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Don Barzini

Don Barzini

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Recently signed up to Ancestry's website for a 14 day free trial.

I have a fairly small family - mum only had one brother, dad is an only child. The families of my grandparents on my dad's side were destroyed/separated during World War II. So I am hoping that I will find some long lost relatives via the process!

Wondered what other people's experiences of this sort of thing were? Anyone use Ancestry, or other similar sites? Anyone dug up anything interesting?

Cheers. (y)
 
Mrs Imurg is heavily into this...
She's got the tree going back into the 1500s where one of my ancestors was Keeper of Tapestries for Queen Liz1
Apparently they changed location frequently due to weather, smell etc.
The walls were covered in these tapestries and it was his job to get them from A to B and carry out any repairs....
I can't get my head around her fascination with dead people but then she can't get her head around me chasing a ball around a field....
 
@Imurg my mum has gone back a fair way and has even drawn out a sizeable family tree on paper, sellotaped together. About a year or so ago she sat me down and took me through it, so I knew about it all. She's elderly so I smiled and nodded my way through. At the end she stopped and said, 'you are never going to look at this again, are you?'. 'Pretty much' I replied 😄

You either get this or you don't. We clearly don't 🤷

@Don Barzini in answer to your question, my mum did her research old school. Happy to do it over a period of years. My wife got her dad an ancestry subscription for 6 months as he has a confused background but he didn't use it. The initial information was quite good, he just didn't dig deeper. Not a huge amount of help I'm afraid
 
Last edited:
Imurg said:
Mrs Imurg is heavily into this...
She's got the tree going back into the 1500s where one of my ancestors was Keeper of Tapestries for Queen Liz1
Apparently they changed location frequently due to weather, smell etc.
The walls were covered in these tapestries and it was his job to get them from A to B and carry out any repairs....
I can't get my head around her fascination with dead people but then she can't get her head around me chasing a ball around a field....
Click to expand...
Bet most can find a link to royalty, they always do on Who Do You Think You Are 🤣
 
I was on Ancestry for a year got back to 1700s was kinda exiting when you got a notification.

All my folk on mums side came from Fulham and Hammersmith and people didnt seem to move around a lot then.

Only relative I found outside London was from Wales.

I also found another relative I knew nothing about who was also researching on Ancestry.

I was told that many records were lost when Fulham was bombed in the war.
 
Rlburnside said:
I was on Ancestry for a year got back to 1700s was kinda exiting when you got a notification.

All my folk on mums side came from Fulham and Hammersmith and people didnt seem to move around a lot then.

Only relative I found outside London was from Wales.

I also found another relative I knew nothing about who was also researching on Ancestry.

I was told that many records were lost when Fulham was bombed in the war.
Click to expand...
Yeah...the 1931 census records were destroyed in the war and no census was taken in 1941.
 
My late BiL did it for both his and our sides of the family. He already knew that Douglas Haig and the Guinness and Tate dynasties were cousins on his side but wanted to see the family tree clarified on paper.
On our side we thought we knew that Dad's antecedents were all from South Yorkshire and Mum's were all from Notts. It turned out that both families were descended from east Anglian migrant agricultural labourers.
Dad was gutted. Always thought he was full pedigree Yorkshireman but turned out to be descended from Essex potato pickers.
 
My great-great-grandfather was a footballer in Aberdeen.
He had many children, two sons played for Aberdeen. One went to Sunderland and the other to Newcastle. The Newcastle one got 5 caps for Scotland.
He also had a grandson via another son who played for Aberdeen, South Shields and Barnsley. This was my grandfather.

I was a bit gobsmacked one day when I saw a chap on Antiques Roadshow with a load of Sunderland FC memorabilia.
He was a grandson of my grandfather's uncle who had played for Sunderland.
Same surname as me and I knew nothing about him. I would like to meet him one day.
 
I ma quite interested in genealogy but too lazy to put in the effort, there is a lady in Australia who shares great grandparents with me who has done a lot of research and has been over to the UK on several occassions researching. Although my surname originated in the 13th century and was centred around north east Lancashire, she only got back to the 1700s
 
Neilds said:
Bet most can find a link to royalty, they always do on Who Do You Think You Are 🤣
Click to expand...
Yes. When you consider the exponential growth in the people you are related to through generations then it's not surprising that most people will have some link to the aristocracy.
 
My sister has been the one in the family heavily interested in this but could only go back so far (my dads dad who disappeared totally) after trying several websites.

One of the things that upset us was one of the things she found out indirectly which she should have kept to herself rather than telling the rest of us.
 
Imurg said:
Mrs Imurg is heavily into this...
She's got the tree going back into the 1500s where one of my ancestors was Keeper of Tapestries for Queen Liz1
Apparently they changed location frequently due to weather, smell etc.
The walls were covered in these tapestries and it was his job to get them from A to B and carry out any repairs....
I can't get my head around her fascination with dead people but then she can't get her head around me chasing a ball around a field....
Click to expand...
If Missis Imurg is into tapestries then hardwick Hall is the place to go.
Bess of Hardwick was back in the day Queen Liz 1sts Bessie pal and Hardwick Hall has one of if not the largest collection of wall Tapestries in the country. There is a good chance that great granny Imurg x10 could have handled them. 👍
 
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