Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Who Do You Think You Are?

The researchers who build the trees of the Who Do You Think You Are? celebrities are busy at work on the next series uncovering some fascinating stories for us all to enjoy. They are experienced, professional genealogists, but they hit the same brick walls that we all do – people disappearing from records, missing births and lost connections. What do they do when they come to a dead end? Turn to page 15 to learn the secrets to their success. Talking of celebrities, Danny Dyer revelled in discovering his royal ancestors. Although we probably all have a connection to royalty, the trick is in finding it. On page 25 Anthony Adolph explains how to build a robust link to the aristocracy that will delight your family. We’ve also got a…

I found the discussion of Victorian entertainers in your Focus On article about researching performers (February) very interesting, and it set me thinking about my maternal grandmother who was born in Birkenhead in 1882 and christened Fannie Whiteside Curran. I’ve spent a long time wondering where her middle name came from, as it seems very unusual; all her brothers and sisters (they were nine in all) had standard middle names. I can’t find any connection with Whiteside in Cumbria and, as far as I’m aware, there is no one with that surname in the family. So why did her mother, Harriet, choose it as a middle name? I did some more research and came across a Victorian stage actress called Fanny (or Fannie) Whiteside Brough, who was born two years…

Free DNA tests are on offer in a bid to trace the English branch of the historic Clay family. The American Clay Family Society can trace their ancestry to John Clay, who arrived in Virginia in 1613 on a ship called the Treasurer. He acquired a substantial amount of land, and was recorded in a muster roll of 1624 with his wife Ann and a servant. Englishmen with the surname Clay are invited to take part in free Y-DNA tests via FamilyTreeDNA to find out if they’re related to the American Clays. Please email David Clay on dmclay@btinternet.com; write to him at 30 Mill Street, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, NG18 2PQ; or visit clayfamilysociety.org to find out more.…

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has added six-inch-to-the-mile Ordnance Survey maps of England and Wales from the 1950s/1960s to its free maps website. The 8,949 new maps, now available on maps.nls.uk, join the existing maps for Scotland. The OS six-inch-to-the-mile series dates back to the 1840s, providing a comprehensive online resource for seeing where your ancestors lived. NLS will now add georeferencing to the England and Wales maps, making it possible to overlay them on maps from other periods to see how the landscape has changed over time. In addition, NLS is running an online survey to collect user suggestions for improving the website. To take part, go to maps.nls.uk/survey. The survey closes on 25 February 2019.…

A retired artist has launched a new website allowing family historians to explore 360-degree photographic panoramas of the First World War Commonwealth cemeteries where their family members are buried. Howard Wood, from Wakefield, told Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine that he was inspired to create ww1monumenta.com after a visit to Adelaide Cemetery in France in 2013, during which he met an Australian father and son who were visiting a relative’s grave and taking multiple photographs. “It was for the relatives who couldn’t make it,” he said. “There must be thousands of people like that, who would like to go and have a look but can’t.” Wood spent two weeks in France and Belgium every year between 2014 and 2018, photographing the cemeteries. Photos of 500 cemeteries are now…

It’s March, and the annual cycle of agricultural activity is gathering pace. Today much of the work in arable areas is mechanised, but for our forebears this time of year ushered in the six months of hardest work, which continued until mid-September and the end of harvest time. They were in tune with the seasons, the changing length of the night and day and the calendar of tasks that had to be done – no matter the circumstances. They were vigilant about the weather, and seized every opportunity to make the most of warmer, drier times (“make hay while the sun shines”). Lambing and calving, milking and sowing, weeding and hoeing… you couldn’t avoid or evade these labours, and everybody had a role to play, from small children bird-scaring to…

Recently, I travelled to Yorkshire to visit a ‘gateway ancestor’ of mine. My grandmother’s great great grandfather was Perry Nursey (1771–1840), a country surgeon turned landscape gardener and landscape painter in Little Bealings near Woodbridge, Suffolk. I have spent years discovering ever more about his artistic connections to other more famous local artists, including Churchyard and Constable. In parallel, I have enjoyed tracing his ancestry, especially through his mother, Catherine Nursey née Fairfax. A cousin of mine has a beautiful miniature of her, not aristocratic but clearly not poor either – her husband was a surgeon and her father was a draper – and her surname hinted at aristocratic connections, because several Fairfaxes appear in Burke’s publications, with titles. So back I traced her line, to a parchment-maker in Elizabethan…

NELL DARBY is a writer and criminal historian who edits our Q&A section every issue BERYL EVANS is a family historian and the author of Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors EMMA JOLLY is a writer, historical researcher and member of AGRA ANTONY MARR is a member of the council of AGRA CHRIS PATON is a genealogist, author and blogger at britishgenes.blogspot.com JAYNE SHRIMPTON is a professional dress historian and portrait specialist ALAN STEWART is a family historian and author of Grow Your Own Family Tree PHIL TOMASELLI is a military family history expert, and wrote Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors Why is my great grandmother missing from two censuses? Q My great grandmother was Mary Ann Hall, born in 1862. She married Daniel Thomas Savory in Walworth, South-East London, in 1884,…

Who was ‘Ukrainian Willie’? Q I believe my great grandfather, William Dixon, came to England from Ukraine with his parents, aged four, around 1884, leaving behind his twin brother Peter. Willie spoke ‘proppa Geordie’, with no hint of his Ukrainian heritage. His mother came from a wealthy ship-owning family who disowned her when she married ‘beneath her’. Not knowing his original Ukrainian name, I have no idea how to trace Willie’s story back. Aside from bigamy, Willie was also a drunk and abusive, beating his wife, Annie Holt. Annie, a cook, got her revenge. She got him drunk, then broke his legs with her rolling pin so he couldn’t chase her, picked up her two daughters, and ran away to London. She returned to Tyneside years later. Willie was buried…

The first modern circus was opened by Philip Astley in London in 1768. By the early 20th century the art form was at its peak, with companies travelling across the world and staging elaborate productions. Performers from the Ohmy Family Circus were among the estimated 15,000 British and French citizens in Germany when the First World War broke out, and were detained by the authorities. An American passport that was issued to Lily Smith, which is held at the National Fairground and Circus Archive (NFCA), tells the family’s story, as Arantza Barrutia Ezenarro, the collections manager at the archive, explains. Who was Lily Smith? Lily was born in Dudley, the youngest child of Joseph Smith (c1852–1931) and Diana Morris (c1853–1920). Joseph, also known as ‘King Ohmy’ (as his deeds were…

ARCHIVE THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES a Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU t 020 8876 3444 w nationalarchives.gov.uk British Army muster rolls are at TNA. Some are also available via ancestry.co.uk, findmypast.co.uk and thegenealogist.co.uk. BOOK Tracing Your Army Ancestors, 3rd Edition by Simon Fowler Pen and Sword, 2017 This book includes advice on finding muster rolls. WEBSITE 1881 REGIMENTAL TITLES w bit.ly/fibis-regiments The Families in British India Society has created a guide to the names of regiments before and after the Childers Reforms.…

Crinolines and Crimping Irons by Christina Walkley and Vanda Foster Peter Owen, 1985 This examination of Victorian clothes includes a chapter on laundry processes. English Laundresses: A Social History, 1850–1930 by Patricia Malcolmson University of Illinois Press, 1986 This book is an in-depth investigation of hand and mechanised laundry work. Female Occupations: Women’s Employment, 1840–1950 by Margaret Ward Countryside Books, 2008 Ward includes sections on laundresses and laundry maids.…

It was George Leare (c1666–1745) – the son of George Leare, a butcher and the great grandfather of Edward Lear (1812–1888) – who came to London from Gillingham in Dorset to be apprenticed to Thomas Compton, Citizen and Fruiterer. No membership records survive for the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers before 1748. However, George Leare received the Freedom of the City of London in 1692, and the record of this includes a copy of his original apprenticeship indenture. This shows that he was apprenticed for seven years from the date of the indenture, 11 November 1680. The Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices’ Indentures reveals that George took on an apprentice himself in 1717, “Robert son of Simon Pullen”. One of George’s sons, also named George, was apprenticed too. A record…

BOOKS Apprenticeship in England, 1600–1914 by Joan Lane Routledge, 2016 This social history explores the changing fortunes of apprentices. My Ancestor Was An Apprentice by Stuart A Raymond Society of Genealogists, 2010 Discover how to locate apprenticeship records. LIBRARIES GUILDHALL LIBRARY a Aldermanbury, London EC2V 7HH t 020 7332 1868 w history.ac.uk/gh/livapp.htm The library holds original records of 85 City of London livery companies or related organisations. SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS a 14 Charterhouse Buildings, Goswell Road, London EC1M 7BA t 020 7702 5487 w bit.ly/sog-search Learn what material on apprenticeships the society’s library holds by searching its catalogue. SOCIETY FEDERATION OF FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETIES a PO Box 62, Sheringham, Norfolk NR26 9AR t 0800 085 6322 w bit.ly/ffhs-members Many local family history societies have transcribed and/or indexed records of apprenticeships…

1745 THE ’45 REBELLION A Scottish army invaded England this year in a dangerous but doomed attempt to restore a Catholic ruler to the throne. ‘Londoners began to fear that their safety was under threat’ Some of the supporters of the Stuart monarchy had never accepted the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, which deposed the Catholic James II and substituted the Protestant William of Orange. James’ son, calling himself James III, maintained a court in exile. In 1745 he launched the last of the Jacobite rebellions, led by his own son, Charles Stuart – known as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ by his friends, but dismissed as ‘the Young Pretender’ by his foes. Charles Stuart’s campaign started uncertainly when a ship carrying 700 Irish volunteers was turned back to France by a British…

WARD’S DIRECTORY OF REDCAR, MIDDLESBROUGH, STOCKTON ETC, 1938–9 Genealogy supplier My History (my-history.co.uk) has kindly provided us with a pair of trade directories this month. The first lists residents and businesses in this part of the historic North Riding of Yorkshire. Normally costing £9.95 on CD or £5.95 as a download from twrcomputing.co.uk, the directory is fully searchable. NORTH YORKSHIRE ARCHIVES IMAGE SET North Yorkshire County Record Office (northyorks.gov.uk/article/23584/county-record-office) has provided a selection of favourites from the vaults in Northallerton. These include examples of tithe maps, Poor Law and quarter sessions material, photographs and First World War tribunals. There’s also a 1603 parish register entry from Hinderwell that lists burials of 49 villagers who died from the plague, plus an example from the archive of the shipbuilding company Cochrane and…

PODCAST GENEALOGY NEWS w geneatopia.com Free Genealogy News is a weekly podcast hosted by US expert Patty Roy, who keeps you up to date with the world of genealogy. Each episode brings you the latest news from the blogosphere, including record releases, DNA news, events and TV programmes. WEBSITE PARISH LOCATOR w benynet.co.uk/parishlocator.html Free This downloadable database enables you to find out where your ancestors lived with a list of nearly 15,000 UK parishes. You can search parishes in any county, or access a list of parishes within a given radius of any parish. Most of the parishes that are included in the database existed from the mid-1500s to 1837. SOFTWARE REUNION 12 OS X 10.7 or later £79.95 Reunion helps Mac users document, store and display information about their…

LAURA BERRY Laura famously broke the news to John Hurt that he was not Irish in 2007. Since then she has continued to break down brick walls for WDYTYA? celebrities. See how on page 15. ANTHONY ADOLPH Author of Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors, Anthony knows a thing or two about uncovering royal connections. Follow his advice on page 25 and take your tree to new heights! MARK SIMNER When he’s not writing books on military history or writing for us, Mark runs the Napoleonic and Victorian Wars forums. On page 54 he shares his considerable expertise on muster rolls.…

Middlesbrough Catholic records published online A set of records from Middlesbrough Diocese Archives are now available exclusively in the Roman Catholic collection on family history website findmypast.co.uk. They consist of images and transcripts of 65,000 baptism records, 19,000 marriages, 7,000 burials and 47,000 congregational records, including confirmation lists, congregational lists, and lists of benefactors and converts. The earliest records date to 1742, when Catholic worship was still illegal, and the latest are burial records from 1974. Gloucestershire Heritage Hub gets a royal opening HRH Princess Anne formally opened Gloucestershire’s refurbished Heritage Hub in Gloucester on 8 January. Gloucestershire Archives reopened as the Heritage Hub in April 2018 with improved facilities, including a new archive research room. The project was funded with £1.1 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £1.6…

LONDON TRACING ANCESTORS IN WALES 2 March a Society of Genealogists, Clerkenwell w bit.ly/sog-anc-wales e events@sog.org.uk Join Gill Thomas for a half-day course explaining how you can research your Welsh kin. £20. FINDING LONDON BURIALS ONLINE 6 March a Society of Genealogists, Clerkenwell w bit.ly/sog-lndn-burials e events@sog.org.uk In this one-hour talk John Hanson reveals sources you can turn to for locating your London ancestor’s final resting place. £8. WAS YOUR ANCESTOR A GYPSY? 9 March a Society of Genealogists, Clerkenwell w bit.ly/sog-gypsy e events@sog.org.uk In this half-day course Beverley Walker will cover the story of the Gypsies, and ways to research Traveller families. £20. MIDLANDS THE HISTORY AND HERITAGE SHOW 2019 9 March a 51 Paddock Street, Wigston w lrfhs.com/History_Show_2019.html The Friends of Welford Road Cemetery, Leicester, will be hosting…

You’re not alone – we’ve all been there. Stuck with seemingly nowhere to go. Sometimes you can trace a person from birth through to marriage and death, yet they’re hiding on a single census. Other times you can only find a solitary document attesting to the fact your ancestor ever existed. Were they a secret agent, a master of deception? Unlikely. When faced with these situations in the WDYTYA? office, fellow genealogist Sara Khan and I have a brainstorming session with development producer Anna Kirkwood and our team of researchers to come up with a solution. Creating a timeline is always useful, encouraging us to re-examine the information we already know about the person and their immediate family. How long did they stay at an address? Are there inconsistencies in…

‘A gateway to royalty’ or ‘gateway ancestor’ is a term used in genealogy for somebody who left many descendants among the aristocracy, landed gentry, and the middle and working classes, yet whose own bloodline can be traced back to a monarch. It is not a scientifically definable term: in a line starting with a monarch and ending with you or me, every ancestor is in a sense a gateway to the previous generations, but the term tends to be applied most to those who bridged a social divide; to those whose forebears were distinctly better-heeled than their descendants. NAMES AND THRONES ‘Find a link to Alfred the Great and you can follow his pedigree back to the Germanic god Odin’ Such ancestors tend to be sought-after for several reasons. Their…

BOOKS The Blood Royal of Britain by the Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval London, 1903 This is a roll of the living descendants (in 1903) of Edward IV and Henry VII. The same author’s The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal, listing living descendants (in 1911) of Edward III, is on Ancestry: bit.ly/anc-plantagenet. Complete Peerage by George Edward Cokayne et al. London, 1887–1995 All eight volumes of the first edition are freely available on archive.org. Peerage and Baronetage by John Burke et al. London, 1826–2003 Burke’s Peerage, as it was known, was updated annually from 1847. A 1914 edition is on archive.org. Right Royal Bastards by Peter Beauclerk-Dewar and Roger Powell Burke’s Peerage, London, 2006 The authors cover royals from the 15th century up to Edward VIII. The Royal Bastards…

If you’re looking for an ancestor at a particular period of history, but you can’t find them in the relevant census, do not despair – there are several other record sources that you can look in for your missing relative. For example, try travel records – including immigration or emigration records, and passenger manifests – or armed forces records. Closer to home, they may also be present in sadder records – those of workhouses, asylums or other institutions. And don’t forget to try different spellings or permutations of their names – they may have been recorded incorrectly by officials.…

How do I find details of Alfred’s First World War service? Q I am trying to find out more about my husband’s grandfather’s service in the First World War, although I can’t find a service record. His name was Alfred Harrison, and he was born on 3 February 1877 in Spalding, Lincolnshire. At the time of his enlistment, he lived at the Crown Hotel in Shepperton. He was in the Army Veterinary Corps, and he is the man on the left in the group photo. Carol Harrison A These are photographs of an Army Veterinary Corps Private, the first taken probably quite early in the First World War in a British studio, and the second on active service later, probably in Italy in 1918, or possibly in Salonika. Alfred’s Medal…

The Imperial War Museum Memorial Search (iwm.org.uk/memorials/search) gives access to the IWM’s huge register of more than 79,600 war memorials in the UK, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. You can filter your search by such criteria as town, county, denomination, material and condition. Details are clearly laid out, including inscriptions and photographs. Lists of individuals commemorated on each memorial are also displayed – very helpful for family historians researching ancestors who met their end during conflicts. Civilians are included as well as members of the armed forces, and there are even memorials to animals. A stone trough on the Isle of Wight is dedicated “To the horses and dogs who also bore the burden and heat of the day 1914–1920”. The website’s memorials each have a story…

Millions of people have earned a living washing others’ garments, and in western societies laundry work has been chiefly a female occupation. Historically the social elite always employed servants or professional washerwomen in household laundries. During the 1800s, as the population rose and Britain grew wealthier, outsourcing washing became a common way of relieving the domestic burden. The middle class and even better-off working-class families also sent their laundry out, or employed help at home. The frequency of the laundry reflected the quantity of clothes a household possessed: a privileged few ran quarterly laundry operations, although most ordinary families had only sufficient linen for a weekly wash. Handwashing was a mammoth task. Apart from the delicate silk, lace and fine woollen articles generally cleaned by experienced servants or specialist firms,…

There’s nothing more frustrating than images that can’t be identified. There are plenty of things you can try, from enlisting the help of other family members to performing detective work using other photos and drawing logical conclusions with the help of your tree (“If Gran is in the photo with three people roughly her own age, could they be her cousins? And if so, didn’t one of her aunts have three kids who would match the ages of the trio in the picture?”). Another technique that can be used to help glean more information – or even fresh material and new leads – is the reverse image search. This involves uploading one of your photos to the search engines Google or Bing using your web browser. The website then searches…

As well as becoming a vast repository for historic records, the internet has proven to be a vital tool of communication for genealogists. Message boards such as rootsweb.com and websites such as lostcousins.com have allowed distant relatives to come together and collaborate in a way that would have been unfathomable not too long ago. If you throw the likes of ancestry.co.uk into the mix – with its millions of user-submitted trees – then it’s possible to find a matching connection in seconds. While you should always aim to verify a stranger’s research before accepting it at face value, online collaboration can spell success and spark new friendships. For Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine reader Erica Moores, this has happened not once, but twice – both on the same…

Joseph was the youngest son of Jedidiah Strutt, the founder of a famous cotton-spinning business at Belper in Derbyshire. After Jedidiah’s death, his three sons William, George and Joseph took over the firm – one of the biggest in the UK. It was Joseph’s job to look after its commercial dealings. Joseph married in 1793. In the late 1810s, after being widowed, he moved from the village of Darley Abbey to nearby Derby. A keen philanthropist, Joseph helped found a school and a Mechanics’ Institute, and became the mayor of the borough of Derby in 1835. In the late 1830s Joseph made a gift of an arboretum to the people of Derby “for ever”. He commissioned famous landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon to design the park, and spent at least…

North Yorkshire enjoys a reputation as a place of no-nonsense plain-speaking, hard work and good, strong tea. It also happens to be beautiful, with a proud industrial heritage peppered by feats of engineering and world-changing innovation. ‘We hold nearly 6,000 appeal papers from WW1 soldiers’ The county was formed in the 1970s by taking bites out of all three of the historic Ridings as well as York itself. For remote researchers, the pick of the online offerings from commercial players is the enormous Yorkshire Collection at findmypast.co.uk. This comprises parish records, Bishops’ Transcripts, memorial inscriptions, burial records and more, all through a long-term partnership with the Yorkshire Digitisation Consortium – its members include the Borthwick Institute for Archives (originally founded as a home for the York Diocesan Archive in the…

How did you get the idea to rebuild your grandfather’s First World War aircraft? I grew up with my grandfather, and he used to tell us stories about his days flying in the First World War. When he died in 1983, my dad and I were clearing out his workshop and in it we found these three parts. He’d never mentioned them, but I was reasonably sure that they must be aircraft parts. My brother Rick and I have always been involved in flying, and a friend of ours suggested that we might investigate rebuilding grandad’s aircraft, Bristol Scout 1264, from the three parts. It took about seven years of research and six years of building, but now we’ve rebuilt the whole rest of the aircraft exactly as he had…

MILITARY RECORDS Lisa was able to find some war records for her grandfather, Henry, on findmypast.co.uk. The website has placed a collection of British Army Casualty Lists online, which were originally kept by the War Office, at bit.ly/fmp-army-casualties. She found a listing for “HG Hammond” detailing his disappearance in Italy in 1943. PCC WILLS A key source that showed that Lisa’s Hilditch kin were Welsh was the will of Joseph Hilditch, the uncle of her maternal 3x great grandfather William Henry Hilditch, which mentions a connection to Denbighshire. It’s one of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury’s wills on ancestry.co.uk and at bit.ly/tna-wills. DENBIGHSHIRE PARISH RECORDS A great many parish records are now online, and we found a collection for Denbigh on findmypast.co.uk. This allowed us to see the various life…

ARCHIVES BRITISH LIBRARY a 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB w bl.uk The library holds books, newspapers, journals, electoral registers and manuscripts. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES a Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU w nationalarchives.gov.uk TNA has a wealth of records created by central government. BOOKS Ancestral Trails, 3rd Edition by Mark D Herber Genealogical Publishing Co., 2009 This award-winning tome needs an update, but is still vital. Who Do You Think You Are? The Genealogy Handbook by Dan Waddell BBC Books, 2018 This practical pocket guide is packed with hints and tips. WEBSITES ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry has unique datasets from the London Metropolitan Archives, Dorset History Centre, Lancashire Archives and the West Yorkshire Archive Service, and smaller bodies like the Institution of Civil Engineers. FINDMYPAST w findmypast.co.uk Partnerships have been…

BURKE’S PEERAGE w burkespeerage.com This subscription-based portal offers these online resources: New and Revised Families; Peerage 107th Edition; Landed Gentry; Irish Family Records; Landed Gentry Scotland; Landed Gentry Ridings of York; Landed Gentry Wales and North West; Peerage Great War Edition; Peerage Second World War Edition; Peerage War Gazette 1940; and Guide to the Royal Family. CRACROFT’S PEERAGE w cracroftspeerage.co.uk Patrick Cracroft-Brennan’s peerage website is well researched. GOOGLE BOOKS w books.google.co.uk You can find free digital versions of out-of-print sources here. THE GENEALOGIST w thegenealogist.co.uk The ‘Peerage, Gentry & Royalty’ section of this subscription website is very useful, especially its collection of images from the heralds’ visitations – find them under the ‘Peerage & Heritage’ category. THE INTERNET ARCHIVE w archive.org Many reliable published sources, including the antiquarian county histories,…

At 3am on 6 November 1897 Constable Walter Ramsbottom came off duty and headed back to the county police station in Widnes, where he lived with his wife Eliza, their two sons and three colleagues. Before retiring, he went to lock up but noticed that Constable Benson was missing. Seeing the door of his own living quarters ajar, he went to check that his family was safe. Turning on the light, he was shocked to find Benson in bed with his wife. Calling for another policeman, he threw Benson’s clothes out of the window and pulled him from under the bed where he was trying to hide. It may sound almost comical now, but the repercussions were to be catastrophic for all involved – and rippled down the generations. More…

When did my great grandmother have her photograph taken? Q I was wondering if you could help me date this photo depicting my great grandmother. She was born in 1895, and got married in 1918. The photograph was taken in a studio in Oxford. Will Mundy A This is a formal studio portrait taken during the First World War, when home camera ownership was not quite the norm and many of our forebears still had to visit a local studio for a high-quality photo. This scan includes no printed information, so I must date and interpret your photo from the visual image alone. Fortunately female fashions can usually be accurately identified and dated, providing an accurate timeframe. Your great grandmother’s outfit is essentially rather plain, but absolutely typical of the…

AMERICAN BATTLE MONUMENTS COMMISSION w abmc.gov Search the ‘Burials’ database of Americans commemorated by the ABMC. AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL w awm.gov.au This website includes a roll of honour featuring members of the Australian armed forces. BRITISH WAR GRAVES w britishwargraves.co.uk This useful database features thousands of photographs of British war graves. CANADIAN VIRTUAL WAR MEMORIAL w bit.ly/canadian-virtual This website contains a registry of information about the graves and memorials of more than 118,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders. IRISH WAR MEMORIALS w irishwarmemorials.ie Explore a growing database of cross-conflict memorials in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. At time of writing the website had records of 577 places, 1,110 memorials and 35,940 people. NATIONAL MEMORIAL ARBORETUM w thenma.org.uk Search an online roll of honour for those who have died in military…

Many of our poorer ancestors were laundresses, while the more wealthy may have run laundries. The occupation is usually indicated in census returns as “Laundress”, “Laundry worker” or “Washerwoman”, although you may also see “Goes out washing”, “Takes in washing at home” or “Washing and charring”. Later censuses may add qualifying details such as “Laundress servant”, “Steam laundress” or “Head laundress domestic”. Where the address is an ordinary residence, your ancestor presumably worked from home or at local premises, but institutional addresses including workhouses and orphanages would suggest laundress inmates or residential staff. Hospital, infirmary and other institutional papers sometimes mention laundry employees, and many laundresses are named in the records of Sun Fire Office, an insurance company founded in London at the start of the 18th century, while some…

BOARD OF STAMPS’ APPRENTICESHIP BOOKS w bit.ly/anc-apprentices The books contain registers of the payment of tax for an apprentice’s indenture between 1710 and 1811. Note that the records are also available to download for free from The National Archives: bit.ly/tna-apprentices. CRISP AND CLENCH COLLECTION w bit.ly/sog-crisp-clench This series of indentures dating from the late 17th century onwards have been scanned and indexed, and are among the more than 11 million records available online to members of the Society of Genealogists. RECORDS OF LONDON’S LIVERY COMPANIES ONLINE w londonroll.org This free website provides a searchable database of records of apprentices and freemen in the City of London livery companies between 1400 and 1900.…

ARCHIVES ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY (RHS) a RHS Lindley Library, 80 Vincent Square, London SW1P 2PE t 020 7821 3050 w bit.ly/soc-libraries The society’s research collection is open to non-members by appointment, and you can view a guide to researching gardens and parks at bit.ly/rhs-libraries. BOOKS Gardens of the British Working Class by Margaret Willes Yale University Press, 2015 This book covers everything from the humble potato patch to municipal parks. People’s Parks by Hazel Conway CUP, 1991 This guide to municipal parks’ history includes a gazetteer. WEBSITES THE GARDENS TRUST w thegardenstrust.org This charity works to conserve designed landscapes. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES w bit.ly/tna-gardens The National Archives has created a guide for anyone researching garden history. NATIONAL PARKS UK w nationalparks.gov.uk Find out more about the UK’s 15 national parks.…

1069 William the Conqueror quells rebellions in a series of campaigns known as the Harrying of the North. 1154 Ouse Bridge collapses under the weight of a crowd gathered to greet Archbishop William of York on his return from exile. 1728 Captain James Cook is born in the village of Marton near Middlesbrough, becoming an apprentice draper in the fishing harbour of Staithes. 1826 Bath Hospital opens in Harrogate. The Royal Pump Room is built in 1842. 1836 The single-track, horse-drawn Whitby and Pickering Railway opens. Its total length is 24 miles. 1914 The hospital ship Rohilla , a former passenger steamer and troopship, runs aground on 30 October within sight of Whitby. There are 85 casualties. 1914 The Imperial German Navy bombards Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, killing 137 people.…

ACKROYD This topographic name derives from the Middle English words ‘ake’ (oak) and ‘royd’ (clearing). AINLEY Just shy of 90 per cent of all Ainleys recorded in the 1891 census lived in Yorkshire. BARRACLOUGH This habitational name comes from Barrowclough near Halifax. COCKROFT There are two sources for this surname in West Yorkshire – Cock Croft in Bingley and Cockcroft in Rishworth. EXLEY According to surnamedb.com, the earliest written example was a Halifax parish reference to Edward Exley, 25 May 1572. FEATHER This occupational name derives from the Middle English ‘fether’, which was given to a trader in feathers/down. HAINSWORTH This habitational name is from Hainworth, just north of Bradford, which in turn is related to the Old English personal name ‘Hagena’. LONGBOTTOM The source of this topographic name for…

NOW THE WAR IS OVER BRITAIN 1919–1920 SIMON FOWLER AND DANIEL WEINBREN Pen & Sword, 240 pages, £19.99 Each chapter of this book concentrates on one aspect of life following the Armistice of 11 November 1918. It references events before, during and after the First World War, the most expensive conflict in British history: political and social changes, industrial developments, crime, technological advances, family life and more – even the introduction of crisps. New government departments were established, as was the first modern charity – Save the Children. This book showed me how little I knew about the chaos of the aftermath of the conflict and its effects on everyday life, including mutinies by soldiers waiting to be demobilised and return home, industrial riots, and increased freedom for women…