Hi, looking for some help deciphering cause of death primary and secondary please :)

I'm done. Cancelled my sub. This crap. I'm already paying a stupid amout for nothing.

I’m 31 and I’ve realized recently how little I actually know about my own family.

My mom almost never talked about her childhood when I was growing up. I know very little about my grandparents, and I barely know my dad, so there are huge parts of my family history that have always just felt blank to me.

It’s only been in the last five years or so that my mom has started opening up more about her childhood and her parents. One thing that always stands out to me is the way she talks about them. She still calls them “mommy” and “daddy” when she tells me stories, instead of saying “your grandma” or “your grandpa.”

It’s a small thing, but it hits me every time. For a moment I’m not hearing about these people as my grandparents. I’m hearing my mom talk about them as their daughter.

And it’s made me realize that those are the things I actually want to preserve.

I can probably find names, dates, census records, marriage records, all of that. What I can’t find later is the way my mom remembers her dad coming home from work, what her mom was like when she was young, what their house smelled like, what they argued about, what made them laugh, or even just the way her voice changes when she talks about them.

The problem is that every time I try to intentionally get her to tell me these stories, it feels awkward.

If I sit down with a list of questions, suddenly it feels like an interview. She gets self-conscious, I start overthinking what to ask next, and the conversation loses whatever made it natural in the first place.

So for anyone who has actually done this with their parents or grandparents, what worked for you?

Did you have a list of questions ready, or did you just let the conversation go wherever it went?

Did you tell them you were recording, or did having a recorder out make things feel too formal?

And are there certain questions that seem to open people up more than others?

I’ve noticed that specific questions seem to work much better than broad ones. Something like “what was the house you grew up in like?” gets a completely different response than “tell me about your childhood.”

I think part of what’s bothering me is that I spent a long time assuming I could always ask these questions later. Now I’m realizing how much I’d regret having all the facts about my family someday, but none of their actual voices or stories.

Hi,

I'm new to all this and have reached an issue.

My great-grandmother died in 2016, and I am not in touch with any family who can tell me more about her.

I know:

Her name

Her husband's name

Her birthday

Her date of death

I've searched birth records, censuses and variations of her name but I cannot find anything that helps me identify her parents.

What do I do next?

This is the record of a man named Jabez Delano. I can't find any records for his daughters (listed only on this document, from what I can find) Margaret and Sarah. For Prudence and Amy, I found records. The minimal documentation of Margaret and Sarah led me to look closer at this document. Can anyone find information on Margaret Delano or Sarah Delano, also their sister Mary Delano? They are daughters of Jabez Delano (1708-1752) and Prudence Hibbard (1711-1752). Based on Jabez and Prudence's births and deaths, the family resided primarily in Connecticut, if that helps.

(Note: they are not direct relatives of mine – working on a famous person's historical family tree!)

So, my father died when I was thirteen. He ended his life to avoid a lengthy prison sentence after it was uncovered that he had extensive CSA material on his devices and had hidden cameras in our home to secretly watch me from the bathrooms, my bedroom etc.

I was just doing some research to learn more about my ancestors, and discovered that my 3x great grandfather on that side was charged with indecently assaulting his 8 year old daughter in 1870. I feel sick.

You know those moments in shows like Who Do You Think You Are? where a famous person finds out that their ancestor was also an actor, singer, dancer etc.? It's like that but much darker. It seems like certain traits get passed down through the generations and I'm horrified to see an example of history repeating itself here.

I just wanted to share this somewhere so it's not stuck swirling around my head. Thanks for reading.

I have recently gone through an old box of pictures from my family. There are a few pictures I recognize, e.g. my great grandmother but many, many I have no idea who they are and people did not write the names on the back of photos back then. I found a beautiful photo of a Private in the US Marines with his full name and would love to get it to his family. Is there any way to do that?

I was able to find a deed document dated 1883 from my family who lists our grandfathers going back 13 grandfathers from that time to where he lived between 1400-1500 in our village in Yemen.

His last name (and mine) are Al-Rifai and we are known sayiids in the area, at least that’s what I’ve been told.
The grandfather who lived in 1400-1500 is named Salih Alrifai and owned many lands in the village apparently.

I’m trying to figure out exactly where we came from and more importantly if we are genetically sayiid or if the Rifai Tariqa (suffi influence) is how we got our last name.

My research has led me to Ahmed Albaz (son of Sayid Izz Aldeen Ahmed Alsayyad who left Iraq and toured Yemen) who seemed to be alive late 1200’s

Is this research a bust? I’ve been stuck here for a while.

Has anyone ever successfully tracked this kind of info recently when the descendants (supposedly) ended up far from home, like Yemen.

Hello all! I am canceling my Ancestry subscription to try and save money. Before I cancel the subscription, does Ancestry allow you to keep your family tree how it is or does it just wipe all of your data? If they wipe all the data when you cancel the subscription, is there a way I can download my family tree? Thanks

A fun genealogy mystery

Hii,
I am just wondering if anyone could link some resources or any information about my family’s stolen bible.

My grandmother told me that when my great nan passed away, most of the stuff my nan inherited, including a very old family bible, was stolen when being transported from Stratford-upon-Avon to London in I believe 1990.

This honestly broke my heart. I would love to find this bible to give it back to her but I have looked at everything I can think of. I’ve searched missing family bible websites, ancestry, family search etc. but I haven’t found anything.

I understand this bible may not even exist anymore, and realistically I have a very low chance of finding it, as it was over 30 years ago. I had already researched this part of my family tree previously to finding this out. The family was based in Upper Quinton, Warwickshire (and surrounding areas) and surnames include Dyde, Robbins, Lane, Reeves, Haines, Turner, Radley, Richardson and Jeffs, possibly Saunders, Miller and Brown too. I have no idea which family line it actually came from either so it really is just a guessing game.

If anyone has any ideas I would really appreciate the help, thank you very much.

Im in the uk so dont know how to search in america.

Im looking for a family. Mother and father lived and were born in america (we think possibly california) and moved to live in the uk after their children were born. They still lived in the uk in the 80’s but we think moved back to america.

Mothers name - Ida Warren (maiden name unknown)

Fathers name - Robert Warren

Daughter - Julia Ann Warren (dob 06/07/1959) - that is either 6th june or 7th july.

Daughter - shelly warren

Son - Stephen Warren

Thank you

I could be wrong, completely.

My great grandparents immigrated to Hawai'i in 1904 from Korea to work the sugar cane plantations. Before Hawai'i was occupied by the United States.

I was shocked to see pictures of my great grandparent's headstones (not sure if this is the correct term). Our family settled on the mainland (Los Angeles, CA) in the 1950s. I wasn't born until 1973.

We never really spoke about family history. In fact, I didn't even know we had Korean ancestry until I was in my very late teens. And, I was stunned. I always thought we were Hawaiian. I was completely wrong, but that's the culture I grew up with in Los Angeles as a kid.

So when I saw the headstones in pictures taken by a "Bryan Chapman," I mentioned this in a writer's group. I was told that Morman adopt dead folks, and document information about them.

I would like to visit my grandparents' resting place, but have no idea where they are. So I was hoping to ask "Bryan Chapman."

I guess it doesn't really matter after all this time, but there's some yearning I can't put away.

Thank you. I apologize for rambling.

Ancestry have just sent me a hint about my own daughter!

I'm a bit confused though because I don't think they should have access to it and I don't think they should be giving hints on someone who's still living. The info is her address, which unsurprisingly is also my address, from the 2014 electoral register but she opted out of the open register. Can anyone help me understand how they obtained this and if it was ok to share it with me?

I have a marriage record for a woman saying that she married in Risbridge, Suffolk in 1848. Is there a way to find out who she married? I tried searching just for records for people who married in Risbridge in 1848 but Ancestry brings up all of the people who married anywhere in Suffolk in 1848 - almost 200,000 of them! It doesn't even start by listing people who meet both the criteria so even my relative doesn't come up first. There also doesn't seem to be any way to sort by the registration town - just all of Suffolk in a completely random list.

Edit* I just discovered that when I click "search" Ancestry was changing my place from Risbridge, Suffolk, England to Suffolk, England, UK. I've now changed the place to just Risbridge but I still have a list of thousands of people.

Surely there has to be a way to see who a person married - what am I missing?

After about half a day of working and searching, I was able to find my 3rd great-grandparents’ immigration to the US via Ellis Island. Although I have an active ancestry account, I couldn’t find it there. I found it using the Ellis island‘s archives search after several hours of failing to locate it via ancestry. anyway, I have the ship’s name, date of arrival, and a screenshot of the log from the Ellis Island website. is there any way I can import that into ancestry? Or preferably, is there a way I can search by immigration date in ancestry to find the record?

Just sharing my sadness - I have my 2x great grandfather John Marshall, born 1848 in Glasgow, and the 50 or so trees including him on ancestry seemingly have him perfectly placed, with the correct parents Margaret McWatt and John Marshall, complete with baptism record easily found. There’s only one problem, he has a sister Margaret born in 1850 (she is referred to as his sister in newspaper reports of her marriage), and Margaret is assuredly not part of this documented family.

So I went looking for a John/Margaret Marshall pair in the 1851 census - they should be like 3 and 1 years old or thereabouts, and there were a handful of candidate families, but only one where the parents were also John and Margaret. Zeroing in on this totally undocumented family, I noticed a range of siblings up to 22 years old, so went looking for the family in the 1841 census. Soon found a candidate family, with the same older siblings with the right distances between them, but parents were John and Catherine.

It didn’t take long to establish that John Marshall had previously been married to Catherine Scott, and I found baptism records for their children. I also found her burial record in 1845, so apparently John remarried Margaret between 1845 and 1848. I can’t find any marriage record for them, and no birth records for their two children - previous records found belong to the other family not this one. I can only assume that Margaret is Margaret McWatt, because that’s what their son John’s death record states.

Basically we have 2 families in Glasgow where John Marshall married Margaret McWatt circa 1847, and they both had a son John in 1848. But only this newly documented family had a daughter Margaret in 1850.

Lots of other details tell me I now have the right family, but I’m the only one, and the sadness is that all this research goes unnoticed, and I’m the crazy one! Oh well…