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Originally Posted by TalnSG
The biggest problem in our research is the same thing Columbine mentioned – duplicate (or mangled) names. It seems mine is the first generation in a very long time not to have an “Elizabeth”, and some generations had more than one. And it seems familys always have one person who was only remembered by a nickname, not their legal name.
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Oh this. This is where we got unstuck. We got back as far as this group of three women called 'Alice', grandmother, mother and daughter respectively. Trouble is, the certificates we've found relating to them have either very few dates on them, or are all signed by the same man, and we think the daughter was illegitimate so it's all very muddled. Basically we think the daughter ended up living with the grandmother, but we can't pull them apart to identify them all distinctly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TalnSG
Most people get all excited about being connected to royalty or heroes of one sort or another, but sometimes you find things your relatives would prefer were lost to history. I dug up a few “skeletons” had hadn’t been buried too well in the 1970s, and now the internet has provided even more material on a few public events in my patriarchal line. I am far from proud of some of the previous generations, but it explained a few things about family politics and attitudes for me. Even so, if you get more than just the names, there can be some wonderful anecdotes to make the digging worthwhile.
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Our family were basically servicemen and women and then further back a lot of craftspeople and farmers, so really nothing glamorous or fancy here! almost all my ancestors were skivvies. :/
Mostly we just keep discovering illegitimate kids and whole branches of family we had no idea about. We even found the living relatives of a daughter my great grandfather had from an affair. They're living in scotland! Haven't found any prison records or anything, but we've found some really odd vague notes on why some of our relatives got medals. And a bunch of these awesome false limbs and x-ray slides that my other great-grandpa made.