Family Tree

[jack_lord]

How on earth did you trace back that far? Genuinely interested to know.

I am on My Heritage, a paid site and one of the quirks is "smart matches" when other users have done their own research or copied others. I will say that if any of your ancestors further back has any link to the higher echelons of society then all the research has been done and well documented. Also, the site that is researched by the mormons has been quite helpful.
If any of you have the surname Bradley in Swansea, then you may well be related to these further back discoveries. I've got back to 1660 with the Bradley family and thanks to his wife my GGGGGGGGGGmother and her ancestors the tree opens up with all kinds of amazing discoveries. If you manage to get to one of these and we all probably are going to find a link then it is a surreal feeling. Saints, Lords, Welsh and Scottish and Frank royalty but from a long time ago. Charlemagne was there but a huge amount of us are going to be related somehow to him.
I'm more interested in getting old of church records that will help me get more information from my Welsh ancestry in mid and west Wales.
I have a link to a distant relative who is also a descendant from that Ciao family but he runs a pub deep in Cardiff land so not sure how well I'm going to be received in there.

 

[Andrew - North Hill]

My Mrs is absolutely obsessed with this kind of stuff. No idea why. The thought of discovering some distant cousin or auntie who's a complete bellend, and even worse might want continued contact, puts me right off. She loves it though. Met with some random fifth cousin twice removed or something like that in town the other week. Each to their own.

 

[J_B]

My Mrs is absolutely obsessed with this kind of stuff. No idea why. The thought of discovering some distant cousin or auntie who's a complete bellend, and even worse might want continued contact, puts me right off. She loves it though. Met with some random fifth cousin twice removed or something like that in town the other week. Each to their own.

My late mother was really into this late in life. Some of what she discovered was mildly interesting but by far the most interesting was that a great, great cousin was hanged for shooting his wife’s lover dead in a pub.

 

[Pacemaker]

I managed to trace my paternal line to the 1780’s but it all dried up, the national newspaper archive is at Aberystwyth and has an online portal you can access for free and you can often find stories especially if they have war service or been summoned to court. The court reports are useful as they often have an occupation, address, age and family circumstances.

The reality is for most working class people their relatives were dirt poor, had little or no education and basic labouring jobs, industrial South Wales attracted people from all around the UK and beyond in the mid 1800’s which resulted in many lodging with other families in their teens and early 20’s. The census often leave these people out even though they weren’t supposed to.

 

[JustJack]

Its all luck

One of my great grandfathers was 'adopted' in 1899, I have his mothers name but its a dead end there at the moment, she was 14 when he was born so the truth may be quite grim.

My paternal grandmothers side goes back to around 1530 (Somerset family) and 1700

Paternal grandfather to 1700ish

Ancestry is useful, pay £20 and use it for 1 month and you can probably get what you need.

 

[Ringwood]

Going back three generations.. my mum side goes Swansea - Cardiff - Southampton. On my Dad's side it goes Stirling - Dundee - Kilarney

Wish I hadn't checked now