So what have you been up to? I am sure you are not asking. It has been a busy few weeks, with the usual round up talks in person and online. I’ve just begun the journey with the latest cohort of students on my Pharos online course that helps to uncover the stories of agricultural labouring ancestors and this week also sees the start of the course on One-Place Studies. I’ve been putting the finishing touches to the next Braund Society magazine that I have been editing for an unbelievable thirty years. Add to this preparing an index for a forthcoming book, working on updates for a new edition for another and starting to produce a third and there’s not been much time for anything else. The job I must not mention is drawing to a close for another season and has brought its usual delights and frustrations. There is already a buzz about Rootstech 2024. I am pleased to have been accepted on to their media team once again. Having made the decision that I would take a year off from speaking at Rootstech in 2023, I have applied to present again in 2024. Stand by for something a little different from me, if it gets accepted. The Call for Papers is still open, if you want to apply. Cornish lessons have finished for the year. The ‘progress’ doesn’t really warrant a post of its own but after thirty hours of lessons, I have a reasonable vocabulary but still zero ability to turn that into sentences.

Then there is the house not moving. There have been several weeks of, let’s be honest, zero progress and being told on all sides that the housing market is the slowest since, well since I last moved house. You want the housing market to slow down? Call on me, I’ll decide to move. Suddenly though, there is a slight chink in the armour and I have a viewing on my property, as do the people who are frantically trying to sell theirs in order to buy mine. Cue a manic cleaning/tidying/gardening spree. Fortunately, this coincides with the arrival of one portion of my descendants, so I can kill two cleaning/tidying birds with one duster. Unfortunately, it also coincides with the visitation of no fewer than three plagues of flying ants. What’s all this ‘they only swarm once a year’ lark? Please could someone inform my local flying ants of this ‘fact’. I still have to dispose of the bodies from round three.

The gardening is another matter. Having been bitten by an unidentified flying insect, I stepped in a deposit ‘kindly’ provided by a neighbouring cat. Said cat and I are already not friends, as it has been catching birds in my garden. I know, I know, it is what cats do but it isn’t pleasant to see it make off with a bird in its mouth. I don’t know what this cat had been eating but boy did it smell. I can still image that smell a day later. Then there was the tree felling. A couple of tree branches were getting dangerously near to the overhead electric cable. Dilemma. Do I risk a serious electrical incident, or do I send an aging fisherman of my acquaintance ten foot up an extremely wobbly ladder because, said fisherman insists, I do not need to get a tree fella in to be a tree feller? We went for the latter option and I just shut my eyes and hopped about in the garden minus my poo-laden shoe. All is well and I would like to put on record for the benefit of the F-O-M-A’s nearest and dearest that I did tell him it wasn’t a good idea. It did take rather a lot of time and energy that I was hoping to spend on other garden tidying but hey ho. Today is the time for duster, mop and bucket and a request for all the positive vibes you can muster, so that I can move on to the next chapter.

A photo because (sorry cat lovers) birds are better than cats.

So still no progress on the moving house front. While I wait for a chain to complete underneath my potential buyer, I am trying to simultaneously put it all to the back of my mind and do something, so that I don’t feel totally impotent in the whole process. This means that I am working round the house triaging my possessions, in the hope of being less crowded in a new property and saving the removal men from having to lug a load of stuff, at my expense, that I really don’t need. The progress so far is: garden sheds tick, bathroom (not much of a challenge) tick, conservatory (apart from the children’s books which are awaiting said children) tick, my bedroom tick. This week it was time to start on the difficult stuff, the two bedrooms that contain between them eleven full height book cases (well, actually ten and two half width ones). That is an alarming sixty six shelves worth. Two of these bookcases are built in and I’d like to lose the two narrow ones, or relegate them to the garage. That means I need to find eighteen shelves of books that I can live without.

First stop the history books, six shelves of these. I tried to take a critical look. Most were acquired in the late 1970s and early 1980s they have accompanied me on three or four house moves. The vast majority of them haven’t been opened for at least forty years and if I am honest, some of them weren’t read even then. Why am I giving them house room? That’s one and a half shelves gone. Next half bookcase, local history of places other than Devon. This was harder but some more joined the ‘to be disposed of’ pile. Two book cases didn’t make much of an impact as one narrow one is seventeenth century social history and I need those. The other is family history research files rather than books, so that all stays. That left two book cases in that room still to do.

Two shelves of social history first, reduced to one and a half. Now it was getting really tricky. Next were family history books and the Devon local history books. I decided that I really didn’t want forty six years of back numbers of a family history society journal. I don’t think I have looked at back numbers more than once. Fortunately someone else was pleased to take these off my hands. Another, shorter, run from a different society also hit the ‘to be humanely disposed of’ pile. A bit of rearranging and one of the narrow bookcases was now empty, the equivalent of three shelves. I am trying not to think of the other fifteen that I need to free up.

Many of the family history books are 1990s vintage. Although the sources don’t change, the techniques do. More of these have been referred to in the past few years but some, like other items consuming shelf space, have not been opened since they were unpacked from my previous house move seventeen years ago. Out they go. I am on a roll. Still to do, the two shelves of Devon local history, I suspect I will be keeping most of those. Then it will be on to the six bookcases in the spare bedroom. These were culled during lockdown but I have hopes of significant weeding when I get to the three and a half book cases of fiction. I know some date from the sixties and early seventies, when there was a fashion for very tiny print that I can no longer read. If I started now I doubt I have enough life left to read all these again. I will be seriously asking myself how likely I am to read each one and hopefully there will be a pile to move on to charity shops.

There are of course also two banana boxes of children’s books under the spare bed. I haven’t even thought about what I do with those. Many are paperbacks that have lost their glue so the pages are loose and my grandchildren have very different reading tastes. I know that these really should go too but I may not be in the right frame of mind for that just yet. I will report on my progress – just wait until I get to the extremely full loft!

Image Peggy Marco Pixabay

Are you still there? I hear you cry. Well, actually I don’t but yes, I am still here. There’s been a lot going on lately, of which more another time but for now, I thought I’d share some details of a few days we recently spent on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire borders.

We travelled via grandchild sitting to a quiet caravan site just outside Sheffield. This was in part to deliver a Christmas present in the shape of attendance at an André Rieu concert. Inevitably, this was accompanied by the usual angst – will we find the venue? Will we find the car park? Can I make the app work to display our tickets? Come back actual printed tickets, all is forgiven. It turns out that all the fears were unfounded and the concert was safely attended.

We also took the opportunity to meet up with family, which was lovely and do some touristy things. First stop Hardwick Hall, home of formidable Tudor woman Bess of Hardwick, familiar to me from the exam syllabus. Hardwick Hall was built in the sixteenth century to showcase the power and status that Bess accrued, largely due to four advantageous marriages. Our visit coincided with a parade by the parachute regiment, who were stationed at Hardwick during World War 2.

The Earl of Shrewsbury, one of Bess’ husbands, was responsible for Mary Queen of Scots during her house arrest and although Mary was never in residence at Hardwick there are artifacts that are believed to have belonged to her. The many tapestries are a feature of the house and adorn almost every wall. The gardens were lovely too.

Next stop Bolsover Castle, where I fell out with the audio guide, which kept defaulting to the introduction rather than the area we were in. Bolsover was the home of the Cavendish family and another symbol of wealth and power, this time of William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, grandson of Bess of Hardwick. The seventeenth century castle was built on the site of a Medieval fortress and has some impressive views.  The late C11th castle was owned by William Peveril and its ruins were the inspiration for Cavendish’s ‘Little Castle’, built in the early 1600s. Charles I and Henrietta Maria were entertained at the castle. The Cavendishs suffered for supporting the king during the Civil War but returned to the castle after the Restoration and commenced a programme of building and rebuilding. The riding house and stables are a reminder of Cavendish’s passion for equestrianism. There are some unusual wall and ceiling paintings that have been preserved. William met his wife Margaret whilst taking refuge in Europe; she was maid of honour to the exiled queen Henrietta Maria. Margaret was a prolific writer and philosopher who challenged the female stereotypes of her time. Her eccentricities meant that she was later known as ‘Mad Madge’ and described by Pepys as ‘mad, conceited and ridiculous’.

When the male line died out the castle became little more than a holiday home and gradually fell into disrepair. The opening of the nearby mines in 1889 were the death knell of the castle as it suffered from subsidence and the associated pollution. It was given to the nation in the mid-twentieth century and further decay has been prevented.

A few months ago, I was invited to give a talk to  London, Westminster and Middlesex Family History Society. They particularly wanted something with a London flavour. Nothing in my repertoire quite fitted the bill so I suggested, rashly, that I could put together something based on my Smith ancestors of London. These things always seem like a good idea from the safety of several months away. It should be easy. I’d already written the Smith family story. I even had a short power-point about them. I ‘just’ needed to pull together all the detail about the sources I’d used for the genealogy and the context and I’d be away. I set out to do ‘just’ that very thing. Perhaps, thought I, this would be a good opportunity to revisit that branch of my family, as I do periodically, in case anything new could be found. Forget rabbit holes. I descended into a pit roomy enough for a decent-sized elephant. It is one of those scenarios where the brick wall seems paper thin but is nonetheless impenetrable. Surely x must be the father of y but how do I confirm that, especially with a name like Smith in a highly populated area?

A saving grace for my Smith family is that they like marrying ladies from the Seear family. My three times great grandfather John Jeremiah Smith married Charlotte Seear, his son, my great great grandfather William Joseph Smith married his first cousin, Charlotte’s niece, Eliza Seear. Their son, Herbert Havet Smith, my great grandfather, married Eliza’s niece, Catherine Seear, who was simultaneously Herbert’s wife, his first cousin and his second cousin. I do hope that you are following this. You are probably thinking that it accounts for a great deal. It certainly makes DNA research on this branch ‘interesting’. You’d think Seear would be easy to research. I’ll own that it is an improvement on Smith but there a list of variants longer than several arms and once you stray into Hertfordshire/Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire there are probably more of them than there are Smiths.

You are probably waiting for me to tell you that, as a result of taking another look at the family, there was a eureka moment and I added several generations to my family tree. Sadly, no but there are fewer bricks in the wall. I was looking for an example to use for the talk and decided to input Seear rather than Smith. This led me to a will that I hadn’t looked at before. A will that should crack my Seear brick wall but doesn’t, still, I now have the names of the siblings of my Seear brick wall ancestor and John Jeremiah Smith featured as a beneficiary. I also reread a will for a John Smith, someone I felt should be John Jeremiah’s father (I knew his father was John). I had previously dismissed it as there is no mention of John Jeremiah, or those I had identified as his likely siblings. Paring this will with marriage witnesses in the family, it now looks as if it is indeed the will of my 4x great grandfather and that the children he does mention are his oldest children, who I had not previously noted as potential siblings for John Jeremiah. I even have three teeny tiny DNA matches to descendants of one of these older children. Is this proof? Of course not but this John Smith of the will has moved from ‘probably not my ancestor’ to ‘almost certainly my ancestor.’ Will he ever be inked in as my 4x great grandfather, probably not but I can hope.

Oh and if anyone is reading this who is expecting me to give a talk on the Smiths in a few days’ time, never fear, I climbed out of the elephant pit eventually and there is a talk prepared.

My Smith Ancestors

‘What have you been up to lately?’, I hear you cry. Well, actually, I don’t but I’m going to tell you anyway.

I have been spending time with some drunken women, I should hasten to explain that this is in the historical, not actual, sense. Our Few Forgotten Women Team, aided by more than fifty helpers from all parts of the English-speaking world, have been tracing the stories of women found in two inebriate homes in the 1901 census. Their stories are mostly pretty tragic cycles of despair and degeneration but it is important that they are told. Photographs of many of the women survive in the online Habitual Criminals’ registers and they tell their own story. The stories of eighty six women are beginning to appear here.

There’s been a bit of a social media discussion lately about large online trees. Do people take large trees seriously? How large is too large? Here is my take on the issue. I was 100% against EVER putting my family tree online until I took an Ancestry DNA test about five years ago. I didn’t even have an Ancestry account at this point, being an inveterate FindmyPast fan (and I still am, finding their searching infinitely easier. Horses for course and familiarity is a great  thing, others will feel differently). Anyway, I took the test, the results came, I started looking for matches. Which were the matches I was prioritising? Those with online trees. Well, I thought, maybe I’d just add a very basic, private tree of my direct line. So I did. With all those thousands of DNA matches, in my case mostly very tiny, I found myself concentrating on those with public trees; so I went public. Of course, to link with DNA matches you need to be wide and deep, so I began, slowly to add all those individuals that lurk on my family tree, garnered over nearly fifty years of research. This I did cautiously and meticulously, one person at a time. One reason for not importing a tree wholesale was because I don’t have one single tree but about twenty different trees for different branches, as I prefer to work that way. Yes, I could have merged them and then uploaded in one go but I deliberately chose not to, using it as an opportunity to check what I’d done. Only one 9x great grandmother was felled from the tree as a result.

I wasn’t going to add sources because why would I? This was not my primary way of recording my tree, this was just for DNA. Then of course I realised that I was only taking online trees seriously if they were sourced, so sources were added. I included my children’s ancestors as well as my own and then, later, some of my grandchildren’s. I began by only adding individuals that I considered to be verified. Then, hesitantly, I have added a few individuals, clearly labelled ‘hypothesis’, in case the hypothesis is right and a DNA match could help to support it. Even with all this, as of today, my tree contains 3161 people. Maybe it isn’t larger because I never add information from other trees, although I do use them as clues to further research.

So what is wrong with larger trees? Do I dismiss them out of hand? Well no, that would be short-sighted but I must admit to a certain amount of scepticism as the numbers stretch beyond 5000. I find myself wondering if each one of those individuals really is carefully researched and verified using original sources. I’ve been at this for since 1977 and spend more time than I am going to admit on it. No way could I add upwards of 5000 people with any confidence. Of course, in some cases, these ultra large trees are well researched. Some are large because they are the result of one-name or one-place studies. It doesn’t take a great deal to gain an impression of the quality of the research on these mega trees and sort the good from the downright ridiculous. Is there a danger though that a large tree might give an impression of careless research? The jury is still out on that one but it is an interesting debate.

There’s been a lot more going on but this post is already too long so I’ll leave you with the tale of my mother’s day gifts. One daughter sent a package that included a mystery book (she chose the genre not the title) the title is ‘Family might be the death of you’, possibly not the most appropriate! A planted (I use the word advisedly) floral arrangement from other daughter was delivered to the neighbouring chapel porch, which shares my postcode. Fortunately, someone spotted it, retrieved it and handed it to me. It was also delivered by someone who had clearly ignored the ‘this way up’ notice and arrows. I seem to have successfully salvaged/replanted it and it is now flourishing but there was quite a bit of earth everywhere.

On the third day of  RootsTech I had been really looking forward to Wanda Wyporska’s session (from late UK time on day 2) about researching women and was sad to see that it was not able to be recorded. As the custodian of ancestral christening gowns, wedding dresses and quilts Preserving your Ancestors’ Textiles and Handmade Treasures by Melissa Barker was another that was high on my ‘must watch’ list. Again, if you watch, you can skip the first 3 minutes 19 seconds of setting up chat. Sadly my house is too small to follow all of her advice. Interesting to learn that folded textiles should be refolded in a different way every few months to avoid deterioration along the creases.

Next, another talk from Diahan Southard, My Messy, Complicated Birth Roots Story. This was a fascinating and well-presented session, highlighting the problems of trying to identify DNA matches, particularly if you are related to someone through two different family lines. Highly recommended.

30 Fun and Meaningful Activities for Kids and Grandkids to Celebrate their Ancestors Sharlene Habermeyer was also on my watch list. Two minutes in before this one starts. I do appreciate and welcome the fact that these videos have been made available so quickly but wonder if a little editing out of the set up might have been useful. The presentation does what it says in the tin and Sharlene’s website has free downloadable resources http://www.growinglittleleaves.com/printables.html. A few are US orientated but there are others that are applicable to all. I did cringe however at her suggestion of cleaning graves and making rubbings of them. This is common practice elsewhere but is definitely not advised, or indeed legal, in Britain, where the lichens that grow on gravestones are protected. I did love the idea of sharing memorabilia; I just wish my grandchildren visited often enough to do this. Trying on ancestral wedding dresses or uniforms was another great idea, although I don’t see why this should be a gendered activity. Plenty of really good suggestions for using ancestral photos. I shall be reading the full details of the activities mentioned by Sharlene on her website and trying some of the ideas; first I think will be the talents and hobbies activity and the timeline. On a similar topic, I listed to Sarah Day’s short GenZ Genealogy presentation from 2022, outlining how we can support 10-24 year olds on the genealogical journeys. She also suggests what GenZ themselves can do. Pleased to hear that this included joining societies. Another catch up from last year was Write your Family Stories (in 30 minutes or less) by Brenda Hudson. Useful suggestions here for those who struggle with starting to write stories.

So that’s a wrap. I do still have a couple left on this year’s play list and few few lingering from previous years. I will no doubt add more when others share their recommendations. I will try not to leave it until next year to watch these. The dates for next year are announced – so make a note in your diaries.