Searching the BMDs

I’ve decided to start filling in the blanks in the maternal side of my family tree – namely the dates of birth, marriage and death for all four maternal great-grandparents – by locating the marriages in the indexes on findmypast.com. I’m starting with my great-grandparents’ marriages because while she was unable to provide me with these dates, my mum did tell me when my grandparents were born and also roughly when their elder siblings were. By using this information, I can make a couple of educated guesses as to the likely years of marriage, making my search a lot easier.

I know that George and Lucy Mead’s eldest child was born at the end of 1925 and that Lucy’s maiden name was Wright. I therefore decided to search the marriage indexes (accessible via the ‘births, marriages & deaths’ tab at the top of the findmypast.com homepage) for a marriage between 1920 and 1930. Despite knowing Lucy’s maiden name, I decided to search for George Mead as I felt his name was the more unique and that this would help me sift through the records more effectively. This search brought up a screen of telephone directory-esque pages as follows,

BMD results - click to enlarge

While my search covered 10 years, I decided to start viewing the records from the year I would initially expect to see George and Lucy getting married, namely the year preceding their eldest’s birth (the end of 1924 – the end of 1925). This turned out to be a masterstroke as I quickly spotted a likely looking marriage in the first quarter of 1925; the index shows that a George W. Mead was married to a woman with the surname Wright in West Ham.

George Mead in the marriage indexes

Feeling like a detective, I returned to the marriage index search screen to check that the Ms Wright was indeed a Lucy. This second search, for Lucy Wright in the first quarter of 1925, resulted in further success as I spotted a Lucy M. Wright marrying a Mead – also in West Ham! The GRO reference (the code at the right of the record) for both George and Lucy’s entries also matched, reassuring me that the entries relate to the same marriage.

Lucy Wright in the marriage indexes

Now confident that these records refer to my great-grandparents’ marriage, I have ordered my first ever certificate from the General Register Office. This was surprisingly simple to do as you can now order BMD certificates online through the GRO website, www.gro.gov.uk. One tip: make sure you record the GRO reference provided in the indexes at findmypast.com as you’ll need these numbers when ordering the certificate. The first part of the reference provided refers to the volume number (in George and Lucy’s case, this is 4a), while the second section is the page number (175 in this example).

Using the same tactics, I’ve also managed to locate the marriage of my other set of maternal great-grandparents and have ordered their marriage certificate too. The certificates cost me £7 each and should be with me in about a week – I can’t wait!

Embracing my maternal side

Good news! I’ve managed to fill in a bit more of my tree after a chat with the mother. Oddly, it seems that the lack of knowledge about my maternal family extends back another generation for while my mum could furnish me with information about her own parents, what she knew about her grandparents (my great-grandparents) was quite limited. What she was able to tell me, however, has revealed that both of my maternal grandparents had rather unsettled childhoods.

My great-grandmother Ada died early on in my grandfather’s life, when he was only about 10 years old. Subsequently, it seems that my great-grandfather Jack found it difficult to cope and eventually handed responsibility of his children over to their uncle and aunt, disappearing from their lives. According to my grandfather’s reports, he and his sister effectively lived as cheap labour for his uncle’s bakery business. He escaped from this as soon as he could, signing up with the RAF as a mechanic when the Second World War started and serving in the Far East.

My grandmother also lost a parent prematurely as my great-grandfather George sadly died when she was around two years old, leaving his widow Lucy to bring up their two young daughters alone. The family apparently believed that George’s death was a long-term result of being gassed in the First World War, an event that had left him with a persistent cough for the remainder of his life. Prior to speaking to my mum, I had always believed that my maternal ancestry was rooted in Hertfordshire. However, it seems that my great-grandmother Lucy and her family originally lived around West Ham, being evacuated out to Ware in Hertfordshire to work as land girls at the beginning of the Second World War.

It’s quite shocking to think that my great-grandmother Lucy would have been the only grandparent my mum knew when she was growing up. Indeed, my mum has actually never even seen a photograph of her paternal grandparents, Jack and Ada. Quite incredible, really. As a result of this, she was unable to fill in much of the factual information about my great-grandparents (such as dates of birth, marriage and death) that are needed to start tracing my lineage back further. To confirm these, I will need to dive into the birth, marriage and death indexes available at findmypast.com .

Interviewing family members

While it may initially seem like the simplest thing in the world to do, I actually found my first attempt at ‘interviewing’ my nan about our family and her memories quite a tricky task. I’m not sure if it’s just because my family are all a bunch of chatterboxes, but I found it pretty difficult to keep our discussion on track and not get distracted from the task at hand.

With this in mind, I had a quick search around for examples of questions that would help me structure my second attempt and spotted this article - How to Write a List of Questions for a Family History Interview | eHow.com . I think these suggested questions are really helpful as they seem well balanced and should help me build up both a list of facts about the ancestors my nan remembers and also begin to understand what their lives were like.

Although I’ve only just started looking at my family history, I’ve already found it quite an eye-opener as I’ve realized just how little I know. While speaking to my nan, it dawned on me that I’d never actually seen a photo of my grandparents in their younger days. In fact, I know it’s crazy, but I’ve only ever tended to think of them in relation to myself, i.e. that they’re my grandparents. I’m really looking forward to reacquainting myself with them and finding out what their lives were like before they were graced with my presence!

A newly-aquired photo of my grandparents, Pamela Jones and Royston Sell

‘Begin with what you know’

If there’s one thing I’ve picked up while working at findmypast, it’s definitely this tip! Honestly, ask absolutely anybody involved in genealogy and they’ll all tell you the same thing, “start with what you know”. It’s very easy to try to run before you can walk when starting family history research (particularly if you have any juicy family rumours doing the rounds!) but the advice I’ve been given has been very clear; don’t try to work forwards from a rumoured famous ancestor, always work backwards from yourself.

So, what exactly do I know? While I’d love to pretend that this blog’s bound to unearth all sorts of illustrious relatives, the truth is that I know very little about my ancestors and, sadly, am yet to hear any rumours of blue blood! What I do know are the names and some birth, marriage and death dates of the family members I’ve grown up with (and have needed to buy birthday presents for!). These include my parents, paternal grandparents and great-grandparents, though my memory of birthdays, marriages and maiden names gets progressively hazier the further back I try to remember.

I don’t really know anything about my mum’s family aside from my maternal grandparents’ names so will need to speak to her to gather further information about them. Likewise, the next step I’ll take to trace my paternal family is to speak to my nan. She should be able to tell me about the family she grew up with, plus fill in the blanks in my own memory. I suspect that she may also have a few photos and birth, marriage and death certificates lurking around – if I flutter my eyelashes, I’m sure she’d let me take copies of them.

In the meantime, I’ve set up a couple of family trees online to help keep track of the information I’m starting to gather - I can just imagine how confused I’m going to get if I don’t keep everything together! I’ve set myself up with one using findmypast’s family tree software, family tree explorer, and have also registered with Genes Reunited .

Starting my family tree with family tree explorer

Where do I start?!

This blog… my family history… quite a fitting title, I thought!

Although I’m new to this family history malarkey, I do have a vested interest. I love history – I studied it at university and am particularly fascinated by the social side, by how people of past generations lived. I suppose family history does go hand-in-hand with social history as it’s really a way of establishing what life was like for our ancestors, isn’t it? I’ve certainly fancied getting involved for a while, particularly since the Who Do You Think You Are television programme started, but have never quite known where to begin.

The lucky thing is, I now work for UK family history website, www.findmypast.com . That’s why, as I now have millions of records at my fingertips and an understanding of the different types available, I thought it would be a great idea to chart the progress I make with my research via the medium of this blog. I do hope it will be useful for the other newbies like me out there and that the family history experts amongst you might be willing to lend a hand here and there. I’d very much appreciate any hints and tips you may have so please do leave me a comment or two!