Is Mary Newlands My Great Grandmother? How not Having a DNA Match Helped Break Down a Brick Wall

Jun3 by thehistoryinterpreter

This post should have gone live on 1 June, the 217^th anniversary of the death of Mary Hogg née Newlands. It has taken four solid days to put together (much longer than I anticipated), so it is late – sorry Mary but better late than never. For nearly five decades, the earliest ancestor in my grandmother’s Northumbrian paternal line has been great great grandfather John Hogg. For almost as long, I have been fairly sure that I know who John’s parents are but I have been waiting for an additional piece of evidence before ‘inking them in’. All brick walls are annoying but this is definitely in my top three that I really want to crack, not least because I love the area where I believe they came from; so much so that I embarked on a one-place study of the parish.

Here is a brief summary of the in-depth research that I have done to try to confirm John Hogg’s parentage. I should say at the outset, that this is the only branch of the family that come from anywhere near the north of England, next best are the Bulleys from Norfolk.

The story starts with my great grandfather, also John Hogg. I have his original 1885 marriage certificate, to Caroline Howe, naming his father as John Hogg, a gardener. The marriage took place in south London but census returns for my grandmother, Elizabeth Ann Hogg and her parents, confirm that great grandfather John junior was born in Morpeth, Northumberland. Family stories linked the Hoggs to Morpeth and to Russell ‘cousins’. I have a card that Elizabeth Ann wrote but never posted, addressed to Mr B. Russell, 3 Dacre Street, Morpeth. She referred to him as ‘Bertie’ and signed herself ‘Cousin Bessie’.

From census returns, we can deduce that John Hogg knew where he was born (Morpeth) but was a little vague as to when (April 1855 – March 1858). He was 28 when he married in 1885, so that fits within that date range. John’s death certificate shows that he died, in December 1926, at 3 Dacre Street and the informant was Bertie Russell ‘nephew’. John’s age was 71 (so born between December 1854 and December 1855). The births of four John Hoggs were registered in Morpeth registration district between 1853 and 1859 inclusive. There were no ‘male’ (i.e. no forename) Hoggs registered in Morpeth in this period. I followed up all four. Only one fitted the criteria of being born in Morpeth itself, having a father called John and not having a future that precluded him from being my ancestor. In addition, this family had a daughter who was the mother of Bertie Russell of Dacre Street.

Fully satisfied with my proof argument thus far, I turned to my great great grandfather John senior. He made life difficult by providing three different birthplaces in the census returns, being vague about his age and on one occasion, calling himself George instead of John. Over many years, I obtained copies of every document that I could and built up a detailed timeline of this man’s life, his two wives and nine children. It seemed clear that he was called John; there is just one census return where he is George. He was born somewhere between 1799 and 1809, probably in Bavington or adjacent Kirkheaton, which are about twenty miles west of Morpeth; although one census says Kirknewton, which is on the Scottish borders. He was an agricultural labourer, for the most part specifically a shepherd and he made many short-distance moves in the area during his life.

John’s first wife was buried in 1849, although no death certificate has been found. His first, apparently legitimate, child by his second wife Elizabeth Pearson, my great great grandmother, was in 1854. I could find no marriage either side of the English/Scottish border, within or outwith that date span, using every spelling variant of the names. This was particularly frustrating as a certificate would hopefully have included a father’s name. Comparatively recently, a newspaper announcement came to light, which revealed that they married, in 1853, at Lamberton Toll, a venue for clandestine marriages that is less well-known than Gretna Green. No records survive for this date.

I followed up all John and George Hoggs born 1797-1808 in Northumberland who appear in the 1851 census and looked for them in both the 1841 and succeeding censuses, to see which one could be the ‘George’ Hogg in Newgate Street, Morpeth in 1861 and John Hogg of Well Way, Morpeth in 1871. It was clear by the family members that these two were one and the same. After a great deal of careful research, I came to the conclusion that my great great grandfather John Hogg was almost certainly the son of Robert and Mary Hogg of Hallington, St. John’s Lee and that he was born in 1804 and baptised in Thockrington, which was adjacent to St. John’s Lee. This was the only baptism in the area around the birthplaces that John/George gave in the census and I could find no plausible alternative future for the John baptised at Thockrington, unless he became my great great grandfather.

I was so nearly there but still I hesitated to add Robert and Mary to my family tree. I was after that elusive ‘one more piece of evidence’. I investigated Robert and Mary’s families to see if this might support my hypothesis. Initially, the Hogg family were not very forthcoming. Robert and Mary only had three children and two died without issue, so there was no hope of tracing descendants for a possible DNA match. Going back yet one more generation, was a bit of a stretch but I tried anyway. This didn’t seem helpful. This family were rural agricultural labourers. They do not appear in the newspapers (as per the British Newspaper Library index). There are no surviving poor law records for the relevant parishes at the appropriate times. They do not appear to have owned land or left wills (Northumberland Archives, Prerogative Court of York and The National Archives indexes checked, as well as the excellent North East Inheritance Database). They do not feature in electoral rolls, nor did they serve in the army or navy. There is nothing in the catalogue at Northumberland Archives that relates to the family, leaving me with very little to go on.

I turned to the brides. Robert’s wife had been Mary Newlands; was she my 3x great grandmother?

The Newlands family, despite their reluctance to baptise children in churches or chapels whose records survive, had more potential. Robert Hogg died in 1805 and his wife Mary née Newlands, just three years later. This would have left John and his surviving sister, Mary, orphaned at a very young age, which might account for John’s later confusion regarding his place and date of birth. There is no age at burial for Robert or Mary Hogg ‘relict of Robt’. Mary and Robert were married in 1799, in Chollerton about five miles west of where their children were baptised. A family of Newlands emerged in Elsdon, some ten miles to the north. In 1773, a Mary Newlins had been baptised in Falstone, the daughter of John Newlins, or Newlands, whose wife was an Ann, or Nanny, née Corbitt. The Corbitts were a little more obliging, with a couple of useful wills and some gravestones. I began to build up a picture of the Corbett and Newlands families but were they my ancestors?

I was contacted by a descendant of Sarah Milburn née Newlands, believed to be Mary’s sister. I’ll call the contact SS. If our trees were right we would be fifth cousins once removed. I am used to playing with very small DNA matches. Yes, I know all the caveats but to put this in perspective, I only have a total of thirty matches that are 40cM or higher and anything over 20cM is ‘high’ by my standards. I do treat these with extreme caution but it is all I have. As fifth cousins once removed there was no certainty that SS and I would match and we don’t. This led me to look again at the matches that I do have. It turned out that, although we don’t match each other, SS and I had at least four shared, albeit very tiny, matches, all of whom descended from Sarah Milburn née Newlands. Two were my fifth cousins once removed, one a fifth cousin three times removed and I am unsure of the exact relationship of the fourth. The largest of these is a new match that arrived this week, leading to more delay in getting this posted.

Twenty year old Mary Hogg, almost certainly Robert and Mary’s daughter, died at Smiddywell Ridge, in the parish of Bellingham. in 1827. This was the home of SS’s ancestor, Sarah Milburn née Newlands. My John Hogg married in Netherwitton, the home of another Newlands sister. Were John and Mary each brought up by a different aunt?

In addition, I have an almost respectable 22cM match to a Corbitt descendant. She would be my sixth cousin once removed and yes I have checked that we don’t appear to share any other ancestry.

I am now going to claim Mary Newlands as my 3x great grandmother. To be clear, the weight of the evidence lies in my 48 years of exhaustive research. What I have outlined here barely scratches the surface. I am not basing this on DNA connections that all the DNA experts would tell me are too small to be significant. Every genealogist has to make decisions about how much evidence is enough. For me, I was 97% there with the documentary evidence, the DNA was just a final pieces of a very large jigsaw. If you want to read a fifteen page proof argument, describing in detail why I believe Mary Newlands is my three time great grandmother, you can access it through my Granny’s Tales page. All serious family historians should be setting out why x is the parent of y for all generations of their family tree (and no of course I haven’t done this for all lines yet but I can aim – how long do I have?).

Next step, who were the parents of John Newlands? This is particularly exciting as it will take my direct ancestry out of England for the first time and yes there is one of those tiny DNA matches to the Newlands of Kelso, who are almost certainly John’s family – the question is which John is which?

The view from the churchyard where Mary is buried and one of my favourite places in the world

A Week in the Life of an Everyday Historian

May2 by thehistoryinterpreter

Lots of family history bits and pieces on the agenda lately. My article on Surviving the Seventeenth Century has appeared in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine – full of handy tips about how not to die from the various hazards that beset our seventeenth century ancestors. I’ve chatted to Radio Devon about family history. You can catch this here at about one hour ten minutes in. I’ve helped to set up a VE Day commemorations exhibition. I’ve written up and published the story of my father’s wartime experiences, which you could read here. It is a bit of a different account as he started the war by continuing in his civilian job as a cinema operator. He worked for the small south London Granada chain and as luck would have it, Guy Morgan wrote a history of that chain in 1948. This book now retails for silly money but I borrowed it from the library twenty five years ago and it was just what I needed to understand what my dad was up to. Then he joined the RAF Regiment, serving in southern Italy and Sicily. Towards the end of the war he was one of the RAF personnel who was transferred to the army and he peeled a lot of potatoes in Ireland. Then he agreed to sign on for a further term of service, this time attached to ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association). In this capacity, he returned to Italy as a cinema operator. If you are interested in writing family stories my Are you Sitting Comfortably?: writing and telling your family history course starts this month. It is online so you can join in from anywhere.

I’ve got ready for this weekend’s one-name family reunion, as the Braund clan make their annual pilgrimage to North Devon. I’ve done lots of behind the scenes preparation for next year’s residential family history conference in North Devon, with a few more speakers announced and more lined up to reveal. It is going to be a great weekend in such a beautiful part of the world. I’ve taken advantage of said beautiful part of the world with early morning walks. Now I really do need to unearth the hoover.

The Seear Mystery: chipping away at a family history brick wall

Apr24 by thehistoryinterpreter

My Seear brick wall has been around for decades. Seear is a nightmare to research because it has so many variants and not all are picked up by ticking FindmyPast’s ‘include name variants’ box. Seear, Sear and Seer are the obvious ones but then you need to add an e, or an s, or an es, to all of those. The name is sometimes mis-transcribed as Secar(e/s/es) or Scear(e/s/es). In addition, mis-transcriptions of the initial letter lead to indexing as Teear, Leear etc.. I have used Seear here for consistency here unless the spelling is relevant to the argument.

I have ‘always’ known that my great great grandfather was Frederick Seear from East London , as I have my great grandparents’ original marriage certificate which names him and very early on in my family history journey, I discovered that Frederick’s grandparents were William and Mary Seear. In fact, as my great grandparents, Herbert Havet Smith and Catherine Seear, were first cousins, as were Herbert’s parents, William Joseph Smith and Eliza Seear, William and Mary are my 4x great grandparents twice over, making the brick wall doubly frustrating.

I built up a detailed picture of William’s life. I quickly found nine children born in the 1780s and 1790s. There was a strong suspicion of an earlier son for whom there was no baptism and thanks to marriage witness signatures, amongst other evidence, he later took his place in the family, as did a short-lived daughter, who became the eldest known child of what was now eleven in the family. I still think I may be missing a child, as it seems unusual that there was no son called William after his father.

There were clear connections with the Seear family of St. Albans, with intermarriage and members of both families together in the census. The only clue I have for William’s date of birth is his age at burial, notoriously unreliable, particularly as his wife had predeceased him. This suggested that he was born between February 1753 and February 1754. There was a William Sears baptised in St Albans in January 1755, close but I needed more evidence. I could find no obvious alternative future for the St Albans William unless he became my William. I mined this family for all I was worth but they yielded very little. I could only confirm one marriage and one infant death for the five siblings of the St Albans William. There was almost certainly another sibling, again missing a baptism (they really have an aversion to baptising their Thomases) and here I was more successful but there was still not enough evidence to claim these ancestors.

I was also missing ‘my’ William’s marriage to Mary ?. The world and his wife on Ancestry are convinced she was a Mary Stone. I am definitely not convinced. I have ‘my’ William’s signature as a witness on three of his children’s marriages and even allowing for the passage of years, it looks very different. He signs consistently Seear, whereas the marriage to Mary Stone is William Sears.

Although I found out more about William’s descendants, as far as William’s ancestry was concerned, this is how the situation remained for nearly forty years. Then a few years ago I discovered a will for a Joseph Seear, a grocer in Ham, near Kingston. I should mention that three generations of the Seear family intermarry with the Smiths, who originate from Ham, whilst my Seears were in Stoke Newington and Hackney. Joseph appears in Land Tax Records and Freeholders’ Lists in Ham between 1791 and 1806. It is also important to note that Ham at this time was very small, with only a dozen or so householders.

In his will, Joseph mentioned his brother John Seear, a shoemaker of South Mimms and his brother William Seear, a gardener of Stoke Newington. Thirty years before this, my William had been a shoemaker, not a gardener but there is no sign of any other William Seear in Stoke Newington. In addition, the will mentions Joseph’s niece Charlotte Seear, who was my William’s daughter and also Charlotte’s future husband, my 3x great grandfather, (John) Jeremiah Smith. Furthermore, one of John of South Mimms’ daughters and one of ‘my’ William’s daughters married brothers, suggesting a connection. After much investigation, I was happy that this was the right family.

I now had a group of three siblings to look for instead of just one, I also had burials and therefore approximate dates of birth for each brother. There was a John in the St Albans family who tied up beautifully with John of South Mimms but no Joseph. If Joseph’s age was right, he would have been born before the parents’ marriage in the family that I was hoping was mine. I checked for illegitimate baptisms but there were none. There was no alternative Seear family with a Joseph, William and John of the right sort of ages.

In his will, Joseph’s first bequest is to his ‘brother’ John Steel, a ropemaker of Sunbury and John Steel’s son, also John. He also mentions a ‘sister’ Sarah Treakell, a clergyman’s widow, who turned out to be a Sarah Steel. John Steel senior was and remains elusive, with no obvious marriage or burial and John junior was no better. I did track Sarah Treakell down and found an age at burial for her, leading to a possible baptism for a Sarah Steel in Putney, very close to Ham. She came from a large family, which did include a John. I assumed the Steels might be Joseph’s brother and sister in law or possibly half siblings but there was no marriage for a Joseph Seear to a Steel, or to someone who might have been a widow, formerly Steel. I couldn’t unearth any suggestion of half-siblings. Another roadblock.

I revisit this problem every year or so ‘just in case’ and this time round found that Sarah Treakell née Steel had left a will. In this she mentions a sister Ann Birch of Somers Town. I can’t trace Ann, nor can I find a Steel/Birch marriage, although there is an Ann in the Putney Steel family. Sarah also refers to a nephew George Day. Joseph made George Day ‘maltster of Barnes’ his executor but didn’t specify a relationship. He also listed George’s wife Mary Ann and her daughter Anne Marie. Hurrah, I thought, a breakthrough; except George Day is even more elusive than everyone else. No Steel/Day marriages, no Seear/Day marriages. Apart from some land tax lists, no sign of a George Day anywhere remotely close to Barnes. There is a press reference to an Anne Marie Day of Isleworth in April 1841 but is she in the 1841 census? No of course she isn’t.

None of this helped with finding or confirming William’s parentage. Sarah Treakell, bless her, did mention a “ten pounds a legacy left me by my late brother ^JosephSteel of Ham near Richmond with the aforesaid sum being in the hands of Mr Day my nephew at Barnes Terrace near Putney”. Ten pounds was the sum left to Sarah by Joseph Seear.

Could Joseph Seear actually be Joseph Steel? In which case, it could be the Seears who were Joseph’s in-laws not the Steels. A Joseph Steel married Sarah in Stepney in 1781. The clerk has written Sears but Sarah’s signature looks much more like Seear. The witnesses were not helpful; Robert Vaughan is a regular witness and I can’t trace Sarah Bradley. No children have been found for this couple as Steel, or Seear in the area surrounding Ham or Stepney.

There is a possible burial of a Sarah Steel, aged 40, in Wandsworth in 1785 and a Sarah Sears in Mortlake in the same year. There is also a marriage of a Joseph Seares widower and Sarah Leach in Wandsworth in 1794. These entries may or may not be relevant.

The Sarah Steel who was baptised in Putney had a brother John, who could be John the ropemaker, a sister Ann, who could become Ann Birch, despite Ancestry trees wanting to marry her off to someone else with no evidence whatsoever of a marriage record. This family also includes a brother Joseph. The age at burial for Joseph Seear who made the will, isn’t quite what I’d like it to be, as it suggests a birth between March 1743 and March 1744 and Joseph Steel, Sarah’s brother, was six years older but he was a widower with no children, who would have provided the details of his age at the time of his death?

So where does that leave me? I know what I think is correct. Thomas Sear and Mary Phillips married in St. Albans, Hertfordshire in 1746. Baptisms for six of the children are recorded in St. Albans: Sarah 1747, Mary, 1753, William 1755, Susannah 1757, Ann, 1759 and John 1762. I believe that in the gap between Sarah and Mary fits Thomas who, according to his age at burial, was born about 1749 and who spent his life in St Albans. He was a shoemaker. His grandson married ‘my’ William’s granddaughter and Thomas’ great grandson, a fruiter’s foreman, was to live in Islington next door to William’s grandson, a fruiterer. Of the other children of Thomas senior and Mary, Ann died young and Susannah married and remained in St. Albans. I believe that William became a shoemaker in Stoke Newington and my ancestor, that John also became a shoemaker and went to South Mimms and that Sarah married Joseph Steel, who changed his name to Seear and was a grocer in Ham.

The same Christian names do recur, although none of them are particularly unusual. Thomas junior of St Albans has Thomas, Elizabeth, Charles Robert (names from his wife’s family), John and William. John of South Mimms has Mary, William, Sarah, Elizabeth, Susanna, Emma, Catherine and Ann. ‘My’ William has Sarah, Thomas, John, Samuel, Mary, James, Susanna Maria, Elizabeth Ann, Frances, Charlotte and Ann. Do I consider that all this is enough to break down the brick wall? No, no quite. There are missing marriages and burials that would help. Locating Ann Birch and even more importantly George Day would be useful. The Putney Steel family does have some unaccounted for daughters who might have married a Day. I guess that, for now, I have to be content with the fact that the brick wall has fewer bricks in it than it did a few days ago. In the meantime, if anyone has a sledge hammer or two to take to the remaining bricks out of my wall I’d be grateful.

Blind, Book and Stone – with a Side of Family History

Mar27 by thehistoryinterpreter

Forget Bell, Book and Candle, this week has been more about Blind, Book and Stone. First of all though, there were more utilities to deal with, as my internet provider sent an engineer to try to work out why my once stable internet had become decidedly flaky. A new router was installed and not wishing to tempt fate, I won’t say much but fingers crossed. This of course meant that all my devices that were connected to the wifi had to be reconnected using the excessively long and totally unmemorable password. I long for the days when the password was ‘hop-think-lazy’ and not a garbled string of two dozen letters and numbers. At least two people in my family will have memorised it after being told it once but as for me, no chance.

Next, having lived here a year, I treated myself to a new kitchen blind to replace the slightly manky and unattractive one that came with the house. Then came the learning curve known as ‘how to install a blind’. To make life more difficult, the kitchen window is over the sink so there wasn’t even easy access. The fisherman of my acquaintance personfully attempted to install said blind. This was accomplished and I didn’t even hear any swearing, ok so I was six miles away at the time but hey. The process did involve the complete disappearance of a dropped screw, which I suspect probably ended up down the plughole. Despite the liberal use of a spirit level, said blind did look just a tad on the wonk. I was just grateful that it was on the wall and not thrown in the bin in frustration, so was going to let this pass. I treated the harassed workman to celebratory cake in the best café in the world, which meant I got to eat cake too – win! Bless him, he arrived next day, determined to correct the list to starboard. To be honest, I was all for letting sleeping blinds lie but no, it was removed from the wall and after a certain degree of exasperation, it is now parallel to the ceiling. I did wonder if he was angling for another portion of cake.

Stones then. This should probably be a garden make-over post but I will write about their installation there. I decided, as it seemed to be the week for spending ridiculous amounts of money (I’d also booked three expensive holidays), I would buy some chippings to cover some unsightly tarmac. I ordered the chippings, carefully calculating that their ‘delivery in 3-5 working days’ would fall on a day when I was home. Day 5 has come and gone and I am still waiting and according to the tracking, they will now arrive on a day when I am out. I just hope that they don’t deposit them in front of the outward opening back gate. Watch this space for the next episode.

Family history has not be forgotten. I am enjoying leading my Pharos Female Ancestors course. It is quite an intensive course but the students are lovely and seem to be enjoying it. I had visions of working alongside them to get on with a biography of my mother but I am also trying, for the sixth time, to finish my biography with my Society of Genealogists’ biography club members and it just isn’t going to happen. Still, female ancestors runs again in September so maybe I will have better luck then. On the subject of women’s history, my blog for women’s history month has appeared on the Pen and Sword website. In more book news, my publisher has now brought out the second and much revised edition of Putting your Ancestors in their Place in paperback. This weekend will see more family history fun as I multi task at the Really Useful Family History Show in Kinson, near Poole. I am speaking, personning an advice desk and dividing my time between Devon Family History Society and A Few Forgotten Women stands.

Another of this week’s adventures involved a nighttime (well, it was after 9pm) drive out to some nearby countryside in order to look for a forecast aurora, where there wasn’t much light pollution. The only other cars in sight probably contained courting couples – I didn’t look too closely and I spent the time worrying that the gate to the area would be shut early and we, or at least the car, would be stuck until morning. I am not convinced that the vague light in the sky that my phone picked up was anything remotely aurora-like but we tried.

Manic March

Mar16 by thehistoryinterpreter

Pretty manic so far anyway. We’ve had Rootstech. I still haven’t found time to listen to the sessions on my watch list, thank goodness for recordings. My own #Rootstech short recorded session ‘Where am I? Are you searching in the right place?‘ is now available – along with my sessions from 2024.

I seem to have wasted hours of my life on the phone to ‘utilities’ this week. First trying to understand why my normally stable internet has become decidedly flaky, randomly particularly in the morning. An engineer is booked. Then a utility company I won’t name want to change the smart meters I didn’t want in the first place (they were already installed when I moved in). Trying to arrange an appointment was not without issue. I was asked all the same questions by two different people, ‘Is there a dog?’ ‘Are the meters accessible?’ etc. Having said I had no long term disabilities the first time I was soooooo tempted to say when asked the second time ‘well only the ones I’ve developed in the last two minutes’. I did get a rant in about how I felt smart meters were of zero use to me whatsoever! Watching the meter whirl round won’t make me turn things off, if I don’t need the appliance on it won’t be on in the first place. I quite like to read my own meters so I know what to expect. Hey Ho – old school I guess. Having arranged said appointment by phone, I am still getting texts asking why I haven’t responded to make an appointment. That would be because I already have one – left hand right hand. After all that I felt in need of a lie down in a darkened room.

Then on Friday it was off ‘up north’ – well at least ‘up north’ from here, I had to de-ice the car – ever tried getting the lid off new de-icer? De-icer canisters are by definition are chilly to grasp – the solution involved a knife. The journey was in order to attend the Midland Family History Show in Malvern where I was personing the Devon Family History Society stand, chatting to friends and eating a lot. In-person get togethers are fewer and further between these days, so it made a change and in two weeks’ time we will be doing it all again in Dorset for the Really Useful Show. Now I am safely home. Mostly unpacked and still eating.

Looking Back Looking Forward

Feb21 by thehistoryinterpreter

Life has been full of presentations, both online and in person. Every routeway in Devon seems to be fraught with road closures at the moment, so some of the in person ones have involved ‘interesting’ journeys. On one occasion, we were foiled in both directions by signs that said ‘Road closed follow the diversion’. This on a road that had had no turnings for a mile or so and not a diversion arrow in sight. We are used to narrow twisty lanes but I swear some of the places we ended up weren’t roads – no visible signs of tarmac at any rate. Then, about a mile up a road that was barely wide enough for the car, a sign that said ‘Danger no Entry’ and a firmly barred farm gate. Cue a million point turn. The joys of presenting in out of the way areas.

I have just started delivering a monthly ‘Biography Club’ for the Society of Genealogists. The first session was met with plenty of enthusiasm and yet again, I have vowed to keep up with the attendees and fill in the gaps in my own biography. I’ve made a good start but some sections still need to be tackled. I am also coming to the end of a full Pharos course for those wanting to find out more about their agricultural labouring ancestors. As one course closes another begins and it will soon be time for the first presentation of my online course for Pharos about putting female ancestors into context. I am really looking forward to this and have deluded myself that I might keep up with the students for this one too, looking at my mother’s story. The course is full to capacity and beyond but it will run again later in the year and if you are interested, you can book a place now.

Next on the horizon is Rootstech from 6-9 March and I look forward to learning from colleagues across the world. I just have one short recorded presentation this time. ‘Where am I? Are you searching in the right place?’ My pre-recorded sessions from last year are also available.

8 March is International Women’s Day and I am presenting for the Alfred Gillett Trust. My own presentation is to be followed by telling the stories of working women, with my A Few Forgotten Women friends. You can book for this free event here. Then March is crowded with the Three Counties Fair at Malvern, which is just for fun and then the Really Useful Show in Kinson near Poole, where I am speaking.

Advance notice too that I will be giving two presentations at the Secrets and Lies conference in Peterborough in September, organised by the Halstead Trust. Early bird bookings are now being taken.

On the writing front, I have done a couple of articles for Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine. The first, on researching female ancestors, should be in the next issue. My next book, ‘A History of Women’s Work‘, due for publication in May, is now available to pre-order if you want a hardback. Paperbacks and ebooks will also be available.

After all that I can breathe – or probably not.

WeAre Having Fun

Jan27 by thehistoryinterpreter

Some months ago, because I teach ‘Writing and Sharing your Family History’ courses, I was given access to the, then brand new, WeAre family and local history sharing platform. I need to say first of all that this came without any strings. I am not obliged to review it, mention it, or recommend it and I have zero financial interest in the software. Platforms with similar aims have come and in some cases, gone but I was keen to give this a try. I can say that it is definitely the best sharing platform of its kind that I have seen.

When it first arrived, I had a little play. I had recently set up my own Granny’s Tales website. I do wonder if WeAre had come first, whether I would have used that instead but I was not going to abandon Granny’s Tales. What could I do with WeAre that was different/complementary to my other ways of publicising my research? One of the main features of WeAre is the ability to share your research with relatives and if you wish, allow them to collaborate. This is always a tricky one – what relatives? Lacking siblings or first cousins and second cousins numbering just six, it is pretty stony ground for me. That left my children and grandchildren. I have used Family Tree Maker software for my family trees since it was on 3½” floppy disks but I don’t have a single tree; I could never control that. This meant that I didn’t have a GedCom that I could upload containing all the family members that I have gathered in nearly fifty years of research. I did however have a ‘tree’ which just included all my children’s direct ancestors, so I uploaded that. I added my father’s brothers and a few photos and pretty much forgot about it.

Then WeAre added features that were geared towards One-Place Studies, so I decided I would dust off my One Place Study for Thockrington and use it for that. I uploaded about forty people, wrote an introduction, added a little general stuff and promptly returned it to the back burner. Then my lovely Forgotten Women ~~coven~~ friends, several of whom were also using WeAre, decided that we would Zoom and all work on our sites on a specific day. This worked really well, both in terms of mutual encouragement and also technical assistance. What one person hadn’t worked out how to do, another had. This reignited my enthusiasm for my one place study and firmed my resolve to get on and add more. We are definitely going to have more mutual help sessions to encourage us to actually get things done to our sites.

I decided to begin with Thockrington’s graveyard, adding those commemorated on the surviving stones. This will not be quick; it took me two days to do ten stones. There are fifty four. Then of course there are parish registers, censuses, wills, tax lists and all the other sources I have used, so I will need to live until I am 150 but baby steps. I can’t even say the site is still in its infancy, more like still in the womb but maybe it is entering its second trimester. I have made it live, so the others from the mutual encouragement group can see it but there’s so much to be done, that it is probably best to say that it is a soft launch!

Then, out of the blue, Edward, aged ten, asked some family history questions. I have been trying to interest young people, including my grandchildren, in family history and heritage since forever, so I grasped this straw with both hands. I was reminded that his direct ancestry was all there on WeAre. He started by looking for houses that he and his parents had lived in to add to the map. Then he wanted to chat about family history on Zoom. He was interested in ‘the medieval period, famous people who aren’t you Granny, funny names and weird jobs.’ Hmm this was something of a challenge. I quickly exhausted the possibilities of the founder of Smith’s crisps, who was my great grandfather’s cousin. I do still have Anne Balls Bulley up my sleeve but where to go next?

Then a friend reminded me that Family Search has an activity that tells you how you are related to ‘famous people’. Unfortunately, this is based on the Family Search ‘one tree’, which is stuffed full of what we will call kindly ‘creative genealogy’ aka total garbage. Last time I looked at my famous relatives, I firmly removed my connection to Princess Diana for the nth time. Fortunately Princess Di no longer features, leaving me with Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, Lucille Ball, Elvis Presley and Helen Keller. Edward had heard of Winston Churchill and Elvis at least. He happily went away and found out about Helen Keller, although I have to say that the link is ‘speculative’. Of the five, the most convincing is the connection to Churchill. At least here my own line does go back to the alleged mutual ancestor. If Edward wants to add Churchill to our tree he is welcome. He can add Helen Keller if he chooses. This is not my main ‘correct’ tree, it is not public. If it sparks his interest that’s what matters. The ‘what is the evidence for this, are we sure?’ conversation can come later. The key to encouraging young people is to let them do things their way. Edward added his cats to the tree; I will take being grandparent to two cats. I am anticipating Edward’s cousin may want to add her tankful of tropical fish one by one, right down to the snails that inhabit her tank but it doesn’t matter. Give birth to fifteen guinea pigs if you have to, do whatever it takes to ignite that curiosity about the past. WeAre having fun.

The Year so Far – a Family History Whirlwind

Jan15 by thehistoryinterpreter

The year began with family visitors, which is always very special. As a bonus, this year they didn’t include any lurgies amongst their seasonal gifts. The new year also means paying the tax bill. This wasn’t a surprise and the money was put aside but it is always a bit of a shock to see the bank balance suddenly depleted by what seems to be an eye-watering amount. Added to this, it seemed I needed to pay a different HMRC bank account, which meant setting up a new payee. I have one of those little card reader things that gives you a secret code to verify that you are not a fraudster. I’ve had the thing for ages, which is probably why it chose this moment to decide that its batteries had had enough. Before these obscure-sized and expensive batteries died a final death, they gave me a partial glimpse of the vital number. Could I guess what figures they were striving to reveal? It turns out that I could. Hurrah.

It has been full on family history on many fronts since the visitors departed. I’ve finished a magazine article. My new book is signed off and is due out in May, pre-orders should be opening up soon. I love they cover that Pen and Sword have chosen. I’ve also, rashly, signed a contract for another one. Will I ever learn? Not totally unrelated, is the work I’ve been doing towards the next Forgotten Women Friday collaborative research day for the A Few Forgotten Women project. This one is to be about women associated with Dorchester Prison.

My Pharos Agricultural Labourers online course has started again this week with a full, enthusiastic cohort. Next up on the Pharos front will be the first presentation of ‘Putting your Female Ancestors into Context’ in March. This filled up so quickly, that I agreed to take more students than usual. This means that there are still just two spaces left, if you want to come along for the ride.

I’ve have been giving talks like, well, like someone who gives an awful lot of talks I suppose. I’ve been out and about in person chatting about herbs and plague and online with the history of prostitution, marginalised ancestors and writing your family history amongst other things. This has taken me to Northern Ireland, to Surrey to Lincoln and other points in between. I have also recorded talks for future broadcasts. Rootstech is on the horizon. The pre-recorded talks have not yet been announced but there will be a short session from me in there, when I will be talking about British administrative units, do you know your townland from your wapentake, or your riding from your peculiar? If not, seek out my ten minute chat when Rootstech opens next month. Even better, online attendance is free. Legacy Family Tree Webinars have announced this year’s programme and I will be popping up there too later in the year. It is a fascinating programme, well worth the subscription.

The volume of talks in a sort space of time has obviously been getting to me, as on the night before two talks Monday I had a bizarre dream in which I had double booked myself and my mother was going to deputise for me. A couple of issues with this. She isn’t actually alive and she’d decided she was going to talk about red wine, a subject about which she knew nothing in life.

A little late to the party, I’ve been playing with Family Search’s full text search facility, which is in experimental mode and can be accessed at https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/ once you are signed in to Family Search, which is free. This allows you to use AI generated transcriptions to search for names within the body of a document, such as the beneficiaries in a will for example. My take on this is that there is loads of good stuff on there and this has the potential to be brilliant but as yet there are still some drawbacks, which is understandable, as this is still being trialled. AI’s palaeography skills are pretty basic and mistakes are made that would not be made by a human, such as ‘Michael wears’ for Michaelmas,, rendering the sentence nonsensical. Searching is clumsy. It is very difficult to narrow down the results. You need to ignore the headings, which are often very misleading. Documents labelled Warwickshire, for example, turn out to also include many other counties. Having said that, it is definitely worth a play but make sure you have a few hours to spare first.

I’ve even found time for some of my own research and am deep down a rabbit hole following the story of a several greats uncle who was transported. It will be coming to a Granny’s Tales site near you shortly.

What Janet did Next

Nov12 by thehistoryinterpreter

Time for a bit of a round-up of recent events, both in the family history world and beyond. Let’s start with the beyond stuff. It was time for one of my infrequent trips to the hairdressers. I engender despair in all those who attempt to do things to my hair. “It is HOW long since you last had your hair cut?” I am asked in incredulous tones. Then having established that I just ‘wash and go’ she asked if I blow-dried my fringe to give it more volume. Lady, you are talking to someone who hasn’t owned a hairdryer for fifty years!

As a non-cook Christmas cake and pudding and occasionally chutney are pretty much my only forays into cooking (beyond shoving things in the oven and taking them out again) but it was time to undertake the annual challenge. Goodness, this actually involves weighing stuff and mixing stuff together. No longer having a Rayburn to assist, I decided, for the first time ever, to cook puddings in the slow cooker. My recipe makes three puddings. Realistically, even accounting for visitors, I really don’t want more than two but three it always has been, so three it is. The slow cooked ones did need finishing off on the hob but they were looking really good. The cakes, yes two of those too because well because there always are two, not so much, well, more of a disaster actually. In my defence, I have a new-to-me oven, although I really can’t blame the results on that. I cooked them for the prescribed time. I cooked them some more and then for several more hours but they remained in an oily uncooked state. I risked taking them out of the tins and they slumped gracefully into a heap. I fear mixed peel was to blame. I am quite a fan of mixed peel so for the last 45 or so years that I’ve been cooking these, I always add extra mixed peel. Ok, so I’ll concede that four times what was required by the recipe was an expensive mistake but we live and learn. The end product is edible but cake it is not, not by any stretch of the imagination. A fisherman of my acquaintance is manfully working his way through two cakes worth of fruity blob, heating portions in the microwave and adding ice cream.

Next, the saga that was trying to renew my house insurance. There’s a ‘new system’, requiring answers to questions that haven’t been asked before. This means that, on the renewal notice, they have basically made up a load of ‘average’ answers to fill in the blanks. Having got over the issue of nothing on the system even vaguely resembling my occupation, I corrected a few things. These included “When did you move in?” – their answer 1900; must say, I feel pretty good for 124. “How many storeys do you have? 2 (yes it says it is a bungalow etc etc). New killer question, “Are you less than 400m from the sea, a river, or a water course?” I had the devil’s own job trying to work this out. Point 1, where do you count the sea from? High tide? Low tide? and then high tides vary. Point 2, even if you know where the sea starts how the ***** do you measure because they obviously want the answer as the crow flies and even the most detailed map really isn’t going to give me an accurate enough measurement. If the distance was 200m or 600m I’d know the answer but 400m is pretty much exactly how far I am from the sea, sometimes. In the end I had to say I was nearer, as I could just imagine them refusing to pay out on a burglary because I’d said I was further away and it turned out that I was 398m away. After a load of faffing and trying to find out on useless websites it turned out not to make a difference to the premium anyway. Half an hour of my life I won’t get back. At least I have no longer lived in a two story bungalow for 124 years with a mythical husband.

I’ve also spent a wonderful eighteen hours in an idyllic location, eating good food and trying to solve a murder mystery set on the French Riviera. It was exceptionally well done and although we didn’t identify ’im wot dun it, we came very close, largely because the people on our table spent ten years living in the location where the story was set.

On the family history front, The A Few Forgotten Women Team, of which I am a proud member, have held another very successful collaborative research day, this time looking at women who can be found in refuges for fallen women in a census return. I did the example biography for this, a lady called Lucy Adderley; she certainly had a story to tell. Then my allocated lady for the day, Fanny Sophia Austen, who was a staff member in the institution, turned out to be a niece of THE Jane Austen.

I’ve recorded and uploaded my presentation for Rootstech 2025. Just a short recorded session from me this year about UK places, distinguishing your lathes from your hundreds and your tithings from your townlands. I, deliberately, haven’t taken on any paid research for quite some time but this week, I was tasked with untangling two people of the same name and establishing how they were related. It turned out that there were actually several more people with the same, unusual, name, all related and the inevitable total nonsense on a plethora of online family trees, which I studiously avoided. It was great fun and I was able to confirm for the client that the two individuals were first cousins.

My online Pharos course about twentieth century research is drawing to a close and a new course about the ill health of our ancestors has just begun. You’ve barely missed anything if you want to join in with In Sickness and and Death. The course last five weeks and the lessons are sent to you as pdfs that you can follow when it is convenient to you. There’s an optional weekly online chat and a student forum.

Time I think for a comment about FindMyPast’s (FMP) new subscription structure. This has created a cheaper, tier of subscription, where you can’t search for anything but you are dependent on hints that their algorithm suggests may be the person that you want. In general, I am a fan of FMP and have used it continuously since before it was even called FMP. I much prefer it to their main competitor. I am also in favour of making genealogy more accessible, which some would argue cheaper subscription can do. Having said that, I can’t see that this is going to do anything but encourage shoddy research. Maybe it is meant to be a carrot to encourage full subscriptions but so many will just do what a prominent family historian (pretty sure it was Dave Annal) called ‘click and collect’. For me, the fun is in the research in any case. I’d rather have my properly researched tree of about 3700 (and that has taken nearly fifty years to amass and includes my grandchildren’s families too) than 70,000 people in five minutes that I know nothing about, many of whom will not actually be my relatives at all. I guess it is a hobby and each to their own but I have to say that, in my opinion, this is not FMP’s brightest idea. If it encourages more subscribers I suppose the silver lining is that there will be funds for the digitisation of more records for those of us who want to do it properly.

It occurs to me that I haven’t blogged about family history since the excellent All About That Place event. If you want to hear me chatting about my straw plaiting ancestors in Buckinghamshire, or the General View of Agriculture, just click on the links.

Finally, because I have gone on for far too long, I have joined the eXodus, as it is being called and am enjoying the unpolluted social media waters over on BlueSky, where a rapidly increasing number of my friends and colleagues can be found.

The History Interpreter – Janet Few

Presenting and Preserving the Past

Tag Archives: Family History