Wordless Wednesday – a double wedding in about 1913
Wordless Wednesday – this week is a photograph of a double wedding taken in about 1913.
Author: Andrew Martin
Andrew Martin is a British author, family historian, tech nerd, AFOL, and host of The Family Histories Podcast.
He’s got a Ticket To Live
Tickets for Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2013 have arrived!
This year I decided to ‘treat myself’ with VIP Tickets for Saturday 23rd – not ever so sure what ‘VIP’ means, but I thought i’d give it a go. Maybe I’ll be able to tweet from the red carpet area?
This will be my third (and consecutive visit) to the show. Last year I also visited on the Saturday.
I have also booked myself on three sessions, including the Celebrity Theatre with Samantha Womack (Series 9 of WDYTYA, Game On, EastEnders, Eurovision Song Contest entry).
I’ve also joined in on a session with the fantastic Else Churchill from the Society of Genealogists, and a session with Dr. Turi King – which fortunately, IS about finding Richard III in a car park in Leicester. Not sure what would have happened if they’d realised it wasn’t him after I’d bought my ticket!
A full list of sessions from across the three days can be found on the WDYTYALive site.
Are you going too?
No ‘Big Family History Fair’ for 2013
Huntingdonshire Family History Society has confirmed that there will be no ‘Big Family History Fair’ in 2013.
Last April, I visited the fair, which packed both car park and the St Ives venue with visitors for a day’s worth of genealogy and local history shopping, networking, and expert talks.
The glimmer of hope from the contact at the Society about a repeat of hosting it again, is that they ‘may do again in the future’ – perhaps in 2014?
Meanwhile, the Society continue to run their regular programme of events – which cover a broad range of local history topics.
Surname Saturday: GILBERT
Surname Saturday: GILBERT – The Gilbert family of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire are the focus of this week’s meme day.
This week’s Surname Saturday post is that of my paternal Gilbert family. My connection is through my paternal Great Grandmother, who was born in 1884, in Littleport, Cambridgeshire.
With the help of the research of distant relative Colin Tabeart, the tree has been found to stretch back through time as far as 1694 when the family turns up in Abbotsley, Huntingdonshire (now part of Cambridgeshire). It is here that they are noted in the parish records and taxation records.
It appears that the earliest Gilbert I’ve found (with, as yet, an unproven connection) was in Abbotsley, Huntingdonshire in 1605, when a John Gilbert takes his daughter Maria to be baptised in the parish church of St Margaret on 24th February.
By the beginning of the 18th century, the Gilbert families in Abbotsley were booming with each seemingly having at least 9 children, and up to as many as 13 children over a 24 year period – as was the case of James and Anne Gilbert between 1752 and 1776.
In 1767 at Abbotsley, Elizabeth Gilbert (née Hale) – the widow of James Gilbert – is noted as paying a Land Tax of £1, 19 shillings to a Mr Robert Edsope.
In 1828, the son of my Gilbert line – William – leaves Abbotsley and heads about 40 miles North East to Littleport in Cambridgeshire, where he married Elizabeth Brightly. The couple settle down in Burnt Chimney Drove – an area of rich agricultural fenland just to the North West of Littleport, where William becomes a farmer. The couple bear 12 children, although sadly a few of these don’t survive their early years.
Whilst William’s relocation may well have been because of his love for Elizabeth, his parents – Edward and Susan Gilbert have fallen on hard times – by 1851 they are both noted as ‘paupers’ and are living with their daughter Mary and her husband Thomas Cade. Susan has become blind, but goes on to live another 8 years. Edward only lived until 1852.
Despite this hardship, William and Elizabeth were making progress for themselves and managing to live outside of poverty thanks to farming. Their 9th child (also Edward and Susan’s grandson), James, was my Great Great Grandfather, and he survived his two older brothers. In doing so, and in an act not unusual or unlike primogeniture, he inherited his father’s farm in 1879, which by 1871 had grown to 40 acres and employed one family.
By this time, James had got married to Elizabeth Howlett – and they had already bore two of their eventual family of nine children.
The family still lives and farms in the area today.
Wordless Wednesday (well, almost)
Wordless Wednesday – 1947 floods and the 2012 flooding at Haddenham and Earith, Cambridgeshire. Both causing widespread disruption.
1947
My Great Grandmother receiving tinned goods from The Red Cross during the 1947 floods.
2012
The Great Ouse at Earith. The neighbouring village from where my Great Grandparents lived, cut off by flooding in December 2012. There’s a river in there somewhere.
My Top 5 Genealogy ‘to-dos’ for 2013
My top 5 genealogy things I hope to achieve in 2013 – a mixture of visits, writing and demolishing those research brick walls.
I don’t really go for New Year’s Resolutions, as I like to challenge myself on a daily basis, but I thought that I would put down 5 areas of my family tree research where I hope to make progress in 2013.
1. The Missing Bowers
If you use RootsChat.com, you may have spotted me trying to unravel the Bowers family of Burwell, Cambridgeshire. There’s quite a lot of them there during the 19th century, and amongst them i am sure, *should be* my Great Great Great Great Grandfather, Henry Bowers – yet there’s no sign of him in an appropriate part of the baptism registers, and unhelpfully he was born in about 1812 (so, well before that helpful 1st July 1837 date) and there’s no parents noted on his 1832 marriage entry in nearby Wicken. Henry’s children’s Burwell connections are frequent, yet he himself has yet to appear.
I feel that I’m beginning to make progress though, by researching all the Bowers in Burwell by cross-referencing the registers to census returns. Annoyingly, my favourite census – the 1851 for Burwell – is missing, and so this leaves a hole in the data.
I am determined to crack this one. Somehow.
2. My Time-traveling Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother
Elizabeth Yarrow‘s birth, death and burial dates and place of death is open to discussion as none of the key sources corroborate. A death in London, a burial in Stretham, a date of burial in Stretham differing from the date of burial (randomly) noted in the register for neighbouring hamlet Little Thetford, date of death and age different between burial registers and gravestone.
It’s all a mess… and with her 1837 death year, there’s also no suitable certificate to help iron it all out (the one i did excitedly find was for a small child). My 5x Great Grandmother’s life and death might be impossible to unravel unless I get my hands on some newspapers and some railway records.
3. Writing that book
So, for quite a while now I’ve been toying with writing up research into a book, but then the genealogist’s work is never ever finished – so at what point do I start and end the book? What do i include and omit? Having several friends who are published authors themselves helps, but I hope to be able to work out how, and start, to turn my years of research into something that can be shared in print and in eBook.
If you’re a published genealogy author – drop me a message – i’d love to hear about your experiences.
4. Visiting places familiar to my ancestors
I’m quite good at this, mainly because few strayed from Cambridgeshire. Top of my list is to find the building (or site) of my Great Grandmother’s birthplace – The Stables, Abercorn Place, Kilburn. I’ve meandered the streets via Google Streetview, and I’ve been in the neighbouring streets (including the famous Abbey Road) where the family lived and worked… but this place remains unvisited.
5. Killing off my wicked Great x4 Grandmother
My Great x4 Grandmother, Mary Clarke ended up in court and eventually prison for neglecting, abusing and playing the role of wicked step-mother to her husband’s children during the mid-1800s. She’d already bore my Great x3 Grandmother and a brother outside of marriage and before becoming the wife of William Bailey of Botesdale, Suffolk. This was to be to their advantage, as they went on to escape the miserable family life that followed. No wonder my Great x3 Grandmother Caroline Clarke changed her name and hid her parentage. Meanwhile, after a couple of stints in the workhouse, and one in prison, Mary vanishes after 1881… but I’ve yet to kill her off.
Mary, i’m coming to get you!
What genealogy brick walls are you hoping to demolish in 2013? Is there something special you hope to achieve in the coming year? Let me know in the comments below.
Alternatively, join in the conversation over on LinkedIn.
Encouraging children to take an interest in their genealogy
What motivates children to take an interest in genealogy?
I remember being about 11 or 12 and sitting in the front rooms of both sets of maternal Great Grandparents and being completely bored by tails of the war years. Whilst one Gt Grandfather saw action in Egypt and other places, whilst the other was with the Home Guard, yet to my child ears, they were so utterly boring.
As a child, I didn’t want to know about ‘The War’. It meant nothing to me, and I couldn’t comprehend the date, why people would want to fight each other, and certainly not the scale of what actually took place. My mother was the same – she too had spent many hours listening to the very same stories as a child, and had not been interested either.
Now, as an adult, with those Great Grandparents all deceased, I’m left with a gap. An unrecorded gap in oral history, in personal history, and with only a few pay-to-view scanned documents sitting in sites like Ancestry or FindMyPast.
I was in Cambridge earlier today, picking up a few last minute Christmas presents when I spotted the following book from the Who Do You Think You Are? brand. I generally don’t buy genealogy books, as I rely on online information, but this one was different – it was aimed at children.
I picked it up and flicked through, to find that it was full of colourful pictures, flaps to reveal information, and more along the lines of a pop-up book (without the pop-up bit).
I wondered what it was that inspired me to start (although admittedly i was 16/17yrs old) – knowing that it wasn’t anything like this. Had it have been, i would most likely have been hooked and written down the stories (or at least listened and perhaps remembered some of them) at a much younger age.
I also got home to find that Who Do You Think You Are? magazine had also landed on my doormat – the January edition – and inside was a great tree chart from FindMyPast – encouraging people to fill in their ancestors. What a great way to help inspire kids to think about the past lives of their family?
What was it that motivated you, and at what age?
The digital afterlife and the genealogist
What happens to our digital selves after our physical selves have died?
I was driving home when I heard Aleks Krotoski presenting this week’s Digital Human (BBC Radio 4, UK only), which covered the topic of death and how we continue to live on digitally after our physical death.
This got me thinking about myself and how might my digital self and my digital assets exist and be of use to others, as a web-friendly genealogist.
Firstly, stop here for a moment and back up your genealogy research. Copy it and save it somewhere where another can find it. Also, think about how you’re filing your research – is it as simple as it can possibly be? What happens to your life’s work of research when you’re not around to explain it? Is it trapped behind a password? Is it stuffed in a filing system that would need Bletchley Park and Stephen Fry to unravel?
I’ve not thought about what happens to my website or this blog after my lifetime, but both are an extension of my research, which also sits in filing cabinets, folders and in my Reunion10 software on my Mac.
Genealogy website LostCousins has for many years, had a ‘My beneficiary’ option in your user account – where you can enter the email address of someone who can take over your research when you are no longer able to.
Should your websites, blogs and profiles be deleted like many people/families have Facebook profiles of the dead deleted? Is that the right thing to do? Some of the interviewees on Digital Human felt that making a Facebook profile a memorial was a heartwarming way to keep someone’s memory alive. Others may be upset about the continuation of seeing the profile, photos etc of a dead relative.
As a genealogist, I would want my research, my website and my social media accounts to stay online – as sites like Facebook are a daily account of my life, interests, interactions with friends.
What do you think?
Remembrance 2012
Remembrance Sunday 2012 – Remembering the bravery of those who have served in, and gave their lives to war.
Remembrance Sunday has arrived again, and like so many others here in the UK, i have bought a poppy and will be observing the two minute silence at 11am.
There are seldom few days where I don’t spare my ancestors a thought, especially those who served and gave their life in the ugliness of war with a bravery far beyond anything I can comprehend.
Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2013
The dates for the seventh Who Do You Think You Are? Live genealogy show in London Olympia have been announced for 2013.
Once again, Olympia London plays host to the 7th Who Do You Think You Are? Live genealogy and history show.
I’m excited about the 2013 WDYTYA? Live show which runs from 22nd to 24th February. The event website – which will be properly updated soon – is now counting down to the 3 day genealogy feast. Tickets go on sale on the 7th of November, and in a nod to these tough financial times – the ticket prices are remaining the same price as in 2012!
I first attended in 2011 – a late starter on this front – but having also visited in 2012, I recommend going along. On my first visit, I found myself wandering around, tweeting, and browsing the plateau of stands from societies and those large commercial organisation stands. This can be quite tiring, and whilst there are lots of great stands, not everything will be relevant to you and your research.
Attend Workshops
In 2012 I booked myself onto a couple of workshops, and found this to be a much better approach to the day – giving me great advice from experts, and also some structure to my day.
I attended the workshops ‘Google Search Strategies for the Family Historian’ by the brilliant genealogist, author and Genealogy Gems podcaster – Lisa Louise Cooke, and “Breaking the barriers of Social Networking – Strategies and Tricks” with the fantastic Else Churchill (of the Society of Genealogists) keeping an expert panel in order.
Tweet-up
If you’re like me, and can’t peel yourself away from social media for any more than five minutes, then I recommend using twitter whilst at the event. In the past, the event has had its own hashtag (a # symbol followed immediately by a word or initialism relating to that specific event).
These hashtags are great for keeping up to date with conversation and inside information about the event whilst at the event! It’s like tuning into the grapevine.
If you are a twitter user, you can get free apps for your smartphone and tablet device that will let you keep track and contribute to the real-time event conversation.
I found this particularly useful and fun, as it enabled me to have conversations with other genealogists at the event. It is even common for people to tweet quotes and advice in real-time from the very workshop they are sitting in!
Look out for the event hashtag in 2013!
You can even take this further by using this conversation to meet up with other tweeting genealogists on the day. This is something that I will be trying to do more at 2013’s event.
Follow me on twitter at @FamilyTreeUK and let’s tweet up!
My three top tips for visiting Who Do You Think You Are? Live
- Leave yourself plenty of time if you’re traveling via London Underground – Earls Court station gets very busy and isn’t the easiest to navigate.
- Be prepared for lots of walking and standing….. and talking!
- Book tickets for the ‘big’ workshops and talks online as early as you can – many of these were sold out weeks in advance.
