Ask An Expert

I'm afraid I don't know. I'm not involved with the technical side at all, and indeed have no technical abilities. I can't even make my central heating work. But I would advise you always to keep your own records at home on paper, or, if you store anything on your computer, to back everything up very thoroughly.

This site doesn't cover Northern Irish records: I do personally, via a colleague there - the're mostly in Belfast, though of course it depends exactly what you're after.

There will be lots of information - masses and masses, that you can research, working back steadily from what you know for sure. Forget 'about 1915'. Start with your grandparents' marriage, sometime before your parent's birth, and from the marriage record work out when your grandparents were born, and then seek their births. Go back step by step.

An interesting result and a good piece of family history for you. It would be worth seeking all possible references to him in the parish registers, to see if he was described as being black - or, you may be able to establish from the sources that his father had been there as planters, doctors, soldiers, clergy or merchants. If his father was a soldier, you could look for William in the army births, on this site. Barbados records are tricky - I'm impressed you persuaded the archives there to answer! You can order a lot of Caribbean parish registers to view at Mormon Family History libraries. The Society of Genealogists has an excellent Caribbean section too, albeit many for the white plantocracy.

It's a shame you cannot find Anthony's birth (have you tried Antony as well as Anthony and Tony?). I note that he was born in the 1940s. If he his father was in the army at the time then he may be in the army births. If born just after the war, maybe his family was stationed somewhere in the Empire, or in a British protectorate such as Palestine. Even if you cannot find the birth, you could search to see if Anthony married (you'd know you had found the right man as his father's name on the marriage certificate would be Arthur). Or seek Arthur's will, to see what that said of Anthony and his descendants. If you obtain Cyril and Gladys's marriage record, you'll be able to confirm or deny (from the father's name again) that you are following the right line. So much for my trying to be clever when I answered the last question - 'dliate' instead of 'dilate'. Well, that serves me right!

There are no Irish records on this site. One website that is very good for Irish records is Find My Past, the sister site of Genes Reunited. The records themselves, of course, are in Ireland, and which archive you visit depends of course on what you want. I'm sorry you have had difficulty dliating your father! I'm afraid I don't quite follow what the problem is here.

That is earlier than I thought. Birth certificates didn't start being issued until 1837, so are you writing here about a baptism record? Again, you'd expect the parents to be named, so if none were, then maybe you are dealing here with a foundling.

I hope that this is a 'short' birth certificate: if so, you can apply for the proper, long one that will have this information. If, however, this is a long birth certificate and the parents' names have been left blank this will mean that nobody knew who the baby's parents were. That would be the end of the trail, normally, unless you can find something in the local papers about the real parents being found. You can also use DNA testing to find possible genetic cousins of yours, and their knowledge of who their ancestors were may enable you to make some guesses about who yours were.

I'm not sure, off the top of my head, about American immigration at so recent a date - not within the immediate purview of my genealogical activities. I would hazard a guess that, like so many aspects of American search, you'd need to know or guess where they arrived, and that's not always very easy given their federal structure (and thus lack of centralised records). Directories and telephone directories are always a good way of picking people up once they had settled down (again, some guessing as to where, exactly, to start looking, may be required).

Isn't that the same question as before?

Your next step here should be looking for your ancestor's army records. The original records are at The National Archives.

That would be my uncle David, still alive and well. I'll out you in touch if you like - contact me at mail@anthonyadolph.co.uk. The place was awash with Wilsons in my time, as his, of course. I don't think that stamp duty would have ensured the document's survival - stamp duty was and is paid on masses of things, and there aren't copies all conveniently stored away somewhere - I say that with some confidence because, if such records existed, I think we'd be using them all the time! DNA testing may the best way forward in this case. You'd need to find a legitimate descendant of Algernon, or of a brother or other close relative of his. A comparative 'Family Finder' test with you at www.familytreedna.com would show whether you were cousins or not.

As you are unsure as to Terrence's father's name, you should start by seeking Terrence's marriage certificate, and once you have that, you can seek his birth certificate. The indexes are on this site, under 'search records'.

Many people served in the armed forces under pseudonyms, to dissociate themselves from what they were doing. Perhaps Arthur was his mother's maiden name. I don't know what to make of the rest - it is very lucky and interesting that you found the 1948 oath. I'd like to see if before advising what could be done next.

If John James Yates was born after the last census was taken in 1911, then you may have to experiment and buy several birth records before you find the right one. If you are unsure of his age, obtain his marriage certificate first, as this should tell you.

Good for you! But what do you mean 'might be wrong'? Maybe the censuses and his age at death have given you ambiguous results.At any rate, the next step, as you know where he was born, would be to examine the parish registers there - check with the National Library of Wales to make sure they've got them before you go there.

Well the records of the India Office Library would be indispensable in a case like this! If you cannot go, you could pay a genealogist to search there instead. It's a shame you cannot find this chap's service records. They should exist, so maybe the computerised indexes have misindexed him, for they are not faultless. The original records at The National Archives should be checked. One possible reason for them missing would be if he went on to serve in WW1, for many such papers have been burned - but date-wise that doesn't seem a likely option in this case.

The 1841 census. You've done well to realise how many possible spellings there can be here. You want to be searching the parish registers for this one. The area around Leeds is complicated by the existence of big parishes containing many small chapelries, many with their own registers, something you could read up on using the Genuki website.

If there are a couple of missing generations, then their connection to each other and you can't really be said to be proven, and, unless John became a cardinal later in life (which is possible) then, as a Catholic, one wouldn't expect him to have had children. Having said that, two high ranking clergymen of the sane surname at that period are perfectly likely to be related. Their wills would be a god starting point. They may well be in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, indexed on the National Archives' website under 'Documents Online'. There could very well be a pedigree in existence for such eminent people. Look on the Society of Genealogists' catalogue of printed family histories (on their website) or in the genealogical bibliographies, G.W. Marshall, The genealogists’ guide (4th edn, 1903, repr GPC, 1973); supplemented by J.B. Whitmore A genealogical guide, an index to British pedigrees in continuation of Marshall’s genealogist’ guide repr J.B. Whitmore (1953).

'Full age' indicates that the people concerned were 21 or more, or, annoyingly, under 21, but lying about their age in order to avoid the need fro parental consent. You can seek their ages from census returns, or their death or burial records.