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ergonomics · 13-01-2010 4:28pm #1

Hi all,

This is possibly a stupid question but I have only just started researching my family tree so I'm new to all this.

Basically, I'm wondering what would the reason be for not finding any information on a whole family? I have information going back on three of my grandparents, but can't seem to find anything on one grandmother. This is despite knowing names, dates of births, careers, even specific addresses going back a number of generations. I have the maiden name of my grandmother's mother also but keep hitting a brick wall. I have checked the 1911 census and can't find any one in the family.

Their second name is also one I haven't heard too many times; Hamill. I have tried searched Hammill, Hamil and Hamill but nothing has come up.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

pinkypinky · 13-01-2010 5:05pm

The obvious reason would be not having the right information. Have you found anyone with your grandmother's maiden name at all in the country? I would go back to what you are 100% sure of with documented evidence, even if that's your own parents' birth cert and re-check the data.

Hamill as a surname has thousands of hits on the LDS index:
http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#toYear=1958;year=1845;collectionId=1408347;p=recordResults;searchType=standard;placeId=1927084;surname=hamill;eventPlace=Ireland

And thousands on the census:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/results.jsp?surname=hamill&exact=&firstname=&county=&townland=&ded=&age=&sex=&relationToHead=&religion=&education=&occupation=&marriageStatus=&marriageYears=&childrenBorn=&childrenLiving=&birthplace=&language=&deafdumb=&search=Search&sort=&pageSize=100

Couple of hundred on the as yet incomplete parish records:
http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/search.jsp?name2=&name=hamill&location=&dd=&mm=&yy=&submit=Search&sort=&pageSize=100&type=&diocese=&parish=&century=&decade=

Happy searching!

shanew · 14-01-2010 11:14am

a point to watch out for is that the census (and other records) can contains transcription errors, so it's worth trying further spelling variations. You can also use wildcards on the Irish census which may catch some of these - e.g. entering h*m*l in the surname would search for all that began with a H included an M and ended with an L

Other (new) options available is to search using occupation/religion etc - maybe combining this with a first name, approx age (and no surname) would give something ?

If you have a probable street name, then it's worth browsing to the directly to that street (without a name search) and looking though both the household names and the building returns (form B1)

Shane

ergonomics · 14-01-2010 4:11pm

Hi,

Thanks for your help. I had been told that the family were living in Belfast at the time of the census but they were in fact living in Swords. Managed to find them on the census, and some other bits too, so I'm going to keep searching and see what I can find!

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