There have been some more excitements on the family history front lately. Having discovered new third cousins, just a week later, I was contacted by the great niece of my father’s life-long best friend. The best friend had written his memoirs, mentioning my father and my contact also had photos that I didn’t have. As my father died when I was nine, these memories were particularly precious. The way in which she found me was also amazing. She didn’t go searching for the descendants of my dad, instead she had Googled a place name, where her great-uncle had been during the war. On last year’s VE day anniversary, I had blogged about my dad’s wartime experiences. He and his friend had joined up together, so the place was mentioned and my blog came up on her Google search!

Along with half the genealogical world, I am signed up for next week’s RootstechConnect. If you haven’t yet registered, go ahead now, it is free. There is an unbelievable amount on offer. An optional aspect of this is to join ‘Relatives at Rootstech’ via the Family Search website. This means that, during the conference, you can contact those who appear on the same composite family tree as you. This tree is hosted on Family Search and for it to work, you have to have a least an outline tree there. This was something that I had resisted up until now but as I lack any living ancestors, I thought I would go for it. It actually doesn’t take long, as you only have to add three or four generations before you link up with the worldwide tree that is already there. There are minor frustrations, as you have to lop off some of the wildly speculative connections that others have added but this was soon accomplished. As of today, I have 69 relatives at Rootstech.

Adding to the Family Search tree also enables you to have a bit of fun seeing if you are related to anyone famous; although many of the possible celebrities are American. I really don’t subscribe to the cult of celebrity and I would far rather be connected to interesting lesser known individuals but it seemed rude not to give it a whirl. For about ten minutes I was Prince William’s tenth cousin once removed. I was mildly interested enough to see if the suggested link held water. It didn’t. After a bit more pruning, I was left with an alleged relationship to an obscure US President. Suffice it to say, that was wrong too but by then I’d lost the will to conduct any more tree surgery.

I have been revisiting one line of my daughters’ ancestry and have been able to add a few generations. When one of them was very small (I won’t say which one to project the guilty) she decided that she was going to name her future children water filter and fish tank; this decision passed into family lore. So there I was, delving into a Wiltshire parish register, only to find that her x times great grandfather had the christian names Fish Coppinger. I checked the original and also a military record and that really was his name. I hoped that would be a clue to earlier relatives but although Fish Coppinger (in this case Coppinger was the surname) was a notable individual, he certainly doesn’t seem to be a relation of the Wiltshire agricultural labouring family that I was researching. I suspect they named one of their fifteen children after the local landowner, in the hope of preferential treatment.

FindmyPast are rolling out new ways of viewing documents. I haven’t had much change to explore yet but after the initial, ‘oh no this is awful’ reaction, that usually accompanies anything new, I have discovered some distinct advantages. I am a fan of the new ability to go straight from image to transcription without going back out to the results. Moving to adjacent images is also now easier.

Oh and the being in two places at once thing. This is an art I appear to have now perfected. I was giving a Zoom talk the other day, whilst my friends were in a meeting of a different society. It seems that someone in their audience was multi-tasking, as they were able to hear a snippet of my talk being relayed by someone who hadn’t muted themselves and was in one meeting, whilst listening to mine.

The really exciting news is that I will be joining the ranks of the vaccinated next week and just to prove that spring it on the way, this lone daffodil has been bravely blooming in my garden for the past couple of weeks.