I have been hidden down so many rabbit warrens with family history research this week that I may have grown long ears and a fluffy tail. I’m definitely in full on family history mode. I’ve attacked three major brick walls with a wrecking ball but still they stand, although in one case, I am tempted to climb over the rubble and add the ‘almost certainly my 3x great grandfather’ to my tree.

Problem one, Josiah Lamball, great unusual name you’d think wouldn’t you but no. Every last cousin for generations in and around Bampton, Oxfordshire called their child Josiah. Forget being called Lamball, let’s just throw in a Lambert or Lambeth for good measure. Definitely let’s ignore eleventy billion online trees who are convinced my Josiah descended from another specific Josiah. He didn’t. Look at the original records guys. This Josiah witnesses his father’s will with a totally different signature to the one on my Josiah’s marriage. I am pretty sure I know who his grandfather was and teeny tiny DNA matches agree but as they are all related anyway ………..

Leaving Oxfordshire (virtually) I travel to Northumberland, where I will shortly be literally, hence revisiting these branches now in case I want to add any places to my must visit list. Here, I am still frantically trying confirm my hypotheses that will take me back to my first non-English ancestor. The Elliotts first, who, lovely people, help by leaving wills. Sadly though, these rule out the strongest candidate for the father of Mary Elliott of Chollerton. I am now pinning my hopes on two wills that are not online via the wonderful North East Inheritance Database. I have taken out a second mortgage to order these from the Borthwick.

Don’t get me started on John Newlands who married Ann (Nanny) Corbit in Alwinton. Helpfully, this marriage is also recorded in the register for Oxnam in Roxburghshire, where it seems banns were called. Mortgage for Scotland’s People alert. I’ll give you that this entry says he married Bettie Corbit (Ann’s mother’s name) but it also gives the name of the farm where she lived in Alwinton, so it is the same couple. No burial record for John but I do have a photograph that I took of his gravestone. It has his age and date of death but despite all the photo manipulation in the world I can’t read it. Can I hope that it will have miraculously become legible five years further down the line when I visit? There’s even a highly likely looking baptism, naming a patterns fit etc. etc.. Those eleventy billion people with online trees of epic proportions would agree that this is the one. Except, there’s a much more plausible marriage for this John Newlands. No problem, say the eleventy billion, we will kill off wife number one so he can marry twice. Except, she is still alive, well and bearing children for the next ten years. There are no alternative likely baptisms. Could he have been ‘married’ to two women, one either side of the border at the same time? I suppose so but pretty unlikely. Firmly stuck here.

Aside from all this, I’ve been giving my ‘Researching your British Ancestors and their Communities in the early Twentieth Century’ online course a revamp ready for its next presentation. Unlike Paddy McGuinness in this week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? I expect you know the names of your grandparents but how much do you actually know about their lives and the communities in which they grew up? This course is a great springboard for telling the stories of those ancestors. Yes, I know my granny’s biography has been stuck in 1939 for far too long. It is on the to do list I promise. Read the story so far here. Why not join me on the course and find out more about your own grandparents? It is also a great chance for all those One-place studiers out there to focus on their places in the years 1900-1945.

Then I’ve been working on the background to Homes for ‘Fallen Women’ for A Few Forgotten Women, who will be looking at this in November. Next Friday, we are researching pupils from schools for the deaf but that’s another story. Anyway, fallen women. I was seeking a suitable case study, whose story I could record for International Day of the Girl in October. I spent literally a whole day false starting numerous girls before I found one that involves accusations of murder and four generations of illegitimacy. She’s the one!

The All About That Place excitement is hotting up and they now have a website. I have a list as long as my to do list of talks I want to listen to. Many are by friends, others will be new to me speakers with fascinating topics. My own two contributions are an Introduction to the General View of Agriculture, which I try to drag into every talk I give and Over One Under Two – the story of my straw plaiting great great grandmother Anne Stratford from Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire. She is always up there among my favourite ancestors since I discovered that she grew up in the road where I lived for three years, although I didn’t know I had any connections to Buckinghamshire at the time. This was over forty years ago, I was still being fooled by my uncle saying they were from Cumberland! Ann will also get a mention in the online talk I am giving Women’s Lives on the Farm which is part of the Society of Genealogists ‘Was your Ancestor an Agricultural Labourer? Day There’s still time to sign up for that one.

In other matters. I now almost have shelves so I can unpack the last two post move boxes (not counting the things that live in boxes). I don’t know who needs to know this but if you move a heavy dresser there’s the likelihood that the doors won’t shut when you move it back. I have been risking fingers trying to shove bits of cardboard under one corner whilst the trusty assistant manfully lifts one corner. Dear reader, my fingers survived.

As one year comes to an end and another looms on the horizon we often have wonderful intentions about where the next year will take us. Sometimes we make commitments that relate to our health or long overdue tasks. As genealogists, we might make research plans for the forthcoming twelve months. Meeting with relatives over the holiday season might have reawakened enthusiasm for investigating a particular branch of the family. One thing that all too many of us continually put off is the task that we label ‘writing it up’. One day we will put all this in some sort of coherent order for our nearest and dearest. We just want to kill off auntie Annie/get back one more generation/prove that family rumour first. In short, we want to ‘finish’ our research but as all but the most naïve genealogists know, the day that we finish our research never comes.

Why then are we putting off the dreaded ‘writing it up’? Some feel that their online tree, plus rigorous source citations, is a finished product in itself. Ask yourself though how appealing this is to non-genealogist family members. You are much more likely to spark their interest with stories, with context. To make your family into three dimensional characters, you need to think about the local and social historical background to their lives.

My father’s portrait of me, aged about 4

Many of us, especially if we have been researching for years, just put ‘writing it up’ very firmly in the ‘too hard’ basket and screw down the lid. It is true that it can be a daunting task but it is one that should be tackled, sooner rather than later. To begin with, ‘writing it up’ doesn’t have to mean a book. There are many other formats, both traditional and more unusual, that can be a vehicle for telling your family’s story. Some of these are much less scary than a book and may suit your own particular strengths. Perhaps you feel that your literary skills are lacking. Don’t worry, if you can read this you will be fine.

You do not have to do it all at once. Concentrate on a small twig at a time, not the whole tree. Set yourself a realistic deadline; perhaps there is a family reunion or an anniversary coming up that could be a target. The most important thing is to stop procrastinating and put fingers to keyboard. Yes, you will find loose ends on the way; extra pieces of research that need doing but don’t let these divert you for too long – there can always be volume two! Think about your potential audience and what might appeal to them. In the end, this impossible task can become enjoyable rather than a millstone round your neck.

If your New Year’s resolution was to lose weight or to give up smoking, you might well seek help from a group who were embarking on the same journey. Researching and writing can be solitary activities, so mutual support and encouragement is important here too. If you publicly announce your intention to do something, be it taking more exercise or telling your family’s story, that public declaration is in itself a motivator. Can you get together as a small group and meet to share your progress and problems? Can you find a course that might offer both guidance and encouragement? Whatever route you decide to take, please don’t let 2020 be yet another year when you don’t start to ‘write it up’. Good luck. I am sure you will get satisfaction from your creation.

Janet Few runs ‘Writing and Telling your Family History’ courses for Pharos Teaching and Tutoring.  The next one starts on 31 March 2020,. These are online courses, which can be taken from anywhere in the world. This one is particularly appropriate for those with British ancestry.

Until recently, I was a columnist for the In-depth Genealogist Magazine and also wrote for their blog. Now the magazine is sadly no more, contributors have been invited to re-post their blog material elsewhere, so that it is preserved. This is another post that I wrote for the magazine, which I have edited to bring it up  to date.

Regular readers will know that my historical novel Barefoot on the Cobbles is set in the early twentieth century. It is based on a true story and the sources that I used, in order to research the lives of the characters, are those that I also use for family history research. With the gift-giving season in mind, I am busy promoting it and my other books as potential present options. Sadly, many family historians do not focus on their more recent ancestors. This is a shame, especially in the era of DNA testing, when researching forwards can help us to understand our DNA matches and enable us to progress backwards.

I thought I would share my four favourite twentieth century sources. Regrettably, only one of these is universally available online. I realise that this may be frustrating for those of you who are unable to visit the relevant English archives. I am spreading the word about these fascinating record sets in the hope that raising awareness will encourage you to persuade the data-providing websites to make them part of their digitising programme, so that they can be accessible to all.

Firstly, the 1910 Valuation Office records. They are largely un-indexed and often ignored; yet their value is equal to that of a census return. The returns are arranged geographically and every property was valued, resulting in four pages of information being recorded in ‘Field Books’. Owners and occupiers’ names are given, together with details such as: when the tenancy commenced, how much rent was paid and who was responsible for repairs. Entries also include a description of the property’s construction, condition and number of rooms. The records for England and Wales are held at The National Archives (TNA), at Kew, in class IR58. The equivalent records for Scotland and Ireland are held at National Records for Scotland and The National Archives, Ireland. A research guide, Valuation Office Survey is available and reading this is highly recommended. Fortunately, the data provider The Genealogist is gradually releasing these records on their subscription website, I am eagerly awaiting the counties that are relevant to me.

Another under-used source is the National Farm Survey of 1941, which again is held at TNA. Class MAF32 includes a series of four forms relating to each land holding. These are:

• The Farm Survey itself, completed by the surveyor, giving the names of the owner, occupier.
• The 1941 Agricultural Census, which lists the acreage, crops and livestock on the holding.
• The Labour and Motive Power Survey. This lists tractors and machinery but also gives information relating to tenanted land, such as the rent paid and when the tenancy began.
• The Soft Fruit and Vegetables for Human Consumption Survey, which is particularly useful in market gardening areas.

There is a National Archives’ Research Guide, which gives further information about the Farm Survey.

The Absent Voters’ Lists are a specific kind of electoral roll. They were compiled in 1918 and 1919 to allow those who were still on active service to vote. For each individual listed, there is also information on their military service, ship, regiment, number and rank as appropriate. Surviving records are likely to be in local archives. There are further details and links to a few online lists.

Finally, a site that you can all consult and will be of interest if your family were in England during the First World War. This is the Red Cross website, which gives details of the service of all the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses. The site allows access to the personnel records of over 90,000 volunteers, with details of the hospitals in which they served, as well as giving interesting background information.

The next presentation of my five week online course ‘Discovering your British Family and Community in the Early Twentieth Century’, run by Pharos Tutoring and Teaching, starts in January. There is still time to book if you would like to start the new genealogical research year in style. Incidentally, comments on twenty four different sources that I used when researching Barefoot on the Cobbles appeared on my blog in December 2018, so do check back in the archives for these.

Image: screen shot from https://vad.redcross.org.uk