Hello everybody, welcome to the Family Tree Talk podcast.

I'm Nathan Wadd, hello there.

And with me as always is Helen Turvey, the editor of Family Tree magazine.

Hi Nathan.

And Nathan is a super creative person at Family Tree, so he does all sorts of things across all sorts of media in this modern world we live in.

One of them is a podcast.

We love to have a podcast.

I think it's our favourite, isn't it?

Magazine or podcast.

Podcast.

I love the podcast.

I love the magazine.

And I love the podcast.

I love the magazine.

It makes me feel comfortable.

It's a nice place to be.

It's just fun putting the podcast together.

We're getting just to talk about family history and what we're doing.

So it's great, isn't it?

So the main question, I want you to ask me this question because then I can show off.

You need to ask me, Helen, have you done your homework?

Say, Helen, have you done your homework this week?

Oh, you know what, Nathan?

I have actually.

Wow.

Don't actually fall off your perch.

I actually have.

Brilliant.

Well, fill us in.

What was your homework?

So my homework was I have this folder.

So what happens is like lots of us, I do my research.

Some of it gets added to the tree.

Sometimes I end up with these documents that I, what I do is I shove them in a folder.

So in the olden days, I would have printed them out and they would have been a sliding pile on my desk.

And then however many years ago, I can't remember, probably roughly 10 years ago, I decided to try and go fairly paperless.

And so then I would just shove them in a digital folder.

And so I would add some things to my dream, not all bad, but there'd be some things that I...

was too busy pressing on with the thrill of the chase that I didn't get to add these things to my tree.

So they'd be in this little folder called To Be Added to Family Tree Maker.

And some of them had been languishing there.

I know this because Scotland's People, when you download a document from Scotland's People, it says the date it was downloaded.

So even if you upload and download your files anywhere else and the file name gets a new date.

There's no escaping from the fact that I downloaded this document in February 2016.

Anyway, it's finally made its way into my family tree.

So that's cool.

And I've been busy adding other things.

And while I do get around to being good at adding my documents to my family tree, I am very diligent.

So I do transcribe.

I type up everything on the original document because it makes me stop and think.

And I always have cool little discoveries.

I can tell you one quick little story and then I'll stop waffling and we'll talk about you.

So when the 1921 census came out, I was looking for my ancestors to see which ones of them I could find.

And it's actually, it's really hard to find my grandparents.

I can't find any of my grandparents in the 1921 census for different reasons.

I know where they are.

They're just not there or not there very clearly.

But then I found my great grandparents and...

Anyway, my great -great -grandparents were staying in a hotel in Derbyshire and they had left their two daughters at home.

And their two daughters were in their 20s.

It's the 1921 census, so it's still quite a kind of prim era, you'd think.

And with them, staying on census night, was a gentleman visitor.

And he turned out to be the future husband of one of my great -great -aunts.

So at the time, I was like, oh, Stan!

handle say mum and dad go away for the night stay in a hotel and no sooner have they kind of whizzed off down the road in their shower bank or however they travel to their hotel then um one of the daughters gets their boyfriend over to stay for the night I was like this is so modern and um and so I kind of made this scurrilous little story up in my head but anyway when I went to do my transcribing and typing up and putting in these details from the 1921 to my tree, I went back to the address page just to make sure I got the address completely correct.

And on the 1921 census, as everybody knows, for England and Wales, it's on a separate sheet.

And it says, who compiled the document?

And there, bold as brass, it has the daughter's dad, Mr.

G.

Hallis.

So he compiled the document.

He wrote that the boyfriend was staying the night and he was completely okay with this.

Wow, cool.

I know, what an insight.

Very modern, though, isn't it?

I know.

How old was the daughter at the time, then?

They were all...

Their daughter was 25, and her boyfriend was 25, just a couple of months older than her, so they weren't young.

But it's still just like a different era, isn't it?

So it still surprised me that they'd be there.

The only chaperone was the big sister and a couple of servants.

Yeah, there's a level of prim and proper still going on.

Level of prim and proper I would have thought a century ago, but, well...

Who knows?

Forward thinking people.

Very forward thinking.

So I was just kind of intrigued about that.

Yeah, that's really cool.

What have you been getting up to?

I actually feel like what I was doing is kind of a weirdly similar version of what you've been doing.

So I gave myself two homeworks.

One of them was just to crack on and do something else.

And the other one was to spend...

it seems silly saying it out loud now spend 10 or 15 minutes updating my tree score so I thought right I'll start my research task I will update my tree score for 10 to 15 minutes and then I'll crack on with something else obviously I started updating my tree score and ended up down various rabbit holes and spent the entire evening doing this one thing that I hadn't even intended to do So I went to the tree score rating, clicked it, and it gave me three options of people that might have missing information.

So one of them was this woman called Marianne Smith.

If you ask me right now, I haven't a clue where she is on my tree because I just picked her because the tree score told me to.

So I randomly picked her.

Probably shouldn't have done because I've obviously just got off my Marianne Taylor Pickering Briggs, whatever rant that I was doing the other week.

But anyway, so Marianne Smith looked her up.

And it says you might have a few details missing.

This is why I feel like it's like what you're doing.

You're adding all these documents.

I'm going back to people in my tree because Ancestry is telling me to do so and adding documents to them to flesh them out a bit more.

So it feels quite similar to what you were doing.

But in doing it, I've become, as I said the other week, about liking to do a timeline on a piece of paper and put the census records also as part of the timeline.

I started doing that with her.

And again, I just found it like revolutionary.

It's probably really commonplace and probably how most people do it.

But just giving me that, where are they at this time?

Where are they at this time?

And making it happen in a line.

It's just really cool.

It really solidifies them for me.

And then the only problem with it is as I get to a rogue element or a mystery, I then go off and do that as well.

So this woman, Marianne Smith.

It was all quite straightforward.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

I kept finding her everywhere I wanted to do.

And then I found, like, her husband died and she was a widower between the 1891 and the 1901 census.

So I was like, oh, well, I need to find out why he died.

So then I created the exact same list on a timeline for this guy, William Firth, I think he was called.

I started doing the census process again with him and then also matching up his dates with her dates.

So it's all cross -referencing.

I think that's the thing, it's making me look at documents of similar people and obviously a lot of them will cross over because they're going to be living together.

But it just makes it feel really solid.

But then equally in that, I found that there was...

One of the censuses had a son for William and Mary called Titus and I was like...

Oh my God, that's an awesome name.

I need to research this guy.

But the interesting thing with Titus was he appears on the 1881 census as a 17 -year -old.

He isn't on any other censuses with the family prior to that.

So I was like, oh, I've got a little mystery.

So again, I turned my page on my notebook and started the census search for Titus then and chronicled his life in census form.

And I ended up finding him as a six -year -old living with his grandparents.

And so it all just matched up because then it obviously, doing the research and finding the birth certificates and marriage certificates, I had the grandparents.

And so it was actually naturally getting me further back in the tree as well as solidifying the person that I'd come to try and boost my tree score with.

But it was just hilarious to go from this little, oh, you might want to just look at this document for this woman to suddenly becoming like three people removed and my tree's going upwards and downwards and sideways.

It was crazy and I was just like lost in it.

But equally, it was like really organised lostness.

Definitely, definitely.

Like you're weaving such a rich tapestry because you're doing kind of detailed research.

You're improving your tree score.

Yay for you, boo for me who gets jealous.

And then you're not only getting more of these facts to help verify everything you're finding.

All of those details help give a better sense of the family, don't they?

So the fact that Titus was staying with his grandparents, that's cool.

You kind of got that understanding of the family network.

Hopefully it's proof that the family get on with each other.

They're a close -knit family to some extent.

They're supporting each other.

And it's the same when you find people's death certificates, isn't it?

People historically, because before recent times, it used to be pretty expensive to order a death certificate.

People were like, oh, I'm not going to order so many death certificates because they're not going to.

concretely build my tree they're not like their birth and marriage ones which give you other people other members of the family to help build out the tree but then the death certificate learning how somebody died that is a major impact on the rest of the family isn't it you know if they died in tragic circumstances like the family having a sudden death to deal with or they had a long -term illness and the family have got to look after them long term in potentially cramped living conditions and it just kind of gets you thinking doesn't it what was it all like for all of them It sounds dark to say, but I love the death certificate.

Obviously, recently I had the multiple marriages on two different sides of the family coming together.

So I had to find out the death.

Well, I didn't have to, but I wanted to know the death reasons for the people that were married first.

to see what situation they were in before they actually got together with the relatives that were on Light Tree.

And it just, like I say, it fleshes it out and gives you a sense of context for what they're going through and how hard their lives are.

It's cool, isn't it?

But I decided that Titus was a very naughty boy and he couldn't be looked after by his parents, so his grandparents had to give him a stiff hand.

Oh, maybe.

I mean, who knows?

I was just making stories up.

But that's that.

Oh, this lad's trouble.

I mean, Titus sounds like a bit of a quirky, I don't know, rapscallion's name.

So that's the way I went.

It was just a bit, you know, they couldn't handle him.

So he had to go live with his grandparents.

Could be true.

Could be true.

Turn a blind eye.

They would have the kind of the wisdom of age and they would go, oh, this matters to tell him off for that.

And that doesn't matter.

We'll just let it go.

Who knows?

I've got a question because we are in kind of similar but different parallel paths.

That thing of revisiting bits of our tree that we've already done and looking at it in finer detail.

And what do you feel about it?

Because there's no doubt about it when you're doing like.

immediate research so you're trying to find something that you have no idea about you haven't got any information about it that detective thing and the thrill of the chase thing everybody loves that we all love it and it's addictive and that's the thing which makes us continue to do our family history that's the thing which makes us not file up our records properly because we're too busy carrying on with the thrill of the chase and everything else so how do you find this kind of slightly slower paced reflect and review bit of doing family history I actually think I prefer it no I I love I do love like saying a thriller chase and like initially to get past where my mum had got to and find new information and be like this is new look at this it's all sparkly and interesting and I've found extra people that you've never heard of and that element of it is very exciting but I actually find it scary as well because again just the nature of how I am some of it's more unknown and until you solidify it from all angles it's really unknown isn't it as to whether it should be true real and proper on your tree or for me will I concrete put this on my tree so that scares me a bit whereas now I'm going back to people that I must have I must have had enough information to put them on my tree and be solid and be like yeah this is great but now it's just saying yes you're right because all these other documents are helping you say yes it's right equally I think I'm in a different space where, you know, when we first started, I wouldn't put siblings on, would I?

I would, I was like, I don't want to do that.

I'm not interested.

Now I'm adding them all.

So my tree's going off sidewards all which ways.

But then I'm equally getting drawn into the siblings as well.

Like the Titus guy, I followed him all the way back through his life.

And I was like, this is just so tangential.

It's not really direct path, but.

I'm interested.

And we're like, he moved to Harrogate and then he went to Scarborough and he worked at the United Yeast Company.

Finding out all these information things that if you listen to the first few podcasts, I pretty much said I'm not interested in all that stuff.

I'm about the stories.

I want to know about their lives and how they lived and find little cute details.

So I absolutely really like this part of it.

It's calming.

It's relaxing.

I'm sure I'll get to one point where I'll do it and I'll be like, well, this isn't matching up and then I'll be a little bit worried.

But at the moment, everything is matching up and it's just making my, I was going to say web, making my tree feel stronger.

But side note there, my tree score hasn't gone up since doing any of this.

But equally, if I'm doing, I'm like looking to solidify one person, for example, Mary Smith.

In doing that, I ended up adding about 12 extra people to my tree.

all of who don't have any documents tied to them or a couple don't now do.

So I think I'm just making my tree score lower probably eventually because I'm just adding more people.

It's like you were saying the other week, it's like two steps forward, one step back.

Yes, yes.

It feels like that because now I've got more people to research.

Yes.

What I'm finding with the kind of reflection of you and adding my records bit, I'm finding that...

I am liking it because it's been a little bit of a weight on my shoulders so I'm like let's get this done let's stop having it sitting there as like a little to -do job because that's a horrible feeling isn't it so I'm liking the feeling that I'm going to get rid of this job in the next few weeks and I'm liking the fact I'm looking for little stories and little nuggets to keep me going and I'm liking the fact that I have not no I'm not going to miss out on any details but that I have to be honest It's the hard bit of family history for me.

So I do have, I have had a few sneaky rabbit holes.

And when I do it, I literally feel like if Nathan could see me and I just have a quick sneaky rabbit hole and then I get back to doing my paperwork.

But I'm really pleased.

I said last week that my pledge is going to be doing a mixture of finding out who Mary Ann Pickering is, plus doing this paperwork.

Because I think if I was just doing the paperwork, I might get a bit downcast over the next few weeks.

So I'll have Mary Ann Pickering.

Which, to be fair, I haven't actually started that.

I just have been good about the paperwork and the old rabbit hole.

And, yeah, then I'll have Mary on Pickering to keep you going as the detective bit.

Can I tell you my cool rabbit hole?

Of course.

When I framed it, then I was like, oh, Nathan's going to be really jealous.

So on the 1921 census, my great -grandpa was working as in, what was he called?

A civil engineer.

And where he was working was for the Department of...

works and building so it's a government job and he was working out of RAF Hendon and I thought oh I'll just have a look at RAF Hendon trying to see what it looks like in the 20s kind of get the vibe or whatever and I knew already he's a civil engineer he built airstrips and things like that and he had been in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War so he loved planes he's a very mechanically minded person as well anyway RAF Hendon was the place where the first people ever did parachuting Isn't that cool?

Right, okay.

Yeah, because I'd never kind of thought, I mean, everything has to have a first time for everything, doesn't it?

And so RAF Hendon was where the invention of parachuting, I guess, happened.

Oh, wow, that's brilliant.

It's pretty cool, isn't it?

It's really cool.

So he wouldn't have been parachuting, I don't think.

I don't know.

But he would have just been there, kind of at work, watching the parachutists.

Quite cool.

I like that a lot.

Going back to this organisation versus just doing what you want.

I actually think I like, it's random because I've been told by the tree score who to pick almost.

But I like the fact that that makes a choice for me.

Previously, I've been trying to go back every generation and then I wanted to have for everybody a birth, a marriage and a death.

so that it looks neat and tidy and there's no dashes without any finished bits, etc.

But that seemed easier said than done in terms of doing it.

To find the information out for that is actually quite a lot of work if there's bits missing.

And then obviously sometimes you get excited and you're suddenly propelling yourself backwards further and further, missing loads of details because just the nature of the chase is taking you back.

So I'm quite liking filling out the earlier parts of my tree where I've...

missed all this but equally without looking at my entire tree going oh my god i don't know where to start it's just like all right marion you know i'll go for her it's calming like my folder's a bit calming because it's just in alphabetical order so obviously the people you know some of the some of the people are going to be related if they've got the same surnames but it is a bit random so i'm darting around different branches jim's side of the family bits of my side of the family all sorts You maybe want to watch SAS Rogue Heroes now.

It doesn't take much.

Yes.

Whatever.

This is a good time of year for teleprograms.

Hopefully something will be coming along soon that we'll have a really good excuse to watch because we can say it's for our historical background knowledge learning.

So you're allowed to binge watch it in a weekend.

Yes.

There is a third series coming of SAS Rogue Heroes.

Oh, brilliant.

But it took them years to make series two after series one, didn't it?

I don't know.

I think I watched it back to back.

I didn't watch one when it first came out.

You didn't have the way that I did then.

No.

Well, I'd like to ask you about one of the, you just mentioned, one of the ancestors worked for the yeast factory or something.

And you do find the quirkiest occupations, don't you?

Yeah, the United Yeast Company.

This was Titus.

I feel like, again, I'm making stars up, but I feel like he did quite well for himself, did Titus.

He works as a salesman at United Yeast Company, an advanced salesman.

I've not researched the United Yeast Company, but just the nature of how they moved about, they ended up living in Scarborough in later life, and then one of their...

Oh, God, this is a rabbit hole I found.

One of their children was in the census living with them, and then in the next census was living with them in Scarborough, but her surname had changed.

But there wasn't a husband there and it marks her as single.

So I don't know whether that person's died or it was 1939.

Yeah, 1939.

So I don't know what's going on.

I need to dig into that.

But yeah, anyway, I'm ranting.

I'm going off on a tangent as family history makes you do.

That's interesting.

So that's a 1939 register you're talking about and they're living in Scarborough and their daughter's got a change of surname.

Yes.

Yeah.

And has she got more than one surname listed?

Because sometimes the 1939 was interesting because it kept getting updated.

So if somebody married, then they would have subsequent surnames added.

Ah, that's interesting.

Because there were bits on that census, not census, on that register where it had been scribbled out and put on it.

And then equally, I don't know if this is anything at all, but Titus and his wife both had red crosses.

Next 30 years, which I don't know why.

I don't know why either.

So the 1939 register is really fun because it keeps getting updated, I think, definitely until the 1990s.

I think it was 1991.

So after the Second World War, then it was used as the starting point to come up with a list of the NHS list.

So that's why the details kept getting amended.

So there are lots of things you can do to...

decode the 1939 register because it does have acronyms in there and I think Find My Past is really good if you google it Find My Past and then decode the 1939 register because Find My Past was the first company to digitise it about roughly 10 or more years ago Forgive my ignorance but what's the difference between the census and the register?

So Lots of people call the 1939 register, they call it a census because it's really like a census because you get everybody in the household listed.

And so that's why we all love the census because you're not getting just the rich people.

You're not just getting men who are eligible to vote.

You're not getting just military people.

You're getting everybody.

Even newborn babies who are just a few hours old will be recorded on the census.

If you're there on census night, you're going to be in the census with the 1939 register.

it's slightly different doesn't record everybody the 1939 register records all civilians so everyone who hadn't yet been called up to fight um on and it was taken on the 29th of september 1939 so this is what i this is one of my favorite documents when it first came out i felt so passionate about it so You scroll yourself back to 1939 and war is brewing.

Germany's already invading places across Europe.

There's that real sense of peril.

Gas masks have been issued.

People are very well aware that war is imminent.

Chamberlain's trying to do his negotiating for peace in our time, comes back with this famous bit of paper, and everyone subsequently thought he was...

deplorably weak for that but he was I guess you could call him an optimist anyway so you're going through all of this I think Britain is trying to negotiate with Russia and then meanwhile in just in the space of a few days Russia does a dirty deal and does a negotiation with Germany and then before we know it's the start of September and the radio announces that Britain is at war and so it's so quick so that's Just the start of September, and so within a matter of a few days, so all those weeks through September, I can't remember how many children get evacuated.

It's something bonkers, like a million children get evacuated out of the main cities.

Don't quote me on the million, but you cannot believe that in an era...

They're writing letters to organise this.

Most people don't have a telephone.

There's no internet.

So the war's happened.

It's been broadcast on the radio.

And yet they're managing to build up a network of people who can accommodate evacuees from the cities.

Hundreds of thousands of people are getting evacuated out of the cities into...

where their billets, wherever they're going to be held as evacuees, so that's mums and children and disabled people, would be prying people to be evacuated.

So I'm getting on to the 1930s register.

So we're going forward to the end of September.

War's been happening for a few weeks and the government take this register of everybody who's not yet called up.

And so it's women, children and lots and lots of men as well.

premise for taking the register is so that they can issue identity cards, ration coupons, and potentially see people's skills and who would be eligible to be called up.

There's a really high incentive to get your name on that register because you're not going to get any ration coupons unless you are on the list.

So there's good comprehensive take up.

Yeah.

So the difference, if we are somebody like David Annell, who is a absolute guru on family history or legislation as it applies to family history he would say well a census the sense there'll be a act of parliament a census act which would enact a census and say this act of parliament's been passed the census is going to happen whereas the 1939 register was different and it's the national i think it's i think it's just called the national registration act i can't remember what the app's called anyway so it's slightly different and from a family history perspective why this is exciting Whenever it came out 10 or 15 years ago, the census always has to stay secret for 100 years, doesn't it?

Yeah, so the latest census we've got access to for England, Wales and Scotland is 1921.

For Ireland, it didn't happen because...

of the difficulties in Ireland so the next one we look forward to Ireland is in 1926 but we've got this 1939 register theoretically if it had been under a census act of parliament you wouldn't be able to view it till 2039 but we've already had it for 10 or 15 years we've had it for so long I can't remember how long we've had it so because it wasn't um protected by the census act then a couple of really amazing family historians one of them's called Guy Etchells he's um an amazing genealogist who's sadly passed away a few years ago, he petitioned the government and got the 1939 register available early.

So before the 100 years period was elapsed.

And so that's why we can use it.

And that's why it has the black lines on it, because anyone who's under 100 years old has a black line on it.

So it started its life as a working document that carried on getting used from 1939.

through to the 1990s by the NHS.

And now as family historians, we've got it early and it's gradually being unfurled to us because each year some of those black lines, by the clever way that computers can do it, get removed and we can see more and more people.

So details -wise...

Nearly finished.

So it's pretty much the same as the census, apart from what it has extra.

It has a precise date of birth, which is super helpful, particularly if you've got somebody with a really common name.

It's also helpful because you can just search on a first name and a birthday and you'll only end up with a short list of people.

And over on the right hand side, it will say, quite often you'll see things like ARP, which would be for air raid precautions.

So you'll have ideas of people's potential roles on the home front in the Second World War.

End of waffle.

Right.

Brilliant.

That was very good.

That was very, very thorough.

I had a few questions about it and you've answered them all because obviously the black lines I was very interested in because they all like said this record is officially closed.

So I know what secrecy was going on there, but you've solved that.

Yeah.

When the National Archives, when they were digitising it, then they had to, I think this is right.

it was being digitized in a sealed room so only a very very small number of select people were allowed in there and i think this is right that you people weren't allowed to see the people who are transcribing it weren't allowed to see the entirety of a page at any one time because then and i think this happens with some of the censuses as well because always you're breaking gdpr if you're letting somebody's full details get seen so people would see kind of one column of information at a time because then they couldn't build off a full picture about somebody so careful i mean we might kind of tease gdpr but on the other hand in a world where data theft can have lots of scary consequences it is nice to know that the archive scene is super scrupulous I guess so, but when it's old information, it seems silly.

Yes.

But that's coming from somebody who wants to know everything from a family tree.

No, you're not the only person who thinks that.

It does seem silly.

I love the fact that you get all the actual data bursts.

That's what I was absolutely loving about that document.

It was suddenly I could really place people quite easily because I was like, I want more people on this document.

But yes, I've just checked the document and it does say this woman who's living with her parents, her maiden name's been crossed out and been replaced by this new surname, but the marital status is single on it.

So I've got a little mystery there, so something for me to get lost in even more.

See, what you could try and do, you could try and look for electoral rolls after the Second World War and try and find out...

if she is living with her spouse after the Second World War.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay, yeah.

To see whether she got married and then they separated or whether it could just be a typo.

And you could also go on and see, does she have any children?

Yeah.

And what surnames the children have.

I guess the single element could have been typed or could have been written on when she was...

That's what it's going to be.

That's all it's going to be, isn't it?

Yeah.

So she's married at some point.

They've updated that, but not updated the single.

Ignore everything I've just said.

You're completely right.

I want some scandal and intrigue, though.

I don't want a straightforward answer.

Well, when you get onto your DNA results, you'll get your scandal and intrigue, Jason.

Shh, we don't talk about the DNA.

I was thinking about this this morning.

I was like, oh, my God, if I ever see Karen again recently, she'll be like, have you done your DNA?

Nope.

You just have to say that you're really busy building the most robust, comprehensive family tree you can so that you can make swift sense of your DNA matches.

Yeah, but I know what she'll say.

She'll say that DNA will back it all up and make it even stronger.

Yes, yes.

So I'm told.

Yes.

I had a few cool occupations from the 1920s.

So I mentioned my great -grandpa's one working at the RAF Hendon.

And then I had...

Somebody else who was working for, I think it was called the British Wire Company or something like that.

That's not the correct name.

But what I loved about it was he was going around installing electricity.

And so that, again, it's another little insight, isn't it?

That it isn't just there in everybody's houses.

You need someone to go around to put it in when it's first coming out, don't you?

Yeah, he's got all the electricity in a van and he brings it out.

I think he probably did do, yeah.

That's cool.

That's really weird.

You take it all for granted, don't you?

Yeah, I literally do.

You've changed me completely.

Why is that?

Because I wasn't interested in stories or bits and bats and jobs.

I just wanted facts and figures.

And then I've just been looking at, like, the United Geese Company and there's loads of, like, paraphernalia.

You can get, like, weighing scales that say the United Geese Company and there's, like, shop fronts and...

Even like receipts that say like the United Youth Company on it.

It looks really cool.

I've made some of that.

Yes, from a design point of view.

It's got cool typography, Nathan.

It just looks old.

It looks like it could be from a movie.

That's the easiest way I can say it.

It looks like you want to create something like that.

If you were to create something from the 1920s, 1930s, it would look just like that.

It's well presented.

I don't need to be going down this rabbit hole.

It's not even on my main line.

Well, that's the thing.

If it's not on your main line, then maybe that's getting a little bit too naughty.

But I don't think it is.

I think it just builds up a picture of everything.

And you never know when that little rabbit hole is going to become...

Yeah.

I mean, he's only just off the main line, though.

He's a child of my main line.

But, yeah.

I just normally don't pay attention to half these details and now I've started doing so.

It just gets worse because all the things I think I'm researching now have 10 extra little bits that I'm now interested in.

So, Nathan, I'm not sure that you have any aunts and uncles, but I have aunts and uncles and our kids have uncles.

And from a kid's point of view, the aunts and uncles are always exciting because they're not quite the same as parents.

They're kind of a similar age, but they're kind of...

zoom in and out of your life.

They might come and stay.

They all seem to be doing much more exciting things than your own parents seem to be doing.

And they definitely add richness and colour to a child's life.

So I think all these side branches, those side branches are the aunts and uncles of earlier generations.

And so you've got an uncle who was a sailor and he came back every five or six years with, you know, a sunburned face.

you know whatever else like trinkets from around the world how exciting so all these side branches yeah why why is it always the side branches though like doing a sweeping generalization here but it just feels like all my straight direct descendants are just quite yeah yeah we lived in pudsy blah blah blah blah and it just all carries on but then the side branches are all like yes i went off here i was in the military i did this i disappeared why is it why is that Well, partly I think it's probably just you always think the grass is greener on the other side.

And then partly some of those side branches are really important to the family, but they may not have a family of their own, their own kind of nuclear family with their own kids.

And so they have a bit more freedom to up sticks and take exciting job opportunities.

And whereas once you have children, you have more tied to a location.

Maybe.

I guess so, yeah.

I think for me as well, as much as I seem to have researched every person in the world called Mary Ann recently, I'm very drawn to an interesting name and I will willingly spend more time on somebody with an interesting name.

Because it's like, oh, Titus, he's cool.

Or Maxwell McKay.

I mean, he sounds awesome.

That's just me, I guess.

It might be just you, but I think maybe they were a little bit more exciting.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Anyway, the important bit is that it's not a bad thing to overlook them.

It's definitely a good thing to include side branches in your tree.

And we've had discussions about this in Study Club and it's quite a moving topic because it is a really important topic.

People who don't necessarily have their own direct descendants, then the question of what happens to their family history research, who is interested in their family history research, where does it all go?

That's obviously a worry if you put lots of time and effort into doing something.

And it's like a legacy thing, isn't it?

And so it's great if people like you are interested in those side branches because potentially it could be somebody you don't even know, but it could be a different descendant on a different branch who overlaps some branches with you.

who goes, oh, I find out that you're interested in family history and goes, oh, I haven't got any children of my own.

I've done all this research.

I've got these amazing photographs.

Would you like to have them in your bed?

Yes, please.

So it's important.

We're all a big network thing, aren't we?

Yes.

And I guess, like, if you were to set yourself a weird research task to find out, like, you're related to a friend of yours, it's the side branches that are more likely to find that, aren't they?

Yes.

You're not, you know, maybe you might find it as a direct descendant, but you'd have to go off.

Well, the thing is, if you find it as a direct descendant that you're actually related to one of your running mates without.

Well, I'm going to be blunt.

What it means is if you find that you're a direct descendant within a very recent time frame, it means that one of your parents or grandparents pretty much has had a secret baby.

Right.

Doesn't it?

So it's got to be the side branches.

So that's why it's always the side branches.

As well, on the whole, you don't know about your side branches.

It doesn't take long.

to not be able to name your second or third cousins, you know, it's easy not to be able to name them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Move away and things like that.

Really easy.

I guess, is that where DNA matches comes into it more?

I'm setting myself rabbit holes, but whatever.

Like, if you are trying to find that you relate to somebody, DNA aspect helps focus your attention onto what part of the branch you should be looking in.

Kind of.

Apart from with the DNA, then people like Donna Rutherford, Michelle Leonard, they'll always be like, follow the DNA.

So you can't really set yourself up and say, I want to find out if I'm related to X.

You need to look at your DNA results and they will tell you who you're related to.

So it's completely the wrong approach and completely the wrong tool if you're trying to definitely find you're related to somebody because the DNA...

doesn't know that you have this agenda and it will just tell you what it's going to tell you whether you're right or not yeah okay so right okay so if people have taken a dna test already they would already be on my potential matches yes yes yes oh that's good that fine tunes my mind yes so if you're worried if you're thinking oh god am i related to one of my running buddies and they have done a dna test that would be fine you could just search in your matches because essentially you could be very distantly related to them and then you could search in your list of matches and see if their name pops up and they could be there sharing a tiny little me get 10 centimorgans way down at the bottom of your list and you haven't noticed them yet oh i mean this this is all uh speculative i haven't actually got any goals in mind just kind of want to tie everyone together though i think it'd be fun I do a really naughty thing.

So what you're supposed to do in your tree, you're supposed to have your maiden name and you're supposed to have your maiden name for everything.

And then I don't.

I have my surname, which is my work surname, my married surname.

And I have that because it's exciting.

And I have had a couple of readers contact me over the years because they've seen me in their DNA match list.

So we're distantly related, which is fun.

But if I was there.

hiding under my maiden name they wouldn't have known to email me at the mag would they so yeah it's the stupid thing but entertains me and i'm like um they're you know they're people of family stories they're going to work it out just they're going to get all the muppets gone and put her married name not her maiden name in a tree but it's a deliberate conscious Decision.

I've broken the rules.

The first step, the first thing I do, the second data point I enter into my tree is breaking the family history rules.

Go, Helen.

Nice one.

Just causing chaos for future generations.

Just a little bit of chaos.

Can I tell you about my 1921 grandparents?

Have I told you about them before?

Tell me to shut up if I have.

Go ahead and I will politely not tell you because you'll spot us another one.

Okay, so I've done my DNA.

It's really British, like mainly Scottish.

Then the next big chunk is English.

And when I look through the 1921 census for my grandparents, I can't find any of them.

And the reason why is because one of them was born in Africa, a little baby at the time.

One of them was born in South America, a little baby at the time.

One of them, the mum and dad split up and so the dad just had my baby grandfather as a cross in the children under one column.

So he's there as literally as like a little kiss shape.

But his name's not there because he's gone.

I think he's gone back to Ireland with his mum.

the one who's the closest to being on the 1921 her dad just wrote infant and she was about three weeks old and then the enumerator crossed out the word infant and then just wrote her surname which is Hallis so she's not there with her first name but I know it's my granny and that's like so isn't that a poor haul of information out of four grandparents who by different little quirks of could all be there listed.

They're all alive.

I could have their full names.

I could have everything about them.

And I'd just have one, can I say, infant under one month.

That's the closest I get to actual information.

That's very irritating.

Very irritating.

I'm impressed you've got that.

I know.

So that's why I'm excited about the 1926 census for Ireland because then I'm really hoping I'm going to find my grandfather as a little boy.

He'll be roughly five or six.

With his mum in Ireland somewhere.

And that comes out next year then?

Yeah, 18th of April.

Get it in the calendar.

It is in the calendar.

Right.

My job then is to find some Irish relatives before then.

Yes.

And get involved with that.

Yes.

I've got nothing.

I've got no link to Ireland apart from I think my DNA matches said I might have some Irish.

No, you didn't.

I'm lying to you.

Cool.

Well, don't worry if you haven't got any Irish.

I think with Scottish, you're going to have a lot more fun.

Have you had a go at that yet?

No.

I'm terrified.

It's like I was saying to you just before, it's that because that's going to be new and exciting information, the thrill of the chase, it's there, but I'm a little scared by it, especially because it's obviously sending me out of ancestry into Scotland's people, did you say?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But there's a lot you can do on ancestry.

with them so i think why don't you start checking them out in the census in the censuses that are available on the ancestry yeah yeah i think i will do i think like i said i wasn't intending to spend more than 15 minutes doing this making my tree score better and then i got lost in lots of people which served me well i've got things done from that and found out more information but i think next time i go back i will ignore tree score and i'll go to the mckay's and see what i can I think I'll use the same structure because I have enjoyed using the censuses to bring everyone together and just see if I can flesh them guys out and get a bit further back.

And yeah, then I'll dip in.

We might have to do a live session.

Yes, that'd be fun.

I'd like that.

Take me through my initial dip into Scotland's people.

Yes.

So we're pretty much talking about homework then, aren't we, for soon.

So what's your homework going to be over the next week then, Nathan?

That will be my homework.

Look at the McKays.

Yeah.

Get them as solid as I can within my tree and ancestry, as far back as I can without leaving ancestry, and then discuss my next steps, if you're happy to do that with me.

Yeah, fun.

That'd be really, really fun.

So my project over the next week is I think I'm going to, I'm going to carry on adding the things to Family Tree Maker, and I'm going to make a start on my...

Mary M Pickering project.

And so my number of unsorted items has gone down to 82.

So that's Mickey progress.

I'm going to say this every week.

It was like 101 last week.

I've gone down a bit.

That's nice.

Yeah.

So it'll be about a month probably.

Maybe, maybe faster.

Who knows?

Making good progress.

Yes.

Yes.

Making good progress.

So that's what I'm going to do.

And if anybody else would like to say what they're doing and if they want to be held to account.

Then we did mention it a few weeks ago.

And we were wondering whether we frightened you all off because nobody has said a pledge that they would like to do.

But if you have a job that's been hanging over you in your family history and you would like to get it done and you want us to start nagging at you, then let us know what it is.

And we are more than happy to do that, aren't we, Nathan?

We are.

Or if you just want to shout out for doing something good, just let us know.

We don't have to hold you accountable.

True, true.

Party bossy, aren't they?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, thanks for listening, everybody.

Bye then, Nathan.

See you later.