...it already has 12 subscribers. So it looks good so far.

While there has not been much traffic recently in the old forums, this one has been active in the past.

Hi! My name is Anne and I am a genealogy addict.

It's be really nice to have a place here to discuss the subject.

I just finished going through my Dad's side of the family. I've always thought of it as being the "shortest branch" of our tree since Dad's grandfather came over from Wales in 1872 and we have not been able to find out anything about his father's parents.

But the Canadian branch of the woman who the Welsh ancestor married - that I have managed to get back to the 1600s in Scotland and in Yorkshire! :woo-hoo: I verified the woman's mother's name - no one researching the family had done that but on the baptismal record of one of her brothers it lists her name with maiden name AND married surname - and her brother and his wife were witnesses! Using her brother's name, I found where he was born and married in Scotland, his parents names, then their brothers and sisters! MOTHERLODE! Following those people took me back another two or three generations.

On the baptismal record of a sister, one of the witnesses was the husband of my great-great-grandmother - the only solid link other than family notes that he was connected to her family. AND it showed a variant spelling that verifies other links.

And Mom and my mother in law never bothered to research siblings - they consider it a waste of time. HAH!

I have a couple of Welsh->Canadian lines that I have not tried to do anything with.

William Wright and his wife Mary Morgan. Pretty much I have their life stories from when they were married, all their children, census records, etc. But with such common names I have not been able to find who their parents are. The next step is to order their wedding certificate to see if it gives their parents' names.

Apparently William Wright was born in London, so he may not have been Welsh, just moved there. But I can see that Mary Morgan will be nearly impossible to trace, even if I do find her parents names. Morgans in Wales are so common it's depressing. I looked for Mary Morgan's baptismal records based on her stated age and place of birth on various censuses. There were DOZENS of Mary Morgans in and near that place born in the right years.

I have lots on my Welsh immigrant ancestor, including where he was working as a slate miner in 1871 just before he sailed over, the ship passenger list with him and his brother when they came over in 1872 and as much as I can find in the US.

Surprising to me, the British did not do any census before 1841 and national records were not kept until 1837. Some parishes kept good records, but many did not and the amount of detail and quality of the records was dependent on the parish priest. If you are really lucky you have Quaker ancestors since they kept wonderful records and many of those have been transcribed and indexed.

Canadian census records are online for some of the provinces and Ancestry has all of them. But Canada's first full census was not until 1871. Some census were taken by the British as early as 1841 but they really are not complete. Again, parishes kept the other records and with the mix of early churches, the quality and completeness is irregular at best and many parishes have not transcribed and indexed their records.

Compared to researching in the US, I find the UK and Canada frustrating!

I'm Australian, of English/Scottish/French ancestry on my mother's side, and Dutch/German on my father's.

I found the UK records a dream to work with. The census is particularly helpful – in Australia, we don't have access to actual names of families; it's used purely to count numbers, whereas the British census not only had information about our family members, I found it interesting to look at the professions of their neighbours to get an idea of the kind of areas they lived in. And having everything centralised is wonderful – I couldn't trace my father's family in Germany, because the records there aren't centralised, and I'm not certain where they came from. Centralisation of records should be compulsory throughout the EU!

I will also need to get professional help sometime with the French records – I know my ancestors were Huguenots, but I can only trace back with certainty to 1789, about 100 years later than I would need if I want to connect the family to the original French immigrants, but I haven't been able to access the necessary records – it's possible they're kept by the French Huguenot church in Soho, but I can't get them online.

The Scottish records are reasonable, but I found that there are a lot of gaps in the records, and it's a shame they won't allow access to people like Ancestry to help them get their records into better order.

And the vital records kept by the government only start in 1837 or 1838. Anything before that is parish records - and I have not been able to find where those are for the church in the small village in Wales where my ancestors lived.

Unfortunately that is right on the cusp of where I need to trace my Welsh ancestors. My great great grandparents married in 1838 so their marriage is recorded. The marriage certificate names the fathers of the bride and groom and where they lived but nothing else. Because the British records start there, that leaves me hanging.

I'm spoiled by being in the USA. Our census began in 1790 as soon as the federal government was stabilized after the revolution. While the early census only gave the name of the head of household and a limited count of family members that at least lets me locate the family. In 1850 they began listing all members of families but not their relationships so you have to do detective work to figure that out.

I need to write to the church in the village and see if I can get the records somehow. I've tried the online resources and while there is a group that is transferring Welsh parish records no one has responded to my requests for how to obtain the information - if it has been transferred.

And while the British census began in 1841, it was very basic, and in quite a few places, information seems to be missing. Looks as though they didn't quite have their act together, because from 1851 onwards it seems to be more reliable.

In Australia, where we can't access family information from the census, the best source of information for me has been death certificates. Bearing in mind that sometimes there are errors (because the one person who knows what's what has now gone), I've been fortunate in that my immediate forebears lived in Victoria, and their death certificates are packed with information on both the deceased's parents and their children. I was able to pick up so much information. Other states are not nearly so forthcoming - luck plays such a big part of genealogy.

And I've experienced something similar to you in trying to trace my Scottish ancestors. I know they supported the Stuart cause (one boy in every generation was named "Charles Stuart&quot , and the records for the family in Edinburgh come to a halt in late 18th century. I suspect they may have come from Argyll, because of the family name, and it was the seat of Clan McGregor, to which they belonged. But I haven't been able to find anything – either the records don't exist, or it will take somebody actually on the ground to do the detective work. I have read that in the regular clan wars in Scotland, the winning clans would descend on a town and burn everything in sight, and many records were lost this way. No foresight at all - did they never think that future generations would need those records?

Most of my mother's ancestors came from South Carolina. During the American Civil War, Sherman's army marched through there and burned many court houses and churches, destroying many records that would clear up a lot of family lines.

I joke that my husband's ancestor destroyed my ancestors' records - one of his ancestors was a Union soldier in Sherman's army so he was along for a lot of that destruction.

As much as we complain new about the limitations of what is available, I think back to when my father's mother was doing her genealogical research over a hundred years ago - very little was available, not even most census records. A lot of her research was from letters written by elderly relatives - one of the letters we have in our files was written by a distant cousin of hers that was born in 1818 and written when the lady was nearly a hundred years old! Another was written by a cousin of my great great grandfather about how the spelling of the family name was changed about 1800.

We have it good compared to back then!

I haven't had much of a chance to do much with the group over on DU2. I hope to do more, and what better excuse to get more involved than a change to the new version of DU?!

I'd miss it

and as a novice, will certainly value as much advice and help as I can get!

Even though I have about 40 years experience as a researcher, it is useful for getting notifications of data coming available on-line or when there is new software, or other inner-workings of the hobby. So, please keep the group going!.

I like reading about the family histories.

I've been working on my genealogy for a long time. I traced my maternal grandmother's ancestry on her mother's side to my 10th great grandparents in 1500 England; William Towne and Joanna Towne (née Blessing). They came to America and settled in Salem Ma in 1635.

Rebecca Towne Nurse (or Nourse) was their daughter (February 21, 1621 – July 19, 1692). She was executed for witchcraft along with her sister Mary Towne Eastey (August 24, 1634 – September 22, 1692).

If you've heard of the play "Three Sovereigns for Sarah" it's based on their witch trial and executions. Sarah, also a sister was tried and jailed for being a witch, but ended up being released.

Their brother Edmund Towne, is my direct descendant.

I was pretty excited, as was the rest of my family to be able to trace my ancestry back to a significant albeit dark time time in our history.

Also found records of service in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War.

I'm constantly learning new things about my ancestors. Just found I am descended from 3 Salem witches: Rebecca Nurse, Mary Parker, & another one whose name escapes me at the moment, but unlike the other 2, she survived.

I also found over the weekend that one of my great-grandmothers survived the "Starving Time" at Jamestown, was later the wife of the Governor of Virginia (her 2nd husband), & witnessed John Rolfe's will (yes, THAT John Rolfe). As if this wasn't fascinating enough, her name was Temperance Flowerdew.

Rebecca's brother was Edmund Towne (my direct descendent), so Rebecca would be my 9th great Aunt. Their other sister Mary Towne Eastey was also hung as a Witch.

"On July, 19, 1692 she and 4 other women (Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wilds and Rebecca Nurse), were taken to gallows Hill, where they were hung until dead. The bodies were then discarded in a nearby crevasse since as witches they could not be buried in hallowed ground. It is not known what became of the bodies, but most likely relatives took the bodies away and buried them secretly."
From Merrill's "History of Amesbury and Merrimac"

Susannah was my 8th great grandmother.

The belief in witchcraft has caused pain and suffering from the beginning.

Timeline
Year(s) Event
B.C.E. The Hebrew Scriptures addressed witchcraft, including Exodus 22:17 and various verses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
c. 200-500 C.E The Talmud described forms of punishments and execution for witchcraft
c. 910 The Canon Episcopi was recorded by Regino of Prümm describing folk beliefs in Francia, just before the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire. This text influenced later canon law. It condemned maleficium (bad-doing) and sorilegium (fortune-telling), but argued that most stories of these were fantasy, and also argued that those who believed they magically flew were suffering from delusions.
c. 1140 Mater Gratian's compilation of canon law, including the Canon Episcopi (see "about 910" above), also included writings from Hrabanus Maurus and excerpts from Augustine.
https://www.thoughtco.com/european-witch-hunts-timeline-3530786

And the sad thing is there still are scattered reports of persecution of witches in more remote areas of the world.

and I never knew this group existed. I'm intrigued and would like it to remain. I keep meaning to research my family tree and now that my parents are gone, time is of the essence. Thanks all for the nudge.

keep it going.