Well the new ‘super fast’ router arrived and sat in its box for a while, awaiting the email to say all systems were go. In the end I listened to half an hour of ‘we are experiencing a heavy volume of calls’ in order to ask why there was a delay. ‘Oh, yours is due to go live today’, I am finally told. Like I believe that would have happened had I not telephoned. I carry on working awaiting the email. The telephone and consequently the internet, goes dead. After a quick foray outside to make sure that the lack of telephone hasn’t been caused by workmen abseiling down the church tower (you think I’m joking don’t you?) I intuit that this may be the grand switch over. I bite the bullet and connect the new router. If you’ve been following this saga you will know that this is no mean physical feat, this time a great deal of crawling under the spare bed whilst negotiating piles of books, was involved. Success but no sign of super-fastness or indeed any other sort of fastness. I seem to be able to connect to two versions of my router fast(ish) and not so fast. Unfortunately the signal from the so-called fast won’t penetrate through my two foot thick walls, so I am paying extra for speed I cannot use. I can’t move the router because that is the only place with a telephone line and a spare plug socket. Deep joy, this means another call to the provider to suggest that I might have been warned about this before being signed up. By the way, if you are wondering about the video I mentioned last time, it is now live.

I am currently trying to cram six weeks’ work into one, as we will shortly be attempting to complete the Scottish holiday that ended abruptly with the demise of the car two years ago. Immediately I return I will be plunged into the black hole that is the job I must not mention for a month, so expect me to reemerge in the middle of July. A draft  of my booklet full of suggestions for involving young people in history and heritage is now at the publishers. This is something that I am passionate about so I am glad to finally get it to this stage. More details when I have them. The to do list was going reasonably well until I got distracted by a couple of research requests that weren’t on the list. Have you any idea how many John and Mary Rowes there were in North Devon? What ever you are thinking, the answer is more than that. One John Rowe confusingly managed to work his way through four wives and yes, two were called Mary. A great story though and another to add to my list of emigrants

Although it was six weeks ago, I haven’t said much about my birthday celebrations, mainly because life has been so hectic since and because I was waiting for photographs. It was a wonderful time with family visiting from far and wide. It seems that it is possible (just) to cram eight people into my house overnight. Thanks to all who were part of it. We danced to the Oggle Band at Poundstock Gild House – you knew there had to be an historical setting in it somewhere – and food provided by The Bell Inn, Parkham, The Royal Hotel, Bideford and The Half Moon, Sheepwash was consumed with gusto. Now I have to get used to being old. No pension, no bus pass, these are receding into the future with rapidity but whoopee free prescriptions! As part of the proceedings we had a series of photographs on display. Very touching that what Lucy thought was a picture of me carrying her was actually my Granny and me. Fits in well with the fun I have been having, comparing old and new pictures for the forthcoming booklet. This is the best I could do for a comparison for this one.

I am currently in what passes for a lull between the Guild of One-Name Studies’ Annual Conference and Who Do You Think You Are? Live, where I am being an ‘expert’, helping on stands and in the guise of Mistress Agnes, presenting. The best part of these events is of course meeting up with old friends, making new contacts and generally catching up on what is new in the genealogical world. All this comes hot on the heels of extended birthday celebrations, with 26 people staying and other day visitors. Wonderful of course and thank you everyone but hardly great preparation for a very hectic week.

First the Guild conference where somehow I ended up in an organising role, not sure how that happened! An initial problem was when the delegates’ badges mysteriously disappeared between the neighbouring county and my home, despite being posted, at huge expense, using guaranteed next day delivery. We set off for Birmingham minus the badges and our poor badge-making volunteer made a duplicate set and left home on an earlier train in order to get them to us on time. Once at the venue, it transpired that we were one of three conferences on site for the weekend. The Unitarian church were inconspicuous but it was immediately clear that we should be wearing furry ears or other outrageous garb in order to fit in with the UK Anime and Geek Culture Convention Kitacon Carnival (probably best not to ask) whose presence added a rather different dimension. Their event seemed to involve a great deal of posing for photographs and late night revelry. It is very hard to keep a straight face whilst speaking to Pikachou.

Having already replaced one of the speakers due to ill health, sadly another substitute was needed following a car accident. Trying to find alternatives for 25% of your conference speakers, especially when you have called in favours to create the programme in the first place, is not easy but wonderful people came forward and that was solved. So, grateful thanks to those who stepped in and best wishes to the incapacitated speakers. At 11pm on Friday night we ran the gauntlet of the audience escaping from an Adele concert and returned to the caravan. On returning to the venue at 7.30am the next day, we found that our registration desk, complete with conference packs and badges for our day delegates had disappeared into thin air. Frantic searching by the staff, including examining CCTV and raiding the bins failed to locate the material. In the end it took 24 hours to discover that the night staff had ‘helpfully’ donated our items to the Unitarians. You would have thought that the fact that the bags were emblazoned ‘Guild of One-Name Studies’ might have been sufficient clue as to which conference party the stuff belonged to but no.

The food was actually good but the first lunch, a buffet, was served without tables being made available. Buffet, in this instance, should not be translated as sausage rolls and sandwiches but a proper meal, with things like curry on offer. A tad tricky to consume whilst standing, especially for those with mobility problems. We solved this by moving to an adjoining room. In the end though, the two key conference elements, the presentations and the interaction with fellow delegates, scored highly, with several people saying it was one of the best programmes ever and there was a marked reluctance for people to leave the conference dinner table for over an hour after the meal had ended.

The last few weeks have seen me wrangling with officialdom on a not infrequent basis. First there was that sinking feeling when I checked my bank account to find that I had allegedly purchased a very expensive bathroom from an outlet in Hull. Credit to the bank who had the money back in my account by the same afternoon but I did find it more than a little odd that I was asked if I was sure that I hadn’t forgotten about this purchase. Like I spend a fortune on a bathroom every day of the week. Whoever hacked my account must have lacked forethought as this was an online purchase and they presumably had to give their address for delivery!

I now have a lovely new-to-me car that is ridiculously smart and I hardly dare use it. In fact I nearly couldn’t use it as it proved almost impossible to tax and insure. Firstly, transferring my old insurance to the new car. The first person I spoke to claimed that she couldn’t identify the new car and requested more specification details than I could provide. Having ascertained that there were no more specification details, I tried again and this time got the holder of the insurance office brain cell. They could identify the car with no problem but then there was the usual hiatus because none of my occupations appear on their magic list. As I do several jobs I was asked how many hours I spent on each one – do I have any idea?! I am now down as an interpreter – my skill at languages is barely above zero. Hurrah though, there is nothing additional to pay for the remaining insurance period. Imagine my horror when the two days later I get a bill for £194 as the excess required for two months insurance – you must be joking was the polite version of my reaction. Another phone call to the insurance company. I should explain that each of these calls necessitates the caller in listening to how important their call is for a full fifteen minutes. “Our call lines are open 24/7” – no, they so aren’t. It, fortunately, transpired that the bill was a mistake but what a performance.

Then car tax. As a new owner I needed a vital part of the log book in order to tax the car online. This would be the vital part that the garage had inadvertently lost. The necessary twelve digit number was a mystery. Allegedly, it would cost £25 and take five weeks to replace the missing piece of paper. I am standing in the garage trying to collect a car that I am unable to tax and therefore, dear overseas readers, unable to drive legally. The garage receptionist sifts through the paperwork. She finds an eleven digit number. Using the mobile phone of a random fellow customer (my emergency phone is ten years old – it make phone calls – period) we go online and try the eleven digit number prefixed by a zero – eureka I have a taxed car. It still seems far too posh. It has a radio that changes colour as you drive along. Actually this is highly irritating and despite pushing, pulling and twisting every available knob and button, it does not seem to turn off but I am learning to ignore it as it blends from pink to yellow to blue.

We also had a car park incident – we really aren’t fit to be let out. We’d collected our ticket on entry to a multi-story car park and were queuing to pay on exit when the car two in front of us caused chaos by apparently losing their ticket. I’ll not lie, during the ten minute wait my driver was more than scathing. It is our turn to exit, we can‘t seem to see the slot for putting our money in. It turns out that we should have paid and validated our ticket at a machine two floors away before joining the queue. Guess who was dispatched at a run to accomplish this task. The fifteen people in the queue behind us barely hooted their horns.

My success at naming the Mutant Hero Ninja Turtles during my last outing to a local quiz went before me and I was asked to make up a team again. Did my alleged prowess at history stand me in good stead this time? No. My claim to fame on this occasion was to provide the name of a member of Take That!

Last week I had an invitation to be interviewed about my books on Radio Wolverhampton. Did I want to come into the studio, I was asked, or be interviewed on the telephone? No brainer that one. So tonight at 8.10pm I will be interviewed by Philip Solomon. His email told me that past interviewees include Noddy Holder, Chas & Dave, P J Proby, Alvin Stardust, Uri Geller, Neil Morrisey, Ken Dodd, Leo Sayer and errrr now me. I expect it will be a blink and you miss it occasion but if you are really short of things to do tonight you can it seems listen online if you have downloaded the appropriate thingy.

When Peter’s sister, Lucy, was born, I wrote about her direct maternal line. Four months later and her cousin Edward’s post was about grandparenthood. Now it is Peter’s turn. When I learned what his name was to be my immediate reaction was that it was a new name for our family but actually it isn’t. I can only comment on his maternal ancestry but there are six Peters amongst his known direct ancestors on this side of the family. What follows is their story; young Peter needs to be aware that he can’t choose his ancestors!

Three of the Peters are members of the Elford family, grandfather, father and son; baby Peter’s 12, 11 and 10 x great grandfathers. The eldest of these is one of our earliest known ancestors and very little is known about him. Peter Elford senior was baptised in Mary Tavy, Devon in 1584, the son of William and Joan Elford née Cudlipe. At this time, Queen Elizabeth I was still on the throne and Walter Raleigh found Roanoke Island in North America. Mary Tavy, four miles north of Tavistock, on the edge of Dartmoor, was in the nineteenth century home to the world’s largest copper mine. It is likely however that the Elfords were yeoman farmers. Peter senior married Jane Bowden in 1606, the year Guy Fawkes was executed and Macbeth and King Lear were first performed. They had eight children. One of their daughters, Joanna, is a strong candidate for the Joanna Elford who was indicted for witchcraft in 1671. The youngest child, Peter, was baptised in 1622. In 1641, two Peter Elfords signed the Protestation Return in Mary Tavy; probably Peter senior and his son. Peter senior died in 1650.

The second Peter Elford married Katheren Wills in 1646, just as the first phase of the English civil war was coming to an end. Peter served as parish constable and churchwarden for Mary Tavy. A lease dated 1669/70 shows that Peter was a yeoman of Peeke’s Tenement in Mary Tavy. Peter and Katheren had five children. Their son, the youngest Peter Elford, was baptised in 1647. He married Margery Spiller in 1676, just as Christopher Wren was putting the finishing touches to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. They too had five children.

A pair of Peter Geachs, father and son, are young Peter’s 10 and 9 x great grandfathers. Peter Geach senior married Frances Addams in St. Mellion, Cornwall in 1674. He leased a property called Forse Field, Viverdon Common in St. Mellion and was described as a husbandman. Only two children have been found for Peter and Frances. Peter Geach junior was baptised in 1675. He and his wife, Anne née White, moved from St. Mellion to nearby St. Dominick, where they had four children.

Norham

The most recent Peter is Peter Eadington, young Peter’s 6 x great grandfather. Edington and its rarer variant, Eadington, is a surname found predominantly in Northumberland. It is a locational name, taken from the hamlet of Edington (Ida’s town), which is three miles south west of Morpeth. Peter Eadington arrives in the family history as the father of Isabella E(a)dington who was baptised at St. Cuthbert’s, Norham, Northumberland on the 29th of June 1789 to Peter Eadington and Isabella Mather. Baptisms in the area do sometimes give mothers’ maiden names but the entry suggests that Peter and Isabella Mather were not married. This is borne out by the existence of a bastardy bond citing Peter Edington, a miller of Norham, as the father of Isabella Mather’s unborn illegitimate child. There are other baptisms in Norham for children of Peter E(a)dington around this time. He appears to have had four children by Alice, to whom it seems he was married and another illegitimate child by Mary Brown in 1794.

Norham is right on the Scottish border and it has been difficult to identify the site of the mill. Local folklore suggests that it was on the site of what is now Tower Cottages and the adjacent ‘vennel’, or alley, is known as The Mill Opening. A painting of 1907 depicts what might be a sail-less windmill. Ordnance survey maps however suggest that this structure was a dovecot. The deeds of 14 Castle Street, next to Tower Cottages, confirm that a miller lived there but there is no certainty that the mill was next door. The Tithe Map and schedule site a mill on the opposite side of the village green however there were no male Eadingtons in the parish at that date. This building is near a tributary of the River Tweed and would almost certainly have been a water mill. There was no building on the site of this mill by 1898. Even if the site of the mill could be identified, there is no proof that this was the mill worked by Peter Eadington. Call Books listing freeholders for the manor of Norham Town do not list Petter {sic} Eadington until 1795 and he sells his freehold to principal landowner Sir Francis Blake in 1805. The land tax for 1798 mentions a mill in the hamlet of Twizel in Norham so it may be that Peter worked here before moving in to the centre of the village.

So, just tiny fragments of Peter’s ancestry and rather a mixed bunch but all part of the rich tapestry that is our family’s history.

Those of you who know that my recent blogging silence has been due to the arrival of my latest and very precious grandchild (hello Peter Robert) might wonder why he doesn’t feature in the lengthy title of this post. He, like his sister and cousin, will rate a post all of his own but that needs to be carefully crafted and will be for a later date.

So, what else has been happening? Much of my time this week has been spent fighting (not literally but I wouldn’t rule it out and we have swords) a truly despicable person who has illegally uploaded one of my books, along with others from respected history book publishers, to a site where subscribers can download it for free and I assume, the uploader gets a payment for each download. To say I am furious would be an understatement of immense proportions. Needless to say, these sites do not make their contact details easy to find but find them I did and I did not mince my words. To be fair, the site did take down the initial link very quickly but it was still available via another link. A few days later the same set of 70 or so books appeared again, allegedly uploaded by someone different. I am heading for setting a record for the number of desist notices one can send in a short space of time. I just hope that it took whoever this thief is a VERY long time to scan every page.

Two warnings to take away from this. When you download a ‘free’ book, are you sure it is being made available legally? Here is a hint, if you can buy a new copy on Amazon (other booksellers are available) the answer is almost certainly No. It may be tempting to go for the free option but unless they are J K Rowling, authors make little enough out of their work as it is – think pence not pounds per copy. Books take many, many hours to write. A little like craft workers, very few of us achieve anything like the minimum wage for the time we put in. We are familiar with the scandals of illegal music and film downloads but spare a thought for beleaguered authors too. Secondly, if you are an author, I strongly suggest that you do an internet search for your titles, perhaps together with the word ‘free’, on a regular basis. I only discovered my book had been stolen because it is new and I was searching to see if it had been reviewed.

Support a struggling author – buy a book. What about a gift for Mothers’ Day (UK) in a couple of weeks time? Of course it would be great if it was one of my books, the latest is particularly appropriate (email me for details) but any book would be great. Having said email me, my emails have been very erratic lately, so please keep trying. Pretty much, if I haven’t replied within 48 hours I haven’t received your message.

I am now officially inducted as a tutor for Pharos Tutors and will be leading online genealogy related courses for them along with a great band of fellow tutors. Look out for my first course on Maps and Surveys, due to start in August. This is one I am picking up from a previous tutor but I will have courses of my own devising in the not too distant future. As part of my training I am taking an existing course and have chosen one on Scottish Ancestry by Chris Paton. This would work well if I had any Scottish ancestry but my ancestors never got further north than Northumberland. Fortunately, my children do have some Scottish forebears that I can ‘borrow’, as do my grandchildren, so I am all set. I will report on my progress in April.

I spent a great day at the recent Guild of One-Name Studies Twentieth Century Seminar, where I was one of the presenters. The proceedings included a convivial meal in a restaurant that was not going to win any awards for fast service. Given that said meal began after my bedtime, by the time the dessert arrived at gone 10pm I was ready to attack it with gusto. The only cutlery available was a fork. Ever tried eating a sundae with a fork? Another ten minutes and spoons were in evidence – like I am going to sit looking at a gently melting sundae for ten minutes.

The seminar itself was very interesting but due to one of the speakers being taken ill, we were ‘treated’ to an truly excruciating ‘video’ (whose pictures did not work) of a webinar on a similar subject. I tried very hard to be respectful. I failed. It did rate highly for its entertainment value though, or as an exercise on how not to present. The remaining presentations were excellent. Firstly was Nigel Lutt, a former archivist who gave a thought provoking presentation in a dryly humorous style, highlighting why twentieth century archives are not likely  to stand the test of time as well as those from earlier eras. The sheer volume of material results in weeding, modern inventions such as paper clips and sellotape do damage, data protection leads to deletion of records and the move to electronic records, such as school admissions’ registers, will leave us the poorer. Ian Waller spoke about adoption and divorce records and the day finished with Gill Blanchard encouraging us to write our family’s story. As ever the best part of the day was catching up with so many old friends and meeting new ones too.

Along with many people who have UK ancestry I was there on 16th, ready and waiting to take advantage of the 1939 Register being made available as part of my FindmyPast world subscription. Up until then I had managed to restrain myself and had not ventured past the indexes to the point where I had to part with hard earned cash. I am getting very mixed results and have submitted a host of transcription error reports, once I had discovered the not very obvious way that this could be done that is. The company is claiming an 85% transcription accuracy; are my relatives really so atypical (don’t answer that!)? The tally so far, for 13 searches:- 5 (38%) were problem free. 2 had christian name mis-transcriptions. 2 had the address transcribed incorrectly, 1 had both the address and the birth year wrong, 1 had the birth year, initial and address wrong, 1 had the occupation from the next entry incorrectly ascribed to my relative, although it was clearly on the next line and one person is not transcribed or indexed with his household (or any other) at all, although he is there when you search via his wife. I stress that these were all transcription errors, not errors with the original record. So sorry, great resource but still ‘could do better.’

And the soggy encounter you ask? I accidentally (obviously) got a pint of water rather too close to the nearly new laptop. A swift move and I upended the laptop so water could pour (well, drip steadily) from the keyboard. At first all seemed fine but then it quietly died without so much as a wimper. I tried not to panic and dried it by the woodburner for a while. I was then in danger of adding a degree of meltedness to the soggyness but managed to avoid this. Still no signs of meaningful life. I removed the battery and shook the drips off it – battery replaced and whoo hoo it turned on …… and then promptly turned itself off. A few attempts at this and I seemed (everything crossed please) to have achieved a partial recovery. Ongoing issues are a rather strange opening screen when I first turn on (that I can live with), randomly, the clock losing 45 minutes and having to be reset (solved) and then there is the problem with the second letter of the alphabet. Either it does not work at all (all the bs in this post have been achieved by cutting and pasting) or, on the rare occasions when it does work, you get rows and rows of bs. I am hoping this will right itself, although it is good for me to try to think of alternative ways of expressing myself, ones which do not involve words containing the errant letter (try it, it is surprisingly difficult).

This week I was scheduled to give two talks on the same day. Not, fortunately, at the same time – sadly I have not quite yet perfected the art of being in two places at once. One was a virtual webinar for Ontario Genealogical Society, the other was a Mistress Agnes gig for a local women’s group. When the webinar was first booked I had worked out that it was due to begin at 3pm my time and began to prepare. Up came the little notice ‘this webinar has not yet started’. What passes for my brain began to whirr – Canada is behind us (in the nicest possible way) not ahead, a quick recalculation. I was due to start presenting at midnight! Midnight! In case you don’t know I just don’t do midnight, not ever, not even on New Year’s Eve; 10pm is a late night for me. Getting up at 5am, no problem at all but midnight! Had I not had the evening booking as Mistress Agnes I could have gone to sleep first but this was not going to be an option.

First then extolling the delights of seventeenth century living at a venue in a small village near me. I have to say the roads en route were realistically seventeenth century like but we made it there and back. Some of my incredulous friends had been made aware of my webinar time slot, ‘Are you really presenting at midnight?’ Well it looks like I am now. The one good thing about this sort of webinar is that it is audio only, so I only had to sound as if I was awake and it didn’t matter what I looked like. I was also competing against Rootstech sessions – the largest genealogical event in the world. Maybe I would be talking to myself anyway. It turned out that 174 people had applied for the 100 places participating in this webinar in real time and I think I manage to sound as if I was vaguely alert. The topic was ‘A to Z of less well known British sources’ and at the end my addled brain fielded diverse questions on such topics as Scottish cab drivers, non-conformists and Buckinghamshire quarter sessions records. It was fun in the end and I get to do it all again with another virtual webinar in December!