind when I do something else, and I'll say that's my favourite part of the research, but it is quite exciting getting back and getting further names.

It is exciting adding new people and even they're such brief, small details, isn't it?

If you added them up, it's just probably 10 or 20 words, just a few facts about somebody's life.

But then each time you get those little nuggets, they change your perception of that family or that individual's life, don't they?

Yeah.

I think for me, it's more the satisfaction of...

I mean, I'm not saying I am doing this, but it's the satisfaction of doing good research.

It feels nice when you see the connections come together.

Like if you can get three things that link one person, it's just nice, isn't it?

It makes you feel confident and it's like, this is good.

I've done some good research here and this is correct and I can feel very strong and confident about it all.

What a geek.

No, it's not geeky.

It's just the puzzle solving, storytelling, relating to other people thing.

It's got so many things going for it, hasn't it?

It does.

Yeah, I think that's it exactly.

My appeal is the puzzle aspect of it.

It's finding out mysteries and solving them.

And the side benefit of enjoying the thrill of the chase and the puzzle solving is that it actually is building my family tree at the same time.

So I'm doing a puzzle, but then it's something I can tell my family about.

That's what I think is different.

Sometimes if you have an addiction to some sort of online gaming situation, you might feel guilty about that.

You might feel like, oh, I'm spending too many hours of my life playing Candy Crush or something.

Whereas if you're doing Family History, I don't think you do feel guilty about it.

I've never ever felt guilty about time spent doing Family History.

No, it's great.

It's really good, isn't it?

And I am getting more and more excited about fleshing these lines out as well.

It's, yeah.

Five third -time great -grandparents, and then I can rock on to the fourth -time great -grandparents.

It is thrilling.

I haven't got all of my fourth -time great -grandparents, so you can beat me to that, Nathan.

I think I've got about two -thirds of mine.

I've had about two -thirds of mine for about probably 15 years, and then I've revealed the rest of them, so I need to do that.

I've got 17 at the moment.

I can't remember.

How many should I have?

It's probably about 68 or something, is it?

64.

64.

Right, OK, so I've got a lot of work to do there.

But still, there's no rush.

No, there's no rush at all.

Three years later, after I finish with George, Rasha and Nelson, I'll get to them.

Yeah, yeah.

What have you been up to?

So I have, oh, I'm a transformed person.

I've got my goal, just working on it.

not getting deterred by anything.

So I've been doing by building my tree out and down.

Yeah, I've moved on to a new branch and I'm gradually working through the siblings of my direct ancestor.

So this is at my great granny's on my dad's side, one of that branch.

I've been looking at all her siblings and originally I thought there were only nine siblings.

Then I realised there was 11 siblings.

And anyway, I've actually found out there were actually 12 siblings, but the parents even recorded that they only had 11.

And I was like, why have they put on the 1911 census of Ireland that they've only had 11 children?

And I got a bit confused.

I thought, if I got two people here, I've listed them twice and I should have just had them once.

And I think it was because, again, it is sad.

They're doing the...

research out and down you'll find very often you're finding people who haven't made it so there was a little baby i found and um it died when it was six and a half hours old and the way they even recorded like half an hour i think maybe they just didn't include that baby in their total i don't know right but he has a birth certificate and he has a death certificate and his dad registers this yeah two days after his birth and his death which is the same day Yeah, very sad.

So that was thought provoking.

But I'm pleased I found him and got him on my tree.

And then moving on to one of the other siblings, tracing her forward.

Then I found she has a little child.

And then again, the little child died when it was just four years old.

And so then I went looking in the 1911 census to find her with her husband and see whether I can find what's happening with them.

So I was just scanning my eye down the 1911 and they're in Scotland.

So if they were in the 1911 census in England and Wales, I'd be seeing them with their own individual household page, just them on a household.

Because it's Scotland, they're still listed, you know, with all the other households on the page on the numerators summary book.

So I was scanning down to find...

husband and wife husband and wife so I couldn't hadn't found any other children for them but then I found them with another child so I was like wait a minute where's this child come from because he's older than the baby you know the four -year -old who died so but I hadn't managed to find him with all my other searching trying to find her their children and he had been inadvertently recorded with one of his mum's middle names as his mother's maiden name So I hadn't searched on one of her middle names.

I'd been searching, you know, you search on mother's maiden name as part of the search system.

So I'd been putting in her maiden name, and they'd used the index to accidentally put her middle name in there.

Right, that stresses me out, that thought.

Weird, isn't it?

But I felt lucky, though, to have found that child.

So I'm making progress on my forwardness.

It is a whole different concept, though, to my head of building the tree forward.

It just feels like a...

entirely different process from building it backwards yeah i can imagine it i can't really get my head around it it feels like a big undertaking in my head at the moment that but i think it is it is big because literally sometimes so if you're tracing backwards you're going to get two parents for each of the ancestors that you already have when you're tracing forwards you you can get 12 suddenly they have 12 children so you're not just getting You end up with a lot of people to keep tracing forward.

Yeah, definitely.

Because I feel like when I'm going backwards, obviously I'm looking for the direct line and the siblings do help you flesh out details and match up facts.

But I'm very aware that obviously, particularly in the generations I'm looking at now, a lot of the households do end up having between eight and 12 children.

And it's a lot of people that the information I'm taking from the census is fine.

But there's a lot of details I don't have for them and I don't know and I'm potentially ignoring.

Whereas for you, I guess you coming down that path, you are literally having to take each one in.

I don't know whether it's me or whether I'm just missing something entirely or in a muddle.

But when you go backwards, you said that you had some of your fourth time great grandparents and you knew the father's names, but you didn't know the mother's because you'd...

got marriage details, which obviously name the father, but they don't name the mothers.

So going backwards, it's easier to trace the male lines.

Whereas what I'm finding is it seems to be easier to trace the daughters of my direct ancestors, the sisters of my direct ancestors than it does the brothers.

And I think it's because when I'm searching for their children, I've got, I don't know why, I'm definitely finding it easier.

It feels like I've got that extra, her maiden name becomes a clue.

Right.

Filled out from, whereas with the husband, let's say I've got a man called Charles Johnson or something, and I know he's born in 1907.

So going forward, I feel really clueless to who he's going to marry.

I didn't have any leads on who's he going to marry, whereas let's say I was researching.

Charlotte Johnson, who was born in 1907.

Then I can go into Free BMD.

I can look for babies with a mother's maiden name, Johnson.

It just feels more, and I can look for marriages for her and see what possible surname she's got.

It feels like I'm finding it easier.

I've got to think more about why I'm finding this easier, but it definitely feels like it's easier, which is unexpected.

Yeah, that's intriguing.

It's quite good, though, as well.

Yeah.

Maybe if I get stuck, I should try and flip it around and work the other way for these people with the missing wives.

Well, I think the other night, Karen Evans, she made a really good point in her talk.

And she's saying when you're building your tree out and down, then normally, well, not normally, but my motive and lots of people's motives is for DNA so that they can see if they match up with the DNA matches.

But she's saying...

It can be really useful, even if you're never going to touch a DNA test, to build out those ancestors' sibling branches and build them forward in time.

Because potentially they can help you solve brick walls.

They might lead you to living relations who've got clues or memorabilia, all sorts of things.

So it can be good.

No, that sounds great.

I feel like I've only skirted the edges of this because I don't like to get involved in other people's trees.

But the further back I'm going, the more...

bizarre details are appearing on Ancestry that I've not seen before so people are writing stories and putting notes on that I've had a sneaky look at a couple of them but people are like trying to flesh out the area or they've got photographs saying there used to be a mill here and he worked here and so people are sort of sharing more details it's quite cool but again it puts that fear in me I'm not sure I want contact with people That is cool, though.

So it's almost as though the further back people have got in time, the more dedicated they are to their research, so the more they've added to their tree to flesh it out.

They don't just want it to be a quick weekend skeleton of a tree.

They want it to be a richer story of their ancestors' lives and work.

Yeah, because the more recent history just feels like facts and figures and I guess it's attainable, whereas now it's like, OK, we don't have that much, so let's really, really focus in on the facts we do have.

And surprisingly, I'm finding more images appearing, not necessarily of people, but of like locations.

And when you're with my AI hat on, because that's my buzz thought at the moment, then are you noticing lots of images that you're thinking, hey, that's AI generated or do they feel genuine images?

Because it's going to change over time.

There will be more and more AI generated material and we all need to keep our wits about us so that we know what on earth we're looking at, don't we?

Yeah, I don't think I've seen any AI ones.

They've mainly been landscape shots of a street at different stages.

But I'll keep my eyes open.

Changing the subject slightly and going back to Joshua Nelson.

His mother, Sarah Ann Proctor, was baptised when she was 21.

Will that just be because she wanted to get married in a church?

Well, it could be that she...

So was she baptised into...

Is this a parish church?

She was baptised, unsurprisingly, at St Wilfred's, where everybody goes.

And then she got married, like, the year later.

But she was 21 when she got baptised.

So it could have been.

So sometimes people, normally when people are getting baptised as an adult, it might be to, like, a non -conformist denomination.

In my head, I've built this picture of her being frail and ill and it's like, oh, we need to get her closer to God so we're going to get her baptised.

But equally, it could be just how she wanted to get married.

And again, that's another reason for searching out the siblings.

It'd be interesting to see what her parents did with the rest of her siblings.

Did they get them baptised?

Were they consistent?

Sometimes you find that people will baptise siblings in a batch.

Just loads of curious details are coming up at the moment for me.

It's hard to stay focused on just one thing.

I think you're doing well.

I think we're both doing well.

I think we are being surprisingly focused.

Last year felt like a right flippity -jibbit year with so many side tangents.

Yes.

You're all about the stories.

This time it's all about the facts.

I want the facts, yes.

Solid facts.

It's just that the hard part is obviously with every fact you get, you get a hundred stories to ask or questions to ask anyway, don't you?

So for somebody else who's thinking of doing your project, building out a generation like that, so you're collecting all your three times great grandparents, what advice would you give to somebody else who wishes to do that?

It's a really good project.

So what would you say how to kind of keep focused and motivated about it and how not to get distracted, which is always the big question?

I mean, I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask, but I think.

For me, the easiest way to keep me focused, or allegedly as focused as I can be on the one task, is to just use the censuses and be really meticulous for each person.

Like I said, I normally do a timeline that I write down and then I'll go through each census and add them and say, right, I've got them here, I've got them here, I've got them here.

It just creates a quick picture of them, the people around them, and then you hopefully get a generation back through the people around them.

And if you just do that...

Because obviously you've got, let's say, six potential censuses for each person for their lifespan.

That's quite a good way to limit it because you're only looking at those documents.

Get all those facts.

Sure, you're going to have to go back later on and flesh everybody out if you want to find more information about them and build their lives.

But for those five or six documents, you can do it, put a full stop on it, move to the next person on the list and do the same and hopefully get across.

That's kind of my logic.

for being sort of motivated to get quick facts.

But obviously we all know in doing that, you're going to find questions, which is what I've obviously found this last week where I'm right, I'll get their parents, but actually now it's just opened a whole rabbit hole of why is he here?

Why is she there?

What's going on with these people?

But we expect that, I guess, don't we?

We always expect to be drawn into the tangents.

But for me, I think that's my one tip.

I don't know if it's a good tip, but that's how I work.

It gives me a limited amount of things to research on one particular person.

And if I can say stop at that point, having hit my target and got the third time great grandparent, then it's great and I can move on to the next person.

Sensitive speaking, I write lots of notes and then I can go back later on and get involved in the finer details of everything.

I don't know.

I'm just curious.

Because you're in the throes of it.

You're not kind of reflecting on it from...

you know a long time hence you're like what does it feel like what's what's useful to you so that's really useful what you've just said yeah yeah well that's that's what i want to do like the satisfaction of having a full row for me is appealing and it is a way just to keep me slightly more focused like i say as as we all know you are just going to get drawn into a few names or a random fact that doesn't match up and suddenly you're all over the place Can I ask one more question quickly before we finish?

So this is a bit off the top of your head, but out of those three times great -grandparents, what geographical area would they spread over?

Are they feeling super local or what are they feeling like to you?

That's hard to define.

I'm so locked into the maternal line, it's weird.

I don't know why, but I find it more appealing.

So I've been with them a lot more recently.

And they all do seem to be in the locality of sort of Carverley, Pudsey, Applebridge, that sort of area.

So very close.

I found, obviously, a few details now for the fourth, Great Grandparents.

There's a few Yorkshire ones, but I feel now they're all coming to Yorkshire.

So you get Manchester, you get in Derbyshire, you get in a few other places.

So it is spreading further afield and then they're coming into Yorkshire.

So the third times feel very local.

And after that, it's coming in.

On my paternal side, I actually can't really remember because I haven't looked at that side more recently.

But I do think a lot of that is put to burst.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

So we just need to keep up the good work there, don't we?

And if anyone listening has got any research tips or connections or anything that you'd like to email in and tell us about, then we'll give you a shout out.

Yeah.

episode of the podcast it's lovely isn't it hearing the stories we've had a few stories on facebook recently it's just been really nice to read like i can't remember the full details but somebody wrote in to say that they had a an ancestor that got married six times but didn't get divorced or widowed just kept remarrying um which was fascinating it's like how do you even chronicle that on your family tree that must be an absolute nightmare it's fun to hear these stories isn't it i love it definitely Okay, then if anybody would like to keep up with tips on how to do family history, then every week we send out an e -newsletter on Monday and it has some quick go -to tips you can read there and then.

And then it will lead over onto our website where we have in -depth articles on all sorts of things.

Some of them are research topics, some of them different subject areas or different localities, different websites, whatever.

All sorts of useful stuff to help you zoop up your...

family history skills so just go over to our website which is www .family -tree .co .uk and then you'll be able to find our e -newsletter there fabulous happy researching guys bye