Day 350 – Cornish Heritage

 

When I saw this as we travelled along in the car I realised that I actually hadn’t taken a photograph of any (or maybe only one or two) of these and so I thought it was about time I added one to this photo journal.

 

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2012

These old engine houses of Tin Mines are dotted about around Cornwall.  Sadly the Tin Mine industry is finished here but these buildings always look so interesting and wherever they are, there was always a lot of activity going on with the mining.

Paul worked in the Tin Mines for over 20 years, as did many of his ancestors.  As someone who loves history and genealogy, seeing these engine houses for me is always of great interest.

(It’s a shame the telegraph wire somewhat cuts across this pic)!!

Day 331 – My Ancestor Wrote This!

As some of you will realise from my earlier posts here, I am very much interested in genealogy, particularly my family history and have been seriously researching for well over twenty years or so now.

Because of all that was going on over Christmas I did not have the chance to take a photograph of this until a few days after I received it on Christmas Eve.

I don’t know who sent it!!  There is only a “Shipping Manifest” which does not give me any idea as to who bought this book and then wanted it sent to me!  I know it was “processed” on 19th December and it arrived on Christmas Eve.

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011/2012

This is Good Neighbours written by my ancestor Walter Rose.  I see the book is published in 1942.  He was born in 1871.

I’ve just managed to start reading it and so far it is a wonderful insight to the life of my ancestors and I know I will enjoy reading the rest of it.

I have a little idea who might have sent it, one of my cousins who I found by chance several years ago.  I will be sending a “Did You Send This To Me” message to him very soon.  Whoever sent it, thank you so much.  I am thrilled and delighted to receive it. 

Day 233 – A Dusty Old Book!

Aaaah, I sooooooooo love dusty old books, the older the better!

This is a book in my collection that I use for my family history research.  I was going through it on the day I took this photo so thought that that was what I should photographically record for that day!

It is “A History of the Municipal Church of St. Lawrence, Reading” written in 1883 by the Rev. Charles Kerry, curate.

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011/2012

Old books like this are so wonderful with regard to family history research.  There are details of burials, graves, Wills etc., of those of my ancestors that lived in that area.  Since that time some of the records are now missing or damaged and unreadable, so to find something that was written at the time or not too long afterwards is a real treasure.  And of course there are usually illustrations of what the church was like then, and any monuments dotted in and around the church.

There are also details in the book where various parishioners have contributed to some of the furnishings for the church (some of which are still used these days) and sometimes there is something about an ancestor that won’t be found in other records.  Just wonderful.  Dusty old books are great. 

Day 218 – Getting Back To My Neglected Genealogy Blog!!

What with one thing or another, I have really badly neglected my genealogy blog, So That’s Where I Get It From.   I was being very good and posting regular theme items and added something almost every day for a very long while.

Part of the reason I did not have time to go into my blog is because to help with my research and connecting my ancestors to others of the same name way back in the 1500s  -  1700s I have been doing what I call my Name Books.

The idea was to add to these books every person of the surname I was researching who had been born/baptised, married and died/buried in a couple of counties where my ancestors came from.  Tied in with this was every entry of that surname that was in the Baptism/Marriage/Burial Databases for the family history societies of both those counties and everyone of that surname in all the copy Wills I have as well as those in the Wills Database for one of those counties.  Many of these records go back to the early 1500s, some Wills even from the 1400s, plus there are other records I have researched and added those names as well to my Name Books.

Hopefully this would then let me see who belonged to who, who strayed where and who they belonged to and hopefully get the branches of these families in some order so that I could eventually find a connection between them and my ancestors.  That was the plan anyway.

It has taken months!!  And it’s not finished yet!!!  But I have already found some wonderful clues.

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

The photograph shows my Name Books.  I started off with one and each letter of the alphabet was for whatever the first name is for eg, A for Alexander, Anne and so on, B for Beatrice, Bert etc., all through the alphabet, each name with it’s own page.  Or pages as it turned out, which in turn ended up as three Name Books.

They all have the same surname, whatever variant spelling it has and I can honestly say that the most popular male names in the 1500s – 1700s are Thomas and John and for the ladies Elizabeth and Ann/e.   I almost need one book alone for all the Johns of this particular surname and one book would probably suit all the Ann/es!!

My scribbles in different colours are for a reason.  All names have been written in pencil, with their date, place and whatever the event was.  For parish register entries that I have found myself over many years, these are written in blue against the pencilled names if the details apply to one of those particular people.  Details written in red are more for deaths, burials, Wills, Probate so that stands out and shows which people I have all those details for.   Anything written in black is usually headed “My Note” and followed by my comments as to whether this fella or couple are the same as the fella and couple at another place, or if it looks like from all my writings that someone has married twice or more and so on.

But, what I thought was going to be a good idea, isn’t such a good idea at all.  I’m absolutely amazed at just how many people there are where I only have a burial for them where no others of their surname are at all in hundreds of years, so no way to know who they belong to.  Or there are all those couples who married in a church where none of their families lived and then moved somewhere else to have their children baptised in another place.  Eventually I suppose I will be able to tie some of them to others and there are many I have found that belong to someone else elsewhere, so that is good, but it is a much bigger project than I thought it would be and at this stage not as helpful as I thought it would be!!

However, I now have a record of every individual of that surname who was born/baptised in those two counties, every individual of that surname who married in those two counties and of every individual who died or was buried in those two counties.  It will be a wonderful genealogy tool at some stage, I’m sure of it.  I somehow don’t think I have explained it very well either!

Now I need to get back to my poor neglected blog and hopefully something in the Name Books will be useful for my blog or help someone else searching for any of these people.    I’ve loved every minute of doing the Name Books!!  

Day 206 – Aaaah, Wills! Lovely Wills!

 

As a genealogist I love old documents, whatever they are but I particularly love old Wills even though sometimes the old style of writing makes them very difficult to read.

In order to know which Wills I want to get to add to my growing collection of them, I sent for a Wills Database from a Family History Society that I belong to.

I asked for a blanket search for a particular surname including all the variant spellings and looked forward to receiving it.

I waited over two weeks and finally on the day I took this pic, the Wills Database for the surname I wanted arrived.

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

While the photo of the Wills Database might not be of great interest to you reading this post, it is absolutely delightful, wonderful and exciting for me because of the terrific clues that lie in all those details!! 

I was a little dismayed when I first saw it, as it seemed only a few pages whereas when I had details of the Wills Database back in the 1990s there were many more pages, so I was thinking that although I might have lots of new info in this delivery, maybe I wasn’t getting all the info that I had before, all those years ago.

But, I shouldn’t have been dismayed, as details are printed on both sides of each page so I have all the old info that I wanted (as some now might make more sense) and lots of new details too.

Since taking that photograph I have had a chance to look at the Database and so far there are 14 Wills I will be ordering from the Record Office.  And I am sooooooooooo very excited because I have found some wonderful details that prove some things for me, even if I don’t have the actual Wills yet.  What a treasure!!       

Day 186 – Still Trying With TNG!

In a previous post I mentioned that I had bought some new genealogical software to use on my family history blog So That’s Where I Get It From.  It was in php format rather than html and I was very good and read all the instructions before uploading it to my website.

Because my family history blog is not my own so to speak, because it is a free site hosted by WordPress, it seems that I cannot upload all the software stuff there.  I have another website for my business and on advice from Darrin who made the TNG software, it seems I have to upload the software there, and then do a link from my family history website to it so people can see it.  It won’t show on my business website at all, which is good as this is only for my personal family history.

Well, I came across a little problem!!  I went to my business website and set about uploading TNG to it.  I thought it would all upload in one go in the one folder, but no!!  I could only upload each individual item in each folder one at a time!!!   That wasn’t too bad in some cases as some folders only had one or two items in them.  But others had a lot of items in them, and I mean a lot!!

I was halfway through doing all this and as it was taking a lot of my time I decided that this needed to be the subject of my photograph for that particular day (as seems to be usual lately, I take my pics every day but  seem to be adding them in one go, days later   ).  So, this photo was taken because I was uploading things from one folder and had 164 separate items to upload from that folder!!  (I think there must be a better way of doing this so don’t think the problem lies with the software, more likely it lies with me as I am not greatly sure what I am doing lol).

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

This is a pic of some of those 164 items in the one folder!   I still had a few more folder contents to upload and then a lot of single items that aren’t in folders.

I haven’t finished doing that yet, so still not ready to add this programme to my family history blog.

I’m a bit worried now that because I am doing it this way, when I come to get it ready for using and linking to my blog, it won’t work!!!  It seems a wonderful thing to have for those of us doing genealogy research and I’m really keen to get up and running with it, so if it goes smoothly after all this, then I will be doing the family historian’s happy dance.          If I hit some problem, which will more than likely be because I haven’t done something right, then I will be forlorn. 

Fingers crossed it all goes right, in the next few days when I hope to get back to sorting it out!!

Day 176 – Silly Me!!!

Oh silly, silly me!!!  A week ago I was having a tidy up in our Study where all my genealogy, craft items, and all sorts live.  As time goes by I end up with huge piles of this and that and it takes forever to go through them to find something in particular.

After I had been tidying up I decided that a bit of dusting and polishing wouldn’t come amiss, so I happily pottered about doing that.  One of the cupboards that I have all my genealogy stuff in/on has a front flap which now had a broken hinge (because of all the weight of the paperwork and files I had put on it) and so I found that I couldn’t close it properly after the tidy up.

I fiddled about with it to no avail and then decided to just leave it open as a sort of desktop  attached to the cupboard.

But oh, silly silly silly me did not realise that I had left the spray can of furniture polish where I was trying to sort out the hinge, so when I left the flap open (and then decided to look through one of my files on it  -  Wills are so very interesting, aren’t they) I did not realise that the flap was resting on top of the spray can!!

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

I took this pic after I had cleaned up most of the furniture polish that had sprayed out in one spot under the flap I had inadvertantly rested onto the can.  The spray can was emptied out of polish!!

Apart from having the bright idea of polishing everything in sight so I did not waste all the polish that had squirted out of the tin, I also had a lot of cleaning up to do of some of my genealogy files, with all those notes and information that was probably going to get smothered and smudged by the furniture polish!!!   eeeeeeeek!

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

At first I was relieved because much of the polish had squirted over some of my plastic folders and that didn’t seem so bad as I could just wipe them off.   Buuuuuuut what I did not realise is that there were small holes at the bottom of each file – air holes maybe – where the plastic didn’t actually touch the bottom of them and also where some of the plastic  was like a seam, that wasn’t tightly closed either, so the spray polish actually went inside the folders.  (Groan, sigh, sigh, whimper).

I’ve decided that never again will a can of spray polish be allowed anywhere near all my genealogy files (or anything else for that matter) in the Study.  Lol. 

The flap at the front of the cupboard has been removed until we get new hinges for it, so that’s on a to-d0 list to do soon.

Day 174 – TNG for my Genealogy Research

On the day this photograph was taken I had bought online and downloaded some wonderful software that is ideal for my genealogy research and showing it on my genealogy blog So That’s Where I Get It From.   Sadly I have neglected my blog for a while and thought this software would be just the thing to get me back into the swing of adding things to the blog.

The new software is called The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding  by Darrin Lythgoe and is a dream for genealogists adding all their info onto their blogs.  (I will just state here that I have nothing whatsoever to do with Darrin or his website or software – I just think it looks to be a wonderful addition to my blog).

Darrin was extremely helpful to me, answering all my questions before I even bought the software.

I downloaded it and then looked at the instructions.  This pic was taken just over a week ago when I was going to add it to my genealogy blog.

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

Now the thing with this software is that it is in something called php rather than the usual html for websites.  I’m not at all techie-minded so thought I really ought to have a read of the instructions so I do it right.   There was a lot of instructions!!  I made lots of notes so that I did the right thing at the right time in the right place.

Having spent a lot of time reading everything about this new software I decided that I would start afresh the next day to set it up.  But, I was unable to do this because other life things meant I didn’t get around to it at all yet!!!

So at this stage, it is not yet ready for my blog, but I am really looking forward to it as I know it would be so good.  Hopefully I will manage to get it uploaded to my blog in the next couple of days. 

Day 162 – After 168 Years …

For my photograph today, I have taken a pic of this particular item as it is a bit of history for this particular day.

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

This is one of our national Sunday newspapers and today after trading for 168 years, it is closing down and this photograph is of it’s last issue today.

Rather sadly it is closing because of a huge scandal it is involved in which I won’t go into here.  I am recording this because the family historian in me knows it is very historical and so should be recorded as such.  I will keep the newspaper and put a note with it to say why it has been kept, in the hopes that 100 years or so down the line some of my descendants might come across it and find it interesting.  I have no idea if this photo journal will still be going then, who knows how long the internet will last!!

 

Day 155 – Time For A Clear Out – Part Two

Following on from my Day 154 post where I was having a bit of a clear-out in our Study, I was still clearing things out the next day.

I decided that it was now the time to go through our hanging file drawer which held much of the correspondence from people I was in touch with regarding my family history research.  Many of these were “new” cousins I had found, others had contacted me in case there was a connection, but there wasn’t and others had become friends although not connected as family but still helping each other out all the same.

Most of the paperwork in this draw went back 15 or 20 years and some people I hadn’t been in contact with for most of those years.  Definitely time for a clear-out!

Original photograph taken by me - copyright 2011

As you can see from the photograph the draw was jam-packed with files and paperwork before I started going through it.  Now, it is many empty files and the paperwork of those I’m still in touch with is kept, as information contained in them that did not mean anything to me 15 – 20 years ago, does now mean something regarding my family history research and I so wish I had looked back at much of this about five years ago – might have saved me a lot of work!!

Now many of the people I correspond with write by email, so I’ve now got lots of lovely files I can add things to – like the piles of paperwork for my family history research that I have gathered over more than 20 years …