Finding old, dead people.

[WhiteGiant]

I've been given the unenviable task of finding some info about a long lost (dead) relative.

One side of my family has been looking into this chap for about 3 months, and it turns out he apparently lived here in Cardiff at some time, and as I'm the only one in the family within about 100 miles they think I'll be able to find something.

My usual 10 minute Google provided nothing.

As always, they have given me limited information, but have access to more which I'll get tommorow.

Anyone know where I can start? At the mo, I know the name of the chap, and the name of the girl he married, and thats about it. They need info about him, not sure what though, the more the better.

Him : Frank Leonard Watkins
Her : Harriet Brown

[Steve]

You don't know how tempted I was to create a false wikipedia entry for this guy.

[samcross]

/\ /\ /\ /\
That would be funny

"Frank Leonard Watkins of Nazareth, also known as Frank Christ, is the central figure of Christianity and is revered by most Christian churches as the Son of God and the incarnation of God. Islam considers Frank a prophet, and he is an important figure in several other religions. Judaism rejects the claim that Frank is the Messiah and incarnate God."

[WhiteGiant]

Not sure British legal courts accept Wikipedia as evidence, might be worth a try though!

[tiggerai]

I'll ask my mum... she's getting good at this Geneology lark, which is quite interesting if you want to track people down.

Registry offices... and census websites etc (depending on how far you want to go back) are apparently a good start.

Any possible idea of timeframe???

[WhiteGiant]

I'll have more info tommorow, hopefully DOB etc.

[sammyc]

Have done a bit of family-research stuff, & this site is v handy for census records 1841-1891 FreeCen.org.uk (& has other links, e.g. to FreeBMD for births marriages & deaths, etc). A lot of sites you have to pay to see much info, including the 1901 census 1901censusonline.com.
If your chappy is later than this then some of the more recent records, say from after 1930s, are not so easy to find online. Good luck with the old dead dude.

[Virtual Monkey]

Depending on when you reckon he lived, it might be worth checking military cemetery databases, it's how I found out about my great great uncle who died in WW1.

[Clunk]

[iranu]

My dad's done huge amounts of work tracing my family. I think he's got back to around 1600 which is quite impressive so I'll ask him later about the best place to start. There is enormous information online. He even found a bloke who arranged my great grandfather's funeral. He had emigrated to Oz as a £10 pom over 40 years ago and he found him inside 30 minutes.

[Lucio]

Ok, if he married, you should be able to trace the marriage certificate if you can figure out which parish he married in. You could also try contacting the local newspapers to see if they have births, deaths and marriages recorded in their archive.

[IBM]

Seeing the thread title, I thought this was going to be something depressing. Instead it's an affirmation of life....a pleasant suprise....

[tiggerai]

My dad's done huge amounts of work tracing my family. I think he's got back to around 1600 which is quite impressive so I'll ask him later about the best place to start. There is enormous information online. He even found a bloke who arranged my great grandfather's funeral. He had emigrated to Oz as a £10 pom over 40 years ago and he found him inside 30 minutes.

I think that's as far back as legible records go (doomsday book?) as we've got back to about 1537 or so.... although we have traced one line of ours back to King Duncan of Macbeth fame

[Jay]

to find old dead people you need one of these....



and one of these



oh, and one of these may be handy as well.

[MadduckUK]

oh, and one of these may be handy as well.

for the headcrabs, dead people often have headcrabs

[Jay]

yes and also for prying open the coffin lid...