Tag Archives: genealogy

April Ancestral Adventures

by thehistoryinterpreter

Apologies for the recent lack of blogs. After four months, the overwhelming waves of post-Covid exhaustion are, I hope, finally abating but I still seem to be working at half speed. Apart from the gardening, of which more another time and some lovely beach-side walks, now it has, at last, decided to stop raining, there have been some family history forays.

In no particular order: I have been working on finishing off another book. This won’t see the light of day until well into next year, so I don’t want to say too much but I needed to find a case study of a Victorian midwife. This will be similar to the case studies in my Marginalised Ancestors book. Usually, you have to false start several possibilities before finding one that goes somewhere but this time I found a brilliant one first time. To be fair, I did put ‘midwife AND murder’ into the newspaper search but what a story. This lady claims to have been born in three different countries in the census returns and gave birth in a fourth country. She is also vague about her age and doesn’t always use the same forename. To add to the complications, there is another midwife, with the same, not very usual, name, well the same as one version of her name, who has a husband of the same name to boot. Once I’d realised that these were two different people I was away.

We’ve had another Forgotten Women Friday, which saw me tracing a staff member from the Fleming Children’s Hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I’ve helped a member of my no longer quite so local, local history group take a dive into his ancestry and am hoping to find his ancestor’s parentage, despite the lack of a baptism.

Next, a brick wall to solve ahead of the August Devon Family History Society brick walls session. I only started this yesterday but I think I may have cracked it. It relies on signatures in marriages registers. Hopefully I can tie that one up today. Also yesterday, a history group outing to Coldridge; just possibly the resting place of Edward V aka the elder of the princes in the tower. Assuming, of course, that the ‘murdered by Richard III’, or even ‘murdered by Henry VII to discredit Richard III’ narratives are not true. The food provided by the local village ladies’ pop-up café was excellent, the company was good and the presentation in the church was thought provoking. I remain to be wholly convinced by the ‘evidence’, which is of the circumstantial variety but there are certainly several factors to consider. An interesting story if you are prepared to take it with a healthy dose of scepticism but also an open mind.

What else? I’ve led another cohort of Pharos online students through my ‘Writing up your Family History’ course. I’ve given several online talks, including the one about the Smith family of London. Excitingly, a DNA link, made just the day before, allowed another Smith descendant to attend. Mistress Agnes has chatted to a WI group meeting about her herb garden, with the bonus of being treated to an Elizabethan style meal. I’ve talked about Uproar and Disorder and Marginalised Ancestors and this weekend it is In-migration, with a dash of illegitimacy and Insanity on the horizon.

I’ve been creating a new presentation about surviving the sixteenth century, which will also be adapted to become surviving the seventeenth century. This is going to be an interactive experience. No spoilers but the audience probably won’t survive. Conversations such as, ‘bother I have six people left ……… not to worry they can get syphilis’, have been heard. Just a shame that I don’t think this one will work other than in person.

Sometimes people think speakers charge a lot for ‘one hour’s work’. Quite apart from researching and writing the talk in the first place, which will probably take several days, any speaker worth their salt will run through and tweak before every performance, checking slides, handouts and links. With this in mind, I’ve adapted my heirlooms presentation and also worked on one for the 50th anniversary of the Family History Federation, to deliver in person at their AGM. I wasn’t quite in at the beginning but I was at the 10th anniversary, having already been involved in family history for seven years. How to make yourself feel old in one easy lesson.

I’ve had committee meetings, met up with friends and tried to learn Cornish (even after eighteen months I am still at the lots of words not many sentences stage – I did say that languages were not my forte). I’ve also had a visit from one half of my descendants, which involved extremely windy beach visits, guarding coats while they behave like ninjas (best not to ask) and building Lego, including the Lego family tree that was their birthday gift.

I guess, put like this, I’ve had a productive month but I am haunted by the twenty-five things still on the April to do list. I guess there’s always May, except I have a very full May diary (currently stands at one free evening), including a family reunion weekend and hopefully a trip to Kresen Kernow (Cornwall’s Archives), which means I need to prepare for said archive visit and then there’s the job we must not mention looming, a journal and newsletter to edit aka write much of and …. and ….. and…….   Good to keep busy I guess.

Reading the Signs – a family history story

by thehistoryinterpreter

This story relates to my 4x great grandfather William Seear. Marriage of cousins in two successive generations not only accounts for a great deal and makes DNA research ‘interesting’, it also means that William is my 4x great grandfather three times over. He is also an insurmountable brick wall and has been since I first discovered him more than forty years ago.

So what do I know? Ten children were baptised to William and his wife Mary between 1782 and 1797, nine in Stoke Newington, London and one middle child in neighbouring Hackney. Two of these children are my 3x great grandparents (one of them twice over). Some of the baptism records tell me that William was a shoemaker. I have William’s burial in 1821. He was buried in Stoke Newington but ‘of Hackney’ and his age at burial suggests that he was born about 1753.

There are issues with researching the Seear surname as there are so many variations. Firstly, there are the spelling variants, Sear, Seer, Seare, Seere, Seeare and all those with an ‘s’ on the end. William though rarely uses anything other than Seear. Then there are the mistranscriptions and mis-indexing errors result from reading a capital S as an L or T, giving us Leear, Teear etc. etc.. Then there are the ‘e’s that turn into ‘c’s and the ‘ee’s or ‘ea’s that become ‘u’s, so we get Scurr, Secar and other delights.

So could I find William’s marriage? The earliest baptism for one of his children, was Sarah, on 11 August 1782. There was however a burial in 1784 for a Sarah Seer, daughter of William, a shoemaker and Mary his wife, which stated that the child was seven years and ten months old, meaning that she would have been born in July 1776. Did this push the likely date of marriage for William and Mary back a few years, or did Sarah’s late baptism suggest that her parents weren’t married at the time of her birth? With Sarah’s birth established as being in 1776, there was a large gap between Sarah and the next eldest child in 1783. There was however a Thomas Seear who had been born in Stoke Newington about 1780, for whom no baptism has been found. I had long suspected that Thomas was another of William and Mary’s children and he would certainly help to fill that gap.

There is other evidence that Thomas belongs to this family, as a Thomas Seear is the witness to the marriages of two children of William and Mary, Thomas’ probable siblings. This signature is very similar to that of Thomas of Stoke Newington when he married in 1806.

According to a family bible, that is not in my possession, a T Seear was godparent to the children of another of William and Mary’s children. I also have DNA matches to Thomas’ descendants, so I am happy that Thomas is an elventh child of the family.

Back to the search for William’s marriage. The world and a large number of wives are convinced that William married Mary Stone in Aldgate in September 1776, which would be after Sarah’s birth and explain the late baptism. He didn’t. I don’t know who William’s wife was but I am as certain as I can be that she wasn’t Mary Stone.

The marriage record for William Sears and Mary Stone reveals a confident signature for William Sears.

William the Stoke Newington shoemaker witnessed the marriages of several of his children. Even allowing for the passage of years, the signatures are very different to that on the marriage to Mary Stone.

Note that no child of William and Mary, whose baptism has been found, was called William, so this is not a brother, unless there’s a missing baptism between Sarah’s birth in 1776 and Thomas’ in 1780 and I don’t believe this is the case, as there is no other evidence of a William who could be a twelfth sibling.

So no marriage for William and Mary, what about William’s origins. There are clues. One of William’s daughters marries a Seear who descends from the Seear/Sear family of St. Albans in Hertfordshire; surely there is a connection. There are several shoemakers in the St. Albans/Hemel Hempstead branch.

The Seears intermarry with the Smith family in three successive generations. The early Smiths were watermen in Ham, in Kingston, Surrey, before moving to Hackney. When searching for the Smiths, I came across the will of a Joseph Seear, a grocer of Ham, who mentions his niece and housekeeper, Charlotte Seear, his brother William Seear of Stoke Newington and a Jeremiah Smith, a waterman. Charlotte and (John) Jeremiah Smith, a waterman, are my 3x great grandparents. Another sibling mentioned in the will is a John Seear, who was a ropemaker of South Mimms. Even with three siblings to search, I am unable to find convincing parents for William. The will also refers to a brother and sister, whose surname was Steel. I feel these must be a brother-in-law and sister-in-law but I can find no marriage for Joseph to a Steel. His wife could of course have been a widow and married under another name but still there is nothing obvious in the records.

No great breakthrough in this story I’m afraid but it does illustrate that, if you have ancestors who could sign their names, looking at the signatures in marriage registers, of both the couple and the witnesses, can help to rule out the wrong entries, even if it doesn’t reveal the right ones. If anyone can find the right William Seear marriage, or the baptisms of brothers William c. 1753, Joseph c.1743 and John c. 1762, I’d be very grateful.

Commemorating the Marginalised

by thehistoryinterpreter

Rootstech is round the corner and with it the option to see if I am related to any of the many lovely fellow-attendee family historians that I have got to know over the decades, both in person and online. Along with thousands of others, I am attending the mega international conference virtually, from the comfort of home and I’m looking forward to learning new things. As well as the ‘Relatives at Rootstech’ fun, there are options to see if you are related to famous people. Allegedly I have connections to a few. Most of these relationships are based on some seriously speculative genealogy. So, although I probably am Winston Churchill’s tenth cousin three times removed, I have serious doubts that the late queen is my 14th cousin, at least not in the way that is suggested. I suppose it would be mildly interesting to find that ‘Gateway Ancestor’ that leads back into royalty but even though I am about to enter my 48th year of serious research I have never found that connection. Do I care? Not in the slightest. My interest is in all those ordinary ancestors whose stories will never be told unless I tell them.

I find marginalised ancestors the most fascinating of all. What circumstances led them to become stigmatised, or to find themselves on society’s fringes? Was this down to their own actions, or society’s attitudes? I love to find the lawbreakers, the sick, the poverty stricken and the ostracised on my family tree. Not in the slightest because I want to reveal their stories in some kind of version of the sensationalist press but because their lives are so caught up in the social history and mores of their times. They become much more ‘real’ as their lives are revealed and of course they may leave traces in the documentary record.

It was this interest in those that history forgets that led me to give talks on the subject and my Rootstech presentation this year is about just that. Entitled ‘Tracing your Marginalised Ancestors in Britain’, I will be delivering this remotely but live at 8.30pm GMT (London Time) on Friday 1 March. If you register you can listen for free from anywhere in the world. I believe the session may be available afterwards too but that is still to be confirmed.

A couple of years ago, as a result of a magazine article I wrote on the subject, I was delighted to be approached by Pen and Sword to write a book to help others trace their own marginalised family members. It seems like forever since I finished writing it last March but it now exists as an actual book and those who ordered pre-publication copies should be receiving them any day now. If you have ordered a copy, please do post a photo on social media when it arrives, as I love to see where in the world my books end up. I am supposed to take a photo of me with the book for publicity purposes. This endeavour is hampered by the fact that I am the least photogenic person in the world. To detract from unphotogenic me, I decided it would be a good idea to utilise some of the spectacular landscape that is on my doorstep. This of course means it needs to be dry and ideally sunny. The first attempt was Monday. Bright, rather than sunny but unfortunately also windy. My fine, baby soft hair looks windswept when the Beaufort Scale is at zero. Let’s just say this photo shoot was not a success. It may have to be the ubiquitous, in front of the library shelves shot. You can order copies directly from Pen and Sword.

On the upside though, I have just signed a contract to write another book that may be out next year, or the one after; the writing is well underway.

The study of the marginalised ties in very well with my work with the A Few Forgotten Women Team and I am looking forward to talking about Forgotten Women, in person this time, at the Alfred Gillette Trust in Street, Somerset, to celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March. A Few Forgotten Women will also have a small exhibition, tickets are available here.

Rootstech Ramblings – my pick from the live online schedule

by thehistoryinterpreter

So the Rootstech schedule is now available and the excitement is building as we can begin to plan our time for the three days of intensive family history fun from 29 February to 2 March. Do you need to head off to Salt Lake City? – no – although I am sure in-person attendance would be great. Do you need to part with large sums of hard earned cash? Again no, if you are attending virtually, as I am, absolutely free. If you haven’t registered yet you can do so here.

I’ve been trawling the schedule of online talks deciding how to spend my time. It has required tricky choices, as there are often clashes but here is what I’ve decided. Bear in mind that there are plenty of great sessions and because this is not geared to UK time, I have had to forego some presentations that really are in the middle of the night. You can make you own choices here.

These are my decisions, though I reserve the right to change my mind. I’ll be back to tell you about some of them after the event. Thursday first. I am going to kick off at 3pm UK time with Nicholas Dixon’s Metropolitan Ancestors: finding families in Georgian and Victorian London. This complements my own ten minute recorded session that you can view any time London Calling, listing some key online resources for London research. With Smith ancestors in London this one is a must. I’ll follow it with Who is my Ancestor? Tracing individuals with similar names by D Joshua Taylor. Although it is US based, I thought it might be fun. Then an evening session with Diane L Richard Researching Modern Ancestors: unlocking the life of an English Rose, focussing on twentieth century research. This takes me to past my bedtime, so I will call it a night.

Friday next. I thought I’d listen in to the Impact Forum about the impact of family history beyond the genealogy community. I’ve changed my mind several times about the 7pm session but have gone for Reconstructing the Lives of our Female Irish Ancestors by Stephanie O Connell. I don’t have any Irish ancestors of my own, although my grandchildren do but with Forgotten Women in mind, I thought it would be interesting. No choice for what follows as it is my own Marginalised Ancestors talk, so I guess I’d better be there. The talk is written but is a bit too long, so I will need to decide what to leave out. It is going to be a fun talk to do going forward, as I can swap the case studies in and out for variety. Just a heads up. I will be mentioning my Marginalised Ancestors book, which is due to be published on 29 February. At the moment, you can pre-order this at a reduced price from Pen and Sword here. I am not sure if this offer will still be available by 1 March, when I am giving the talk, so if you think you might want the book of the talk, now is the time.

On Saturday I am going for Finding your Common Name Ancestor, with Shaunese Luthy – those Smiths again. Then, with my interest in the history of medicine in mind, Diseases our Ancestors Faced and How those Illnesses Changed our World with Gregory C Gardner. I am going to finish my smorgasbord of in real time talks with Nick Barratt’s Researching English Industrial Labourers.

But there’s more – literally hundreds of recorded talks that I can pick and choose from over the coming weeks. I’ll be back to tell you about my choices from these another time.

Oooh and I’ve just spotted that these delivered live talks will also be available after the event. I’ll definitely be reviewing the schedule and adding more from those that clashed with my choices, or were at less favourable times.

Tales of sorting the garage/sheds and garden will resume shortly – P.S. 190 boxes.

Is it Time to get the Kilt Out?

by thehistoryinterpreter

In a few months’ time I will be embarking on my 48th year of serious family history research. In all that time, all but one of my lines can be taken back into the eighteenth century, several into the seventeenth century and a few to the sixteenth century. My direct ancestors are spread across nine English counties, from Northumberland to Cornwall, with an additional three counties if I count where I am pretty certain brick wall lines came from. Every single one of all those direct ancestors and there are well over two hundred of them, that I have identified, was born or baptised in England. Until perhaps now. I have been whiling my waiting to move time away by revisiting my Northumbrian ancestry. Part of the story has already found its way on to my Granny’s Tales website. Incidentally, I decided to splash out and convert Granny’s Tales to a paid website so it now has a new URL, although the old one will still work.

Northumbrian ancestors then. This is an eighth of my ancestry, so there’s a lot to tell, even though great great grandad is a brick wall. I sorted the Hoggs and the Pearsons to the best of my ability, so it was time to turn to the Eadingtons. The Eadingtons are tricky; partly because there are so many spelling variations and partly because every last one of them, well almost, is called Patrick, David or James. Except of course when some of the Patricks decide to call themselves Peter just to add to the fun.

My earliest Eadington ancestor is 5x great grandfather David Eadington who married in Embleton in 1756, had some of his children baptised about ten miles from Embleton in Warenford Presbyterian Chapel and had some more children who he didn’t baptise at all, or whose baptism records don’t survive, then ended his days in Alnwick. His gravestone gives his age at death, which suggests that he was born in 1731 or January 1732. Of course, ages at burial are notoriously inaccurate but that’s all I have to go on. Conveniently though, David left a will and this includes mention of several nieces and nephews, children of his late, unnamed, brother. Following up these nephews and nieces, one of whom was also David’s daughter-in-law, at least some of whom have baptism records, revealed that the brother was called James. James married on Holy Island in 1768. James too has a convenient gravestone that leads to a birth between October 1729 and October 1730; so I was now looking for two brothers. There the research sat for several years.

If you believe the ‘wisdom’ of online trees (I don’t), David was baptised in Earlston, Berwickshire, Scotland in 1738, the son of Robert. Not only does these mean he was probably only eighteen when he married but there isn’t a single Robert in my Eadington family, nor was there a brother James. Although this was possible, I remained to be convinced. Investigating the Eadingtons of Holy Island, I discovered an Alice, or Alison Eadington who had an illegitimate son Patrick in 1763. It is almost certain that this Alison was the daughter of Patrick and Alison Eadington née Allen, who moved from Coldingham, in Berwickshire, to Bamburgh, Northumberland. Better still, this Alison had a brother James baptised in 1730. There is no David in the family but the family are on the move between 1729 and 1740 and there is a ten year gap in the children’s baptisms after James. The naming patterns of James and David’s children are a good match for this family; Alison Allen’s father is called David. Even supposing I adopted Patrick and Alison as my 6x great grandparents and I really feel I need more than this, there is another unanswered question. My ancestor is David’s son Patrick (when he isn’t calling himself Peter). He is mentioned in David’s will and on his gravestone as ‘son’ but there is no baptism. He was born c.1762/3. Alison’s son Patrick has no future as Eadington, Chirnside (his father’s name) or Anderson (his step-father’s name). Did David bring his sister’s illegitimate son up as his own child?

Scottish research is not my area of expertise. If anyone has any idea how I might find more evidence that would support or refute this theory I’d be very grateful. I really would like to be able to confirm my Scottish ancestry and get my kilt out.

People and Places of the Past

by thehistoryinterpreter

Most of the month has been taken up with family visits and being weirdly unwell, with a return of the mystery allergic reaction I had three years ago. Maybe I am just allergic to August, who knows? Anyway that is receding now and I am trying to take my mind off the fact that no one who wants to buy my house can sell theirs. There’s been plenty to keep me busy. As two Pharos courses draw to a close, I am already preparing for the next one: Discovering Your British Family and Local Community in the early 20th Century. I particularly like leading this course, as it combines both family history and one-place studies. It starts in October if you want to come along for the five week online ride. Following my own advice and immersing myself in early twentieth century family history, my granny’s biography has now reached the outbreak of the Second World War. The story so far is available here.

The recent Forgotten Women Friday also led to investigating women who reached adulthood in the early twentieth century. More than fifty volunteers have been looking at the lives of the first cohort of women to train as teachers at Cheshire County Training College in Crewe. The finished stories are starting to be uploaded to our website. It is hard to believe that in less than nine months we have preserved the memories of more than two hundred women.

On the one-place front, the revisions for the second edition of Putting Your Ancestors in Their Place are done and that should be available in the new year. So many URLs have changed and I have added some more suggested sources for one-placers. More one-place news; I am excited to be joining a stellar cast for the All About the Place event. My ten minute slot is recorded and I have also done three short readings about places. This promises to be a great collaboration.

Dinosaur Poo, Milking Pigs and Being Me

by thehistoryinterpreter

I apologise for yet another post with poo in the title. This stems from the great discussions I’ve been having with my current cohort of Pharos students on the Discovering more about your Agricultural Labourering Ancestors course. They are a brilliant bunch and our chats range far and wide, including, yesterday, investigations into the use of coprolite (that’s the dinosaur poo) for fertilizer and whether it is possible to milk a pig. The jury is kind of out on that one. Obviously pigs do produce milk but milking them is not generally advised, although there are some ‘interesting’ YouTube videos. Don’t be distracted by the possibilities of milking Minecraft pigs however, that’s another thing entirely.

So someone has decided they’d like to be me. Well, I know I am pretty cool and all that but seriously, although I enjoy being me, it is a bit of an acquired taste. What appears to be (and hopefully is) a very restricted portion of my friends and colleagues have received emails from a spurious email address that does not include my name but is signed with by me with the title of one of my volunteer roles. After a full investigation it has been confirmed that this is not hacking or a virus but identity theft and there’s not a lot I can do. If you get one of these weird emails, check with me on an email address you know is mine and then, if it isn’t me, forward the offending message to report @ phishing.gov.uk. On the upside, as I am now two people, I will race through the to do list at the speed of light. The other me is a little tardy doing the washing-up though.

Excitingly, the first proofs of Marginalised Ancestors have arrived. Less excitingly, that means the dreading black hole that is indexing is looming. Hey, maybe the other me could do that part.

Things or Heirlooms?

by thehistoryinterpreter

Two things have prompted this post. Firstly, today and tomorrow I have two rather different, yet similar, presentations to give about heirlooms. The first is a 15-20 minute conference paper for the Family Archives and their Afterlives conference. Wednesday is a 90 minute heirlooms workshop for the Society of Genealogists. The clue is in the title. Workshop means that I will be putting the audience to work. The second thing is that I am embarking on the inevitable ‘you might be going to move this year/next year/who knows’ cull of possessions. Incidentally, because I know people don‘t like to ask, the position is that someone is desperate to buy my house but is waiting to sell theirs, so I may be here some time.

I am faced with the accumulated ‘stuff’ that survived my major downsize seventeen years ago, augmented by the additional stuff that I acquired when my mother died. Why are some items more precious than others? What has prompted me, my mother and in some cases preceding generations, to keep x over y and z? What do I keep or discard and why? Many of these things have no aesthetic qualities and serve no practical purpose, yet they ‘need’ to be kept. They have moved beyond the realm of being ‘things’ to be heirlooms. I don’t envisage that I will be disposing of anything that has a family significance. If it has already been treasured for two, three, or more generations, then it is my role to continue to do that, even if I feel that the generations that come after me may not wish to do the same. I hope to persuade them to keep at least some of these treasures. That is part of the aim of the Treasures section of my Granny’s Tales website. It is the stories that turn things into heirlooms, so I need to tell the stories. It will be a long job, I just need to last long enough for all the stories to be told. At least I have made a start.

Then there are the things that have a personal significance for me, important of course but somehow perhaps on a lower rung than the items that stretch back to touch the past. At the moment, I can’t be sure how much space I will have when I move. The aim is not to have less than I do currently, so in theory I could keep everything. In practice, it is a good opportunity to reduce the task that my descendants will face when I go and join the ancestors. I’ve made a start. I’ve done the bathroom. Not much of a challenge there. I did throw away manky looking products that have been around for years. I even threw away a few stiff flannels. My bathroom is officially the second smallest in the world (ironically larger than the one I had in my previous 5 bedroomed house) so there were only two small cupboards to go through.

Slightly more demanding were the two sheds, although the majority of the contents of one contained the possessions of the fisherman of my acquaintances (who has four garages a barn and a shed of his own and those are the ones that he admits to). I decided that I really didn’t need 200 plastic flower pots or a dozen tins of solid paint. Easy this throwing away lark isn’t it? I am actually very pleased with the shed clearance. A trailer load disappeared to the tip and more to the owner’s barn.

Moving inside, the conservatory is also done. Well, it is awaiting visits from my descendants to triage the children’s books. That will be trickier. I know most are now too young for my grandchildren but they have seen two generations and some three. What will stay and what will go? I know we will be keeping some that probably no one will read in my lifetime. I do hope my body will keep working to read them to a fourth generation but realistically, it probably won’t. I don’t see my grandchildren being likely to have children young. So they will sit in a box in a loft, in an as yet to be identified property, until my children have to repeat the triage in the future.

The conservatory also contains many inherited ornaments, some dating from my great-grandfather’s trip to India and China. They stay, waiting to appear as one of Granny’s Treasures; another culling decision deferred.

Today maybe I’ll start on the bedroom. The clothes part is easy. I do an annual cull and in any case, as anyone who has met me will know, I am not a clothes person. But and there’s a huge but the bedroom also contains a china cabinet, itself an heirloom, inherited from my mother’s cousin and we believe, made by my great grandmother’s brother. It holds more ornaments, ornaments that I have known all my life. They have sat in the china cupboards of my mother and grandmother and now they sit in mine. A few of the items reach back to touch my great-grandparents’ lives. Then there are the photograph albums. Many of these are the sticky plastic variety, containing colour photographs from the 1980s. Photographs that are fading into weird and wonderful versions of their former selves. I did have a spell of remounting these and scrapbooking them in new albums. Maybe I will have time to continue that process. Do I now take the opportunity to be selective? Shall I retain the images of people and remove the pictures of random stately homes and scenery? I have yet to decide. In any case that is for that dim and distant time labelled ‘later’. Unless my worst moving nightmares are realised and it takes years rather than months for me to complete a chain, they will move with me in their current state.

With the honour of being the custodian of the family archive, comes the responsibility for its curation and care. I also need to be its interpreter. What I should be doing of course is writing those stories, preserving those memories, making sure that I am not the only person who understands the significance of these items. Some already have partial or damaged stories. There are things that I know belonged to my mother’s grandparents but which grandparents? I am committed to making sure that the items I pass on are real heirlooms, with what is left of their stories intact.

A Few Yorkshire Days with a Family History Twist

by thehistoryinterpreter

Last week, we made a whistle-stop trip to York. This was mainly so that I could take part, along with the rest of the A Few Forgotten Women Team, in the York Festival of Ideas. We were working with The Mount School and The Rowntree Society to raise the profile of women’s history. After a panel discussion, we helped attendees to research a woman or girl who was associated with The Mount School, either as a pupil, a teacher, or another member of staff. The school is a Quaker foundation, so there was some delving into Quaker records and some fascinating stories emerging. With the aid of our team, other researchers worked on a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. If this sounds like your idea of fun, you can join in. For details see here.

York isn’t exactly next door, 335 miles to be exact, so we went a couple of days early to spread the driving load. The journey up was protracted, not least because of the ten mile/one hour tail-back on the motorway as people tried and failed to exit on to the gridlocked slipway at Castle Donnington for something called the Download Festival.

We decided to steer clear of the city on our two days ‘off’ and visited the lovely gardens at Beningbrough Hall. The Georgian house itself, former home of the Bourchier family, is closed for refurbishment until next month but the gardens were beautiful and we did an extended walk round the parkland by the River Ouse. In the evening, I was virtually chatting all things ag lab with Wiltshire Family History Society. The next day, we opted for Kirkham Priory and another riverside walk. The priory was founded in the mid-twelfth century and was an Augustinian foundation. Dissolved with other monastic foundations by Henry VIII, Kirkham fell into disrepair. Unusually, it was used for military training purposes in the run-up to the D-day landings.

After the research day in the beautiful surroundings of The Mount School library, Mistress Agnes and Master Christopher were on parade, extoling the delights of life in the seventeenth century. With soaring temperatures, it was just a little cosy being in the seventeenth century, especially as I had neglected to bring my thinner bodice. Good fun was had nevertheless.

We left at very silly o’clock to try to beat the forecast heat and fortunately, were driving towards the cooler (when cooler is a relative term) part of the country. The homeward journey was not beset with festival goers and as a bonus, none of my plants seem to have died during my absence. Now to the rigours of the job we must not mention; I may be quiet for a while.

Beningbrough Gardens

From Elusive Ancestors to Ag Labs

by thehistoryinterpreter

Amidst a quick trip to Yorkshire (of which more another time) and the uber frustrations of fourteen tedious hours attempting (and mostly failing) to get access to vital software for the job we must not mention, I have been spreading the family history love with my latest cohort of Pharos family history students. Unbelievably, I have been teaching online family history courses for Pharos Tutoring and Teaching for seven years now. Last night saw the first presentation of a new course draw to a close. The learners have been investigating ancestral migrations. Those pesky ancestors who won’t do the decent thing and spend their whole lives living in one place lead us a merry dance as they trip from one area to another, often leaving gaping holes in their life stories in their wake. This course was designed to help the students tell those migration stories, investigate possible motivations for movement and hopefully come a little closer to tracking down their elusive ‘brick wall’ ancestors. Unfortunately, I don’t have a magic wand, otherwise I wouldn’t have any brick wall ancestors of my own but it was pleasing to find the students reporting that they had to change their case study elusive ancestors as they had found them!

No sooner does one course end than another begins, or, in my case, two begin. Next up, Agricultural labourers, a five week course that starts on 17 July. We all have them don’t we? The ubiquitous ag labs who drip from every branch of the family tree. Do we dismiss them as somehow more boring than the sagger-maker’s bottom knockers? Not such a great job tile of course but ag labs are fascinating in their own right. What I love most about leading this course is seeing the students create stories about their own ag lab ancestors, stories that I then sometimes see published in family history society journals or online. Sometimes I join in with the students and use the course as an opportunity to tell an ag lab story of my own. The job I must not mention won’t allow it this time around, so, just to prove that I do sometimes practice what I preach, here is one I prepared earlier (you will also need this outline pedigree to follow the twists and turns). This is the story of a Wiltshire ag lab filled family, or series of families, who, like many others, ended up abandoning the countryside for life in Reading and later Croydon.

My second course for July is for those starting out on the all-absorbing branch of research that is one-place studies. They have such an adventure ahead! To add to the excitement, Pharos have a brand new shiny website, which not only looks good but make life easier for students and tutors. Most importantly, it is stuffed full of exciting and absorbing courses (not just mine) to help you hone your family history skills. I recently had a discussion about the importance of getting the balance right between learning more about how to do family history and actually doing it. Even if you’ve been a researcher for years there is always more to learn and joining a group often provides great encouragement. Important though gaining new skills is, you need to keep this in proportion and allow time to actually put it into practice. I do try to bear this in mind when I am writing courses and make sure that students can learn more about their own families as they work their way through the suggested exercises. Why not come along and join me for the ride? Last time I looked there were still spaces on the Ag labs and One-place studies courses. If you want to track down elusive and migratory ancestors, you will have to wait until next year.