Does Anyone Know How To Find Out If One Person Is Related To Another?

[ladybirder]

I've never done any of this stuff but I know a few on here have so any help would be appreciated.

I would like to find out if Brian May (of Queen) could be the nephew of Alfred Soane who was born in the 1920s and grew up in Cove, nr Farnborough, Hampshire. Alfred was one of 13 children. There have been discussions that Brian might be the son of one of the other 12. There are Soanes still living in the area.

Can anyone help? Is Dot around?

[wolf63]

Parents were Harold and Ruth May . It is in wiki but I can't do links on this machine.

[ladybirder]

Oh thank you wolf, I'll take a look tomorrow, just going to bed now.

Any more help welcomed.

[Baldric]

Brian May, the only child of Harold and Ruth May, was born 19/07/1947
in Hampton, London

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May

[Baldric]

Couple of pics of his parents in this link

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/18/brian-may-queen-guitar-red-special-dad

[237SJ]

I presume that would mean that he would be the son of one of Alfred`s sisters because if it was one of his brothers, the surname would be Soane and not May. If you look at this site http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl and search the approximate era, there is an Alfred Soane who had lots of brothers and sisters but none of them were called Ruth which is the name of Brian May`s mother (Alfred Soane`s mother was surname Knight)

[ladybirder]

Thanks Baldric, especially your second link about Brian and his parents. Quite moving.
237 I shall investigate your link later today when I have more time, thank you.

[Old_Geezer]

If you aren't subscribing to a genealogy site then FreeBMD is a good place to start. Although you need to get skilled at knowing what filters to apply to extract the data you are looking for from the little you know and are allowed to enter.

Maybe start with whatever info you can glean from Alfred, try to work out who was in his family (the unjustified time restrictions of census info does hinder things considerably but hit the birth info enough, and add whatever marriage info you can pull out, and a picture will hopefully emerge ). Maybe you will be able to trace much of the family forward to the present day.

[jno]

does your local library keep old electoral rolls? They're often a useful source for finding who was in what family.

[jackthehat]

Wiki states that Brian May is of Anglo-Scottish descent.....so that may indicate that his mother is Scottish.

I can find 2 Birth records for a Brian H. May born Sept 1/4 1947.
One gives his mother's maiden name as Fletcher, the other is Northcote.
I looked up marriages of Harold May with women of these surnames....neither potential mother has a given name of Ruth.

[237SJ]

Brian Mays`s birthday is July 19th though so maybe that`s not the right one.

[jackthehat]

Births are registered in quarters;
Jan-Feb-Mar = Mar 1/4
Apr-May-Jun = Jun 1/4
Jul-Aug-Sept = Sept 1/4
Oct-Nov-Dec = Dec 1/4

[237SJ]

Oh OK. I don`t belong to any sites so I`m not familiar with how it works. Both his parents were in the RAF - would it be possible to find out from records to do with that?

[Barmaid]

Well I had a butchers and came up with the same as JtHat.

Might be worth looking at the sisters of Alfred to see who they married - ie trace forwards.

If you post Alfred's details (parents and dob) I'll have a looksee (got naff all else to do tonight). Tracing forwards is always a bit of a pain, but worth looking at it from another angle.

[twix123]

If Brian May's parents were married in Scotland, their marriage would not appear in either the FreeBMD or Ancestry.Co.Uk records, both of which only record the English & Welsh registers, although Ancestry have some Sottish marriages but only up to 1910. You will have to use:

http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

which unfortunately is a pay per view site!

[ladybirder]

Thank you so much everyone. I'm afraid I have been busy, more than one crisis at home, and still ongoing so haven't had time to think about this. I'm asking for a friend so I will have to see if she has a birth date for Alfred. I'll be back.

[237SJ]

Sep 1926 according to freebmd (and he didn`t have a sister called Ruth)

[ladybirder]

Alfred was born 06/08/25

Or pos 1924 or 26, so my friend tells me.

Hmm just seen your post 237. And yours twix. Thank you Jack and sorry I couldn't get the info last night barmaid. Not easy this is it. Thank you all. X