british_roots

Welcome new member poppylicious !!!

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:58:08 GMT

Please tell us a bit about your British roots.

My roots (better late than never)

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:25:57 GMT

So I noticed new members being asked to post and thought "Gee I wonder if I ever got asked"
It only took me THREE years to notice but http://community.livejournal.com/british_roots/708.html
Yes, I am authorized, but I can only claim "not paying attention" (or so caught up in my research....)

My British Roots

GOARD (Cornwall)
SLEEMAN (Cornwall)
RUBBRA (Northampton)
RANN (Warwickshire)
BATES (Warwickshire)
WEBSTER (Leicestershire)
SOUTHWELL (Huntingdon)
HANDFORD (Leicestershire)
HURRELL (Norfolk)
HOOKS (Norfolk)
BECKETT (Suffolk)
CLAXTON (Suffolk)
WRATHALL
ATTWOOD
KELLAM (Leicestershire)
SWAINSON (Lancashire)

I don't do this full time and sort of pick a line for a while then pick another - and most of my research is for my own interest - but happy to swap info / stories / pics if anyone has similar names etc.

Welcome new user girlmacbeth

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:18:37 GMT

Please take a few minutes to tell us about your British roots!

Welcome new user schnooky1968 !!!

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:51:56 GMT

Please take a few minutes to tell us about your British roots.

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:05:41 GMT

I'm a new member, and here I am to tell you all about my British roots! I've been working on studying my genealogy for about a year and a half, and was lucky to already have a basic background from what my family has always known. The most interesting part is that we trace directly back, on my mother's side, to the Dudleys of England. They were the cousins of the infamous Robert Dudley, who loved Queen Elizabeth. THey did live in the Dudley Castle (Dudley, Eng.), but later left for Bristol, and eventally came to America in the 1600's and settled in VA, then NC. In between Dudley and Bristol, they lived in Cumbria, in a place called Yanwath Hall...Cumbria was one of the worst hit places for Hoof and Mouth disease!

Welcome new member voodoodollyiii !!!

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:44:18 GMT

Please take a moment to tell us about your British roots.

Hello, hello, hello

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:07:34 GMT

I'm excited to be on this community and I hope to learn some things about my British roots.

I started tracing my family tree earlier this year, using the materials gathered on both my mother's and father's sides of the family. I signed up for ancestry.com and I really have enjoyed using the material there to expand my understanding of my family's heritage.

I started out looking for my Native American heritage and my connections to certain Virginia families, found that difficult, but was surprised to find that once I traced a few lines back to England, the family trees just kept going and going and going... I discovered that not only do some of my lines go back to the Jamestown era, but that many of those early colonists' lines went back to people I had read about due to my love of history. Eventually I traced back to Eleanor of Aquitaine, in whose life I've always been interested. Well I tell ya, I was totally hooked at that point!

Many of my ties to England are in Norfolk, which is inspiring me these days to want to travel there. I was also fascinated by a connection with a Scotsman named MacGehee, or MacGregor, who came to the Virginia colony as an indentured servant to escape outlawry in the British Isles. I have not yet had the chance to get into detailed historical research about the period (which would have been during the time of the Stuart rulers), but intend to delve more deeply when I get a chance. My love of the Elizabethan period meant that I knew who the Paston family were when they turned up in my tree.

So I guess what I love best about genealogy is feeling a sense of connection, however ephemeral, to these historical figures. It inspires my growing love of history. Because I found Vikings in my family tree, I started reading about them; because I found Provencal and Savoyard connections, I learned about those cultures. I'm fascinated and enthralled by the way history unfolds when you feel that sense of connection with the people who lived it.

Anyway, that's probably enough from me. Just wanted to say hello!

Welcome new members!

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:46:13 GMT

Sorry, life has made me a little preoccupied of late. Just added: muddy21, dudette38, nepthytis, and rarely77

Sorry it took me so long! Please welcome them. And new folks, please tell us a bit about your British roots!

A little about myself.

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:44:20 GMT

I was born in the little mining town of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire.
My ancestors were mainly from Derbyshire - they don't appear to have much of a wanderlust as most of them stayed there and did move towards Nottinghamshire.
I suppose we broke the mould when we migrated to Australia in 1951. Mum, dad a brother and myself.
I married a Yorkshireman whose ancestry was far more interesting than mine as one of his ancestory came over with the First Fleet.....subsequent migrants moved back to the UK again in a short time.
I don't know what else you would like to know.
jingles

Welcome new member jinglebells12 !

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:14:24 GMT

Please tell us a bit about your British roots.

Welcome new member mab8merlin

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:41:32 GMT

Please take a moment to tell us about your British roots.

Please welcome new member fringedweller !

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:04:26 GMT

Please tell us a bit about your British roots.

Welcome new member dibeartach !

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:26:56 GMT

Please tell us a bit about your British roots.

Welcome new user wwmpc !

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 05:45:48 GMT

Please tell us a bit about your British roots.

Welcome new member michelles_here

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:33:15 GMT

Please tell us a bit about your British roots.

Please welcome new group member louisedennis

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 07:20:21 GMT

Please take a moment to tell us about YOUR British roots . . .

The Irish Connection.....

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 07:52:06 GMT

Just when I thought it was safe and I had finally got my head around Scottish records after being immersed in English ones when blow me they appear to have moved from Ireland.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some good Irish resources ? I am looking at pre 1871.

Thanks

National Archives

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:37:26 GMT

Am I the last person to discover this wonderful site?! I was able to buy pdf copies of 4 ancestors wills on here http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

Welcome new member zoefruitcake !!!

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:58:34 GMT

Please take a moment to tell us about your British roots.

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:23:43 GMT

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but I'm finding it fascinating. It's an article about a way of reading deteriorated grave stones.

Cross-posted to the other lists I'm on.

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:41:10 GMT

Hello British Roots!

Well basically I have just recently picked up researching my family tree again after I started last year as finances didn't really allow me to order all the birth certificates and things that I needed to go further then.

my great grandmother, who is my mothers grandmother, who I spent a lot of time with when I was a young child, died in 1995 at 91 years old, she was born in 1904, her mother and father were Albert Cosgrove (age 37 in the 1901 census) and Julia Ellen Cosgrove (27 in the 1901 census) she had at least 9 brothers and sisters and possibly a set of twins who died at birth (old family memory).

I am awaiting a bundle of certificates from my mothers father and my grandmothers fathers side, but I have traced this direct female line back to the 1901 census, where my great grandmothers parents and 5 older siblings (she wasn't born until 1904) were living in Oldham.

Her father was a coal miner hewer and her mother was a card room hand at a mill.
I have possibly found her mums birth certificate in 1873 in Oldham but I have to wait to receive it until I can confirm it is the correct person and not just a coincidence that the name and date matches.

A few family mysteries have come up though, even though on the census it says that they were married and that they were both born in Oldham, my great grandmothers parents don't seem to have any marriage records and I have searched through all the years from the younger of the couple being 14 until after 6 of their children had been born and nothing has come up, also I can't find her on any census returns from before 1901, so not on the 1881 or 1891 censuses and I also can't find her death certificate even though my grandmother remembers her dying when my grandmother was very young. If she was going under a different name by then I don't know how I'll ever trace it.

After a fruitless search for Albert Cosgrove's birth records I got it into my head to search for Julia Ellen Cosgrove even though I knew that really there shouldn't be one as she should have been born under a different name, her maiden name, but no...I found Julia Ellen Cosgrove born as Julia Ellen Cosgrove in 1873, odd I thought.
But then I looked again at the paperwork I had and I realised that my great grandmothers birth certificate was only filled in as far as address, mothers occupation, name and given name of child, the fathers section and mothers maiden name were not filled in, could this mean she was illegitimate?

They were devout Catholics so it seems strange.

My great grandfather doesn't appear anywhere before 1901, no birth, marriage or census returns, it's very strange.
I've even looked in the Irish records as they apparently were of Irish descent and still nothing.
I have checked under alternate spellings of their names too, Cosgrave instead of Cosgrove.

It's a Mystery!

Apart from the BMD register and the census records, are there any more online resources I could use?
I've contacted our local Catholic Diocese to find out where baptismal and marriage records etc. would be held now so that might be a lead.

Welcome new member animalunaris !!!

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 05:21:44 GMT

Please take a moment to tell us about your British roots.

Researching one's family name?

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:43:48 GMT

Hi, everyone! I had a question for those of you doing geneology. I don't have access to much in the way of my Mother's Father's family... she didn't get on well with him, and now his widow won't assist us in any way. The family name is Thomas, and I know 2 generations back. Does anyone have a fantastic research tool for Welsh/British names? I've been told it's either, both, neither, all of the above. *lol* Can anyone lend any assistance? I know it's a common name and like a needle in a haystack, but that's what I have to work with.

Cheers!

Chance discovery of a fun memorial inscription in London

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:13:46 GMT

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd share with you something cool that I found whilst geocaching this weekend (geocaching is like treasure hunting using a GPS system, and is heaps of fun).

On Sunday I found a geocache that was located in a nature reserve/graveyard in London. The cache setter requested that, as there were famous people buried in the park, anyone finding the cache should find the grave of a famous person and write about that person in their log. Well, I didn't have a lot of time so I couldn't go looking for anyone famous, but there are some really cool looking graves in this park so I took a few photos.

When I got home I decided to look up a one of the inhabitants of the graves up in the UK census, to see where they lived and what they worked as when they were alive.

I chose to look up a bloke with the fabulous name of "Erasmus Lawrence". According to his monument, he was "an old and respected inhabitant of the parish of Saint Luke's, having filled most of its important offices". He was "beloved in life, mourned in death". I figured he may have been a parish clerk or something....

....and it turns out that he was actually a bartender and publican for well over 30 years! St Luke's is the parish around Old Street, and Erasmus is listed as a "Retired licensed victualler" on City Road in 1871. He would probably have worked in several pubs during his lifetime. Erasmus was the landlord of the City Arms on City Road in 1861; ten years earlier he was a bartender and victualler in Norton Foldgate (just up from Bishopsgate, on the way to Shoreditch) and in 1841 he was a plumber.

So yes, I'd say he did fill some pretty important offices!!!!! Looks like his memorial inscription was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but it's a joke that got lost in time. Now it's been found again :)

(more info: Erasmus was baptised at St Andrew's church, Holborn, on 23rd March 1806, the son of Erasmus and Mary. He had an older sister called Maria, baptised in 1803. His father served on a couple of juries for trials at the Old Bailey in the 1780s. Erasmus himself married Jane Yates (who is buried with him) on 25th April 1829 at St Dunstan in the East in the City of London (this church got destroyed in the war but there are gardens on the site now and there's a very nice geocache hidden there!).

Welcome new member del_writes !!!

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:20:11 GMT

Please take a moment to tell us about your British roots.