Genealogy - making family links

I have had an interest in doing the family tree since I was a teenager, but I did not really get into it until well into my 50s. In the meantime my brother George had done a lot of the footwork, especially on our mother's side of the family - the Royes. He had also made contact with Robin Young in England, who is the main researcher of the Houghams. The Houghams and Royes have married twice, giving us dual links into the Hougham family tree. This takes us back to the d'Avranches of Normandy. This in turn possibly takes us back to the Vikings and Scandinavia. So this was getting really exciting!

Subsequently, I have made contacts with the Jamaican Royes (who are descendants of the brother of the Royes who migrated to Australia), the Irish Hogans (who married into the Russells as did the Roys), the South African Russells, Northern Irish Logans and Girvans, and various links to other "off-shoots" of the main branches.

So there was lots of data, but I was interested in stories and contexts. A name with dates is not of great interest unless you can tie them to a place with its story within a time with its stories. This was becoming a journey into geography and history!

The development of the world-wide web also provided access to a huge amount of data and the parallel development of e-mail groups provided access to other people doing the same thing I was doing. A by-product of that was the ability to gather links to other sites - links that told some of the stories and gave some of the context.

But a really rewarding result was that people could find my data. This has resulted in people making and renewing connections with family. One notable incident was the re-establishment of a whole branch of Hogans who had become separated by a family rift - somewhat poignant in that it was just 18 months too late for key members to have met each other.

One of the outcomes of doing genealogy was the development of an annual CD which morphed into my web site. The ability to provide links to other web sites made life a bit easier, because I did not need to duplicate information on my site but direct the viewer to the other site. This particularly applies to the Houghams and I arranged to host Robin Young's Hougham/Huffam Family Tree on my domain using the same software (but with a different template) as my own.

So let me follow those remarks with the following links to key pages in the family tree web site.

The "front page" of Roy~Royes Family Links

This page includes a news column covering about the last six months. You can search the site for people from this and every page in the site.

An Overview of the tree and its main branches

Each person's page allows you to examine that person's ancestor or descendant chart or report, but this chart and the ones that link from it are designed to give a "bigger picture" - an overview.

"Tree tops" in the Roy and Royes pedigrees

The earliest known ancestor as you "look up" into the tree (or should that be look down into the roots?)

Migrations

This report is generated from the data in individual files and listed chronologically. (We may know of a migration but if we do not have a date it will not be listed.)

Histories and Articles

Histories relate directly to one or more people in the family tree. Articles cover wider areas of interest in regard to genealogy.

Photos and Albums

Photos linked to a person are viewable in a person's file - this section lists all photos. You can search for key words. There are similar sections dedicated to Documents and Headstones, accessible through the middle drop-down menu.

Support files

Partly help files for using the site but also explanations of terms used, the mysteries of currency and dates, the question as to who are cousins and what "removed" means, etc.