Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Family Tree UK

The accolade recognises villages that are leading the way in nurturing rural areas and preserving landscapes, cultural diversity, local values, and culinary traditions. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation’s (UNWTO) Best Tourism Villages is a global initiative to highlight outstanding villages with tourism projects that help ‘preserve cultures and traditions, safeguard biodiversity and empower local communities’. In this third edition, 54 villages from all regions were selected from almost 260 applications. The villages were named during the UNWTO General Assembly, taking place this week in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. UNWTO secretary-general Zurab Pololikashvili said: ‘Tourism can be a powerful force for inclusivity, empowering local communities and distributing benefits across regions. This initiative acknowledges villages that have harnessed tourism as a catalyst for their development and well-being.’ For the full list of best…

I’m on a journey of discovery into my family’s darkest history, unexplored before, where a diagnosis of insanity in Liverpool in the 1880s had devastating consequences for each generation that followed, including my own. As I begin to unravel the secrets of Victorian Liverpool, I wonder, is insanity inherited and if so, does the madness lie within? I have spoken and written about the above many times throughout 2023 and each time I do, I still feel angry and disappointed with the Victorians’ attitude towards poor mental health, because from what I have discovered it feels like it was an experiment in the newly developing world of the alienist, who were the doctors looking after the mentally ill and who were part of an emerging psychiatric profession. Cultural history suggests…

Trying to trace my mother’s mum HIL ARY WRITES: I have had a DNA test done and have carried out quite a lot of research. As a child, I was in regular touch with three maiden ‘aunts’ and various other ‘aunties’ who I understood were my mother’s relatives. Eventually, my mother informed me that she had been brought up at the Foundling Hospital in London and the ‘aunties’ were mostly girls who had been there at the same time as her or were friends she had made subsequently. The maiden ‘aunts’ were actually part of the family she was fostered out to from the approximate age of 3 months to 5 years old. My mother had no knowledge of any blood relations. Gradually, over the years I learnt that some…

On the usefulness of newspapers Two of my Chambers ancestors both died in mining accidents, but not at the same mine. My 3 x great-grandfather Levi Chambers 1837-1875 died on 26 June 1875 at Upsall Mine, Eston, Yorkshire in an accident. The North-Eastern Daily Gazette report ran as follows: Fatal Accident at the Eston Mines – On Friday evening a man named Seth Chambers, a man employed at the Eston Mines, belonging to Messrs Bolcow, Vaughan and Co. – Limited, met with an accident that terminated fatally. Two loaded waggons were loaded into a drift, in front of the place where he worked, one of the waggons being slightly on an incline. He uncoupled the waggons and placed himself between them. He then placed his back against the front one,…

These women played a vital role in the war effort, replacing men who had joined the forces during the Second World War. They contributed to the at Clochan production of food and kept vital industries supplied with timber during the war and its immediate aftermath. Each card can give insight into: • the training given to new recruits • where they worked • why they left their post The records are currently available for those members who were born in 1922 and earlier. Explore the records at https://bit.ly/ftlandarmy…

The centre and all its associated works will now be known as Hebrides People. The website will also move under this banner, so the meaning of what is offered is ‘clear, concise and representative of the work undertaken by expert genealogist Bill Lawson and his team’. Cò Leis Thu? will be retained as the name of the genealogy service. The website has undergone a refurbishment by Isle Develop CIC with assistance from the Heritage Fund and features a searchable genealogical database. Both the centre and the website were born from a love of Harris and its people by Bill and his late wife, Chris. The couple started off the genealogical service Co Leis Thu? over 40 years ago, initially in the School House in Northton. The rebrand comes at a…

The Crimean War Casualties release is an update to an existing collection that covers the years 1853-56. The 5,893 new records can include a name, date, soldier number, rank, regiment, in addition to a description of the casualty and the action it was caused by. Explore the transcriptions at https://tidd.ly/3SASvl3. New to Findmypast are the Cheshire World War I hospital records. The hospital collection includes 1,880 hospital records from Macclesfield in Cheshire, which you can explore transcripts of at https://tidd. ly/3QS3YeN. Transcripts of the World War I campaign medals collection of 6.5 million records, which contains the names of men and women who were awarded campaign medals during the First World War, are also now available on Findmypast. Find out more at https://tidd.ly/3SviE4M. The original images of this last collection…

Although headstones can be a great source of information for family historians (and who doesn’t love pottering round a cemetery or graveyard?), what can we do when a headstone is illegible, inaccessible, vanished, or never existed in the first place? Even where a legible headstone can be found, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all those interred in a plot are recorded on it. How does anyone find just where their ancestors are buried? Fortunately for me, I spotted a Facebook request for family historians to join Undercliffe Cemetery’s research team and jumped at the opportunity to investigate the records. That was back in 2018. Little did I know what rabbit hole of research I was entering and what I’d discover! Undercliffe Cemetery’s history Undercliffe Cemetery (www. undercliffecemetery.co.uk) was provisionally registered…

Every family historian, in the course of their research, has had the experience of finding themselves distracted by something totally irrelevant. This happened to me while I was indexing the Creed Registers for the Bromley workhouse and first came across the name Amelia Dolding. I first ‘met’ Amelia Dolding, in a manner of speaking, on 25 October 1889. She was just another entry in the register: I recorded it before passing on to the next one. But then she began to appear again and again. She entered the workhouse no fewer than 24 times between 1888 and 1893. I subsequently found that this was a typical pattern of her life for at least 30 years from 1881 to 1911. Her average stay was about four months but after each discharge,…

Costume historian & photo-dating expert Jayne Shrimpton shares advice to help you date your unidentified pictures and so put names to the faces of the past. YOUR FAMILY PHOTOS James Rigby writes: I am hoping that you might be able to help with this photograph, which came from my late parents’ house: three females in a ‘boat’. This is a postcard type photo, of possibly three generations. It looks like it may have been done at the seaside, possibly Blackpool. I believe these types of photo were called ‘photo stand in’. You can see the end of the stand in at the right-hand side. A date and age estimates for the girl and women would be much appreciated. Jayne Shrimpton replies: Family photographs presented on a divided-back postcard mount such…

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Rachel Bellerby repor ts on the latest genealogy news. Got a stor y to share? Email editorial@family-tree.co.uk An international team of researchers has found new archaeological and genetic evidence that transforms our understanding of the history of cats in Europe. The team sequenced and analysed both wild and domestic cats, including 48 modern individuals and 258 ancient samples excavated from 85 archaeological sites over the last 8,500 years. They then assessed the patterns of hybridisation after domestic cats were introduced to Europe over 2,000 years ago and came into contact with native European wildcats. The results of the studies demonstrate that, since their introduction, domestic cats and European wildcats generally avoided mating. About 50 years ago in Scotland, however, that all changed. Perhaps as a result of dwindling wildcat populations…

One particular sentence in ‘The Value of Seeking Evidence’ article by David Annal in November 2022 Family Tree caught our eye: ‘… we mustn’t ignore the very strong possibility that the person we’re looking for was born with a different name to the one that he or she routinely used in later life.’ This is certainly true of Ro’s maternal grandmother, of whose first and last surnames (out of four!) we initially had no knowledge. Despite having researched our family histories on and off for many years, and acquired a vast store of information along the way, mystery surrounded Ro’s mother’s maternal line. Ro’s mother (Elizabeth Ann Gripper, known as Ann) was born to Geoffrey Frank and Krysia Gripper in Shropshire in 1928. Not long after her birth she was…

The aims of Friends of Wolverhampton Archives are to promote and support the Wolverhampton Archives and this takes many forms, including attending local fairs and history events; we take along a selection of historical material, which is displayed on attractive boards and seek to introduce members of the general public to the exciting material available to view at the Archives. Talking to the residents of our local area is an interesting and illuminating experience, for many have fascinating stories and facts, as well as interesting documents and photos. We also help out at any events which the Archives run. Recently we ran a café at the Local History Fair, providing people with refreshments and home-made cakes. Members raise money through events throughout the year and, with these funds, they purchase…

In this Family Tree guide, we’re going to explore some of the nuts and bolts of building and maintaining our family trees on Ancestry. Online trees sometimes get some bad rap for inaccuracies, lack of source citations, and a sense of a ‘copy and paste’ or ‘smash and grab’ approach to tree-building. The online tree-building sites are tools that generations of genealogists before us could have only dreamed of, however. To ensure that our trees are beyond reproach, let’s take a look at how we can go about making the most of the Ancestry site tools and so create family trees that accurately reflect the determination and dedication that we put into the tracing of our ancestors’ lives. Step 1: your log in Setting up your two-step verification on Ancestry.…

DISCOVER LEARNING EXPERIENCES TO ENJOY FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, PLUS ON-SITE EVENTS ONSITE EVENTS Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance, until 7 January Which stories get remembered, and why? This exhibition explores some new stories from history – stories that help us to separate fact from fiction and history from myth. By bringing together collections from across the University of Cambridge’s museums, libraries and colleges with loans from around the world, Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance asks new questions about Cambridge’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and looks at how objects and artworks have influenced history and perspectives. Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB; website: https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/plan-your-visit/exhibitions/black-atlantic-power-people-resistance Burma to Mynamar, until 11 February Experiencing decades of civil war and now ruled again by a military dictatorship, Myanmar is an…