Getting started

For a long time I was aware that I had a family history which had a dead spot right in its middle. No doubt I could trace my maternal pedigree to a degree, but it was my paternal side that was the blockage. I felt this was a great pity. "One day," I thought, "I really ought to visit Great Yarmouth where my father grew up and see if I can trace some of his history." As a child you are told snippets of information about the past and your family's part in it. This can be the trigger later in life to starting a family tree. Yet, despite what you have been told, never assume it to be correct. Despite their best attempts, your relatives can get it wrong. You must also realise that what you thought you knew from personal experience is also prone to error.

A friend of mine once remarked that he had done research on his family tree at a local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I thought this was a very strange place to work on a family tree. I later discovered that the Latter Day Saints encourage baptismal candidates to provide details of their ancestors who can also be received into the church "by proxy". Hence this church possesses perhaps the world's largest deposit of information on genealogy to help people locate details of ancestors.

I logged on to the LDS website and began a search for my grandfather, John Edgar Alexander. After a long search his name popped up and I had a start. Knowing that my father had a sister and two brothers of whom I knew very little I hoped to locate them too but was disappointed. I joined the website, GenesReunited, in its infancy and used it to build my online family tree. Looking at a chat section I read of someone being advised to consult the website for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I checked on this site and found an entry for my uncle Claude Nelson Alexander who had died as a POW of the Japanese forces. I had been told as a child that he had died whilst working on the Burma Railway. It was at this point that I discovered he was buried on the island of Singapore! As I said, never assume the accuracy of information you are given by word of mouth. Like all oral tradition it is vulnerable to inaccuracy.

My father's sister went by the nickname, Tiss. All I knew was that she had sent a wreath when he died and Tiss was the name on the message. So I became fascinated to know her real name. It was a number of years before this was revealed when the genealogy website, Findmypast, published the 1911 Census. Until then all was darkness. When I realised that the 1911 Census was available I did a search and was very surprised at what I saw. My mother, Dad's third wife, had said she thought his sister was called Gladys. But the name turned out to be Grace and in the census she was described as adopted daughter. This was true but it opened a real can of worms for me.

A census always requires the compiler to provide the year and place of birth for each person listed. From this I learned that Grace was born in 1901 in St Albans, Hertfordshire. I was over the moon at finding this information together with my father's address in Nottingham at that time. I once went to Nottingham for a job interview and my mother commented that this was where my father came from. I was surprised because everything he had told me as a boy was about growing up in Great Yarmouth. The census provided confirmation that my mother was right.

Now for the can of worms! A fellow user of GenesReunited tried to help get information about my paternal grandmother, Gertrude Mary Alexander nee Carrington. Despite many searches no evidence could be found of a marriage between my grandparents! Subsequently I too did a lot of searching and came up with her marriage to another man, Herbert Jeakings, by whom she had three children. By now the world wide web had become a mine of information for genealogists and I was able to search more deeply for information. It is one of my attributes that I can search long lists and find information if it is there. I did a great deal of this and came up with nothing. I searched year after year for a marriage between John Edgar Alexander and Gertrude Mary Jeakings and drew a blank. I can therefore say, without fear of contradiction, that my paternal grandparents were never married.

Research on my mother's ancestry was much easier. I found on the LDS site my great great grandfather, Wilson Duerden plus many other family members. But more of that in a further posting. I did have the help of one of only two people to possess a copy of the entire parish register of St Bartholomew's church, Colne, Lancashire. Many years before I had taught him to drive, so I looked him up with a view to enlisting his help. It was only when I spoke about the wish to trace my pedigree that he made the comment about having a full copy of the local parish registers. Until 1837 people were recorded in their local parish church register for baptisms, marriages and burials. Until then a couple attending a non conformist church had no option but to be married in the local Anglican church. So one did not have to look far for information on what my mother referred to as "Hatches, Matches and dispatches."

In the next posting I shall give more information on how I expanded my family tree and that of my wife.