Always worth asking!

[allie island]

Not sure if this is the right place but......
The other day I googled a village where one of my ancestors was born, and found a contact email address for the local parish council.

I sent an email asking if they have any records with her name on, and have had a lot of positive feedback from a PC member, plus other useful contact addresses.

Just shows that we shouldn't be shy :D

[Little Nell]

Couldn't agree more. I found a parish clerk that way and - thrill - she lives in what used to be a number of labourer's cottages, in one of which my gt gt uncle lodged and killed his fiancee. Not only did she send me a photo of it as it now looks, plus a story about a ghost (see forthcoming Criminals issue of FTF mag for details of this) but she also looked up my grandfather and siblings in the school registers and gave me birthdates for the siblings and details of when they left the school.

[allie island]

How intriguing Nell!

Don't think my lot are that interesting though!

[Darksecretz]

OH god yes!!

I recently googled on one of my more unusual names "Chadbourne" and came up with a site that has a whole host of them in Canada!!

I mailed the owner and was delighted that I could add bits of missing info to the UK family

Have also found another possible relative as well, but at the moment am waiting for them to get back to me....

motto of this story... google google and google some more!!

[Little Nell]

I googled a surname in my husband's London branch of his tree and found a website dedicated to that name with lots of useful transcripts from street directories etc which enabled me to confirm they had originally come from Colchester.

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

I emailed someone running a website about the village where one of my ancestors lived and it turned out the person I emailed was living in my rellie's house! lol

[bev&kev]

It's always worth being brave, genealogically speaking (and sadly, I am not!)

My cousin, however, strode up to the door of one of our "better" ancestor's homes and knocked on it! (I don't think even he quite knew why!) But, he explained to the dear little old lady who answered that the house had been in his family in the 16-1700's, and did she know anything of the it's history?

She asked cousin his name - and (what a coincidence!) she had the same surname. Turned out she was actually his 2nd cousin (that he didn't even know existed up until then!)

Also turned out the house had remained in the family, without a break. Better still, dear little old lady had kept every will, indenture and legal document pertaining to the family for the past 400 years! She had original documents dating to the 1590's in a box under her bed, and she let us copy every single one. She also made us tea, showed us round the house, and let us take photos of the ancestor's portraits that hung on the wall.

So thank you Doris! And thank you cousin, for being so bold!!!

[allie island]

I think I might get further if I was as bold!