Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Family Tree UK

LAUNCH OF FAMI LY TREE PLUS Family Tree has launched its new Family Tree Plus online membership – and we’ve love you to join us! With instant access to the latest issue of Family Tree every month, a calendar of exclusive meetings & much more, Family Tree Plus is an online community dedicated to helping you enjoy your family history to the full. For just £9.99 a month, not only do you get every issue of Family Tree added to your online library, you also have a collection of back issues at your fingertips, plus expert support and advice from our three exclusive monthly clubs: DNA Club, Genealogy Gadgets Club and Study Club. To find out more and to join the September meetings with your Family Tree Plus free…

It’s not difficult to appreciate the genealogical importance of wills. The documents are full of names and relationships, references to places and objects, jewellery, clothes, furniture, and all sorts of miscellaneous household items. If you’re lucky enough to have wills in your family you’ll need no convincing of how valuable they can be. But when it comes to using probate records in your research, wills are just one part of a much bigger picture. A network of 200 ecclesiastical courts Before the passing of the Court of Probate Act of 1857, our English and Welsh ancestors’ wills were proved in a network of more than two hundred ecclesiastical courts. As with the registration of births (baptisms), marriages and deaths (burials) it was the Church of England that performed the role…

When the dust settled on the Battle of Bosworth (22 August 1485) the last Yorkist and Plantagenet monarch, Richard III, lay dead, his fate to surface from beneath a council car park in Leicester over five centuries later. His vanquisher, Henry Tudor (1457- 1509) ascended the throne as the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII. This Pembroke-born usurper’s road to the crown had been both troubled and unlikely. Henry’s right to rule Henry Tudor knew his royal credentials were not exactly sound. His grandfather, Owen Tudor, had married Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois, whilst his mother, the formidable Margaret Beaufort, was greatgranddaughter to John of Gaunt, so passed on Lancastrian genes. When that royal house was wiped out after the Battle of Tewkesbury (May 1471) Henry was whisked off to…

Cemeteries & Graveyards: A Guide for Family and Local Historians in England & Wales by Celia Heritage Covering a topic close to many a family history heart, Celia Heritage’s vast knowledge of the subject and experience in researching and searching for ancestor resting places and markers takes coverage of the subject to a whole new level. For instance, while we may be familiar with the development of the Victorian era cemeteries, Celia also encourages us to consider the long view – covering as she does the emergence and evolution of local burial places through the Saxon and early Medieval periods. In addition, she explains our ancestors’ changing relationship with and view of burial over the centuries, on into the 20th century. An invaluable guide for all those people visiting cemeteries…

Q Thank you for publishing (FT July 2022) John Reid’s article on the operation of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) in Canada during WW2. My interest stems from the small part played in the BCATP by my late father Robert (‘Bob’) Collier who, it seems from the little that he told the family and a few documents and photographs discovered after he passed away in 2018, was stationed at North Battleford and Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan from December 1943 to November 1944. Bob’s role was as part of a maintenance team with his RAF rank being AC2 (LAC – leading aircraftman) and his trade Fitter IIA. An inscription on a group photograph taken in Blackpool a few months before his departure to Canada tells us that he was…

I’ve been at this family history business for a long time now, and I think my main lines are largely as complete as they ever will be. I’ve been lucky on the paternal line, getting with certainty back to the birth of an eight times great-grandfather in 1633, so although I’m always tinkering around in nearby villages, even finding the odd promising line of enquiry, further provable links seem unlikely. This isn’t helped by the paucity of first names. So many candidates and not enough distinguishing details. The trouble is my ancestral Warwickshire and Leicestershire families were fertile and fruitful, enthusiastic producers of strapping sons, which is good for surname research, but short on first names, which is not. I’m convinced that every time a boy child popped out into…

In August we heard about the delightfully-named Morwood Windle, who had the rather unsavoury occupation of ‘pig killer’. Although probably not seen as a desirable occupation nowadays, put into context, this occupation would have been more common in 1921 when the census was taken. In those days, it was common practice throughout the country for people to keep one or more pigs in a sty in their back garden and feed them on leftover scraps of food in order to fatten them up. This provided much needed food for the family, particularly at Christmas. When the pigs were of suitable size, they required despatching quickly and efficiently. This was not a job for the faint-hearted, therefore the pig owners had to find someone who was proficient at the task. Morwood…

The new Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland website has now been launched at https:// virtualtreasury.ie, a valiant attempt to try to reconstruct and retrieve much of the material lost in the devastating fire at the Public Record Office (PRO) in Dublin in 1922, during the opening salvos of the Irish Civil War. There has a been a great deal of excitement about what could be produced by this project, and now that it is live, we can see that there is much to applaud from such a novel and worldwide collaboration, but equally, still a great deal to lament from the tragic loss of Ireland’s historical record. To read about the historical period leading up to the Four Courts Fire and the reasons why the Virtual Treasury project is valuable…

Have you ever had an ancestor suddenly appear in the records hundreds of miles from home? Usually when this happens, you go through an exhaustive process of elimination, ruling out everyone of a similar age and name until, several days and several jars of coffee later, you finally decide, ‘yes, it’s them!’ or, more likely, ‘no, it’s not and we’re back to square one’. But when your ancestor’s name is John Anthony Riboldi, there’s no question about it. The entry I found at FreeBMD has to be my 2x great-grandfather. There’s no one else of that name, and the fact that in 1853 the Irish newspapers place John Riboldi in Limerick, giving evidence at an inquest, and then, five years later, he turns up in Gravesend, Kent – where he’s…

Your family photos Marjorie King writes: I’m afraid this photograph is damaged, but am hoping that Jayne may be able to date it. It was found in a box belonging to my cousin who has recently died. Sadly, no-one knows who the people are. I have tried to date it, and think possibly it is late 1930s or early 1940s but not sure. I suspect the two men are brothers born in 1919 (Albert McGrath) and 1921 (Edward McGrath). Both were married in 1945. Could it have been taken when the sailor came home from the war, or after a wedding? They lived in Earlsfield, Wandsworth. Other family names are Granados, McVicar and Whitehead. Any help would be very welcome. Thank you. Jayne Shrimpton replies: Looking at the format This…

Graham Caldwell was born in Birmingham, but now lives and works in Melbourne Australia. He has been researching his family since 1996. As a past Territorial with the Somerset Yeomanry and Light Infantry, Graham has made military genealogy his main hobby. John D Reid has a particular interest in 19th and 20th century British migrants who, like himself, settled in Canada. He writes a daily blog www.anglocelticconnections.ca Mary Evans has been researching her family tree for more than 30 years, is a regular contributor to FT, and has contributed to research on TV series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ and ‘Julian Fellowes’ Great Houses’.…

So far, we have explored how to create a searchable digital photograph collection. When backed-up, this collection, containing named files with embedded metadata, will be safe, sorted, searchable and shareable. The same cannot be said about your physical photographs…yet. Don’t despair! Step 3 will address this. PRESERVE Figure 1 outlines the workflow for the PRESERVE category (resulting from Step 2, SORT 1). Photographs in this category need to be sorted by size and type for efficient scanning (SORT 2). As you sort, gently write the name(s) and date taken1 on the back of each print using a soft pencil (make separate notes for slides, negatives and any prints which cannot safely be written on). This will fast-track the process of adding the scans to your Digital Photo Hub (Step 2,…

Making DNA work FOR YOU Can a DNA test help me find my father? STEVE WRITES: Dear Karen, Although I have been researching my family history for the last fifty years, I have to admit I’m a bit lost when it comes to DNA. In all my DNA results I only had connections to my mother’s side. I persuaded my younger sister to take a test. Unfortunately this really complicated the issue as it showed that she also had a different father and was my half sibling. I then asked my younger brother, whose results showed that he also was my half sibling, but he had links to our father’s side. During the war my mother worked at a company called Marchwood Power Boat this was based at Hythe in…