Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i Who Do You Think You Are?

It’s the time of year when the country, from businesses to the Government, sets a budget for the year ahead – and we’re no exception. Whether you are worried about balancing the books or just want to be sure that you are getting the best value out of your hobby, we’ve got some top advice from Chris Paton on how family historians can save money (page 17). We also look at the history of tax on page 70. Who would have thought that taxing income was once so radical? On page 26 the recently appointed curator of the National Trust’s photography collections, Catherine Troiano, introduces us to some of the charity’s archive and offers tips to help date early photographs. We’ve also got a masterclass on institutional census records from…

CHRIS PATON Chris is a regular contributor to WDYTYA? Magazine and runs the popular blog scottish genes.blogspot.com. Turn to page 17 for his top tips for growing your tree on a budget. CATHERINE TROIANO Formerly curator of photographs at the V&A, Catherine is now the National Trust’s first national curator for photography collections. See some of the Trust’s gems on page 26. GILL BLANCHARD Based in Norfolk, Gill is one of the UK’s leading house historians and author of the book Tracing Your House History. On page 63 she reveals her go-to house history records.…

RootsTech London returns on 5–7 November 2020 Family history show RootsTech will return to London this autumn. FamilySearch CEO Steve Rockwood made the announcement at the 10th annual RootsTech conference, which was held in Salt Lake City on 26–29 February. RootsTech London 2020 will take place on 5–7 November at ExCeL London. RootsTech London 2019 – the first RootsTech conference held outside the USA – was attended by 9,727 family historians from 42 countries. Visit rootstech.org to book your tickets. Imperial Yeomanry records added to Fold3 Military history website fold3.com, which is owned by ancestry.com, has added a new collection of records of the Imperial Yeomanry, a British volunteer mounted force that fought in the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. The collection contains 29,996 records and 186,741 images. The documents…

The new Cambridgeshire Archives building officially opened for business on 6 February. The old archives building in Shire Hall, Cambridge, closed in December 2018 after an inspection found that it was no longer fit for purpose. The archives’ 855 tonnes of documents were cleaned and moved to a new facility in Ely. Since then more than 170 visitors have been to the new centre – over three times the average number of visitors to the old facility in the same amount of time. Dr Elizabeth Hallam Smith, the first female librarian of the House of Lords Library and a published historian, attended the official opening and unveiled a plaque. The archive is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (9.30am–5pm), and the third Saturday in each month (except for 21 March 2020)…

Britain’s first museum of migration is now open in a new venue in a shopping centre in South-East London. The Migration Museum officially opened its doors in Unit 11 in Lewisham Shopping Centre on 14 February. Sophie Henderson, director of the Migration Museum, said: “As a new museum, we’re constantly asking ourselves how we can make what we do more accessible, breaking down barriers and reaching wider audiences. Which is why we’re so excited to be opening our new venue in the heart of a busy shopping centre in one of London’s most dynamic and diverse boroughs.” The museum’s 2020 programme includes Departures, a new exhibition exploring 400 years of emigration stories from Britain to coincide with the anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower to North America. The Migration…

Family history research often prompts intriguing questions. I’ve recently been discussing with a class how babies were reared in the early 18th century. Evidence is hard to come by for the ordinary folk, but we explored how the gentry raised their children by looking at the diaries of a Lancashire squire. Nicholas Blundell (1669–1737) was lord of the manor of Little Crosby near Liverpool. A devout Catholic, he married late, when he was 32. His bride, Frances Langdale, was rich, Catholic and only 17 years old. It is no exaggeration to say that they disliked each other from the start, but this was a union designed for one purpose – to carry on the family line. Nicholas was one of 14 children, and Frances was expected to secure the succession…

The Northern Irish General Register Office offers copies of all historical civil registration records online at https://geni.nidirect.gov. uk at a cost of £2.50 each – namely births from 1864 to 1920, marriages from 1845 to 1945, and deaths from 1864 to 1970. However, prior to Partition in 1921, the whole of Ireland was administered centrally from the General Register Office in Dublin, which held onto the original centralised records when the island was divided. Copies of most of the same Northern Irish records before Partition are therefore also available on the Irish government’s own website Irish Genealogy (www. irishgenealogy.ie/en), which is free to access. The only exception is the death records dating from 1864 to 1878, which have still to be uploaded.…

BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE  w britishnewspaperarchive. co.uk Local newspapers are very useful for checking out sporting fixtures, reports and results. ENGLISH BASEBALL ASSOCIATION  w englishbaseball.weebly.com Sports clubs and associations often hold records going back decades. If you know an ancestor played a particular sport (for example, Billy Rankin played English baseball), it’s worth contacting them. THE EVERTON COLLECTION w evertoncollection.org.uk This collection of more than 18,000 records and other items can be searched at Liverpool Record Office or online.…

The workhouse system our Victorian ancestors would have known came into being because of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. This established a Poor Law Commission to supervise the workhouses, which were administrated by local boards of guardians. Living conditions in workhouses were meant to be worse than living in poverty outside, to discourage all but the truly destitute from living off parish funds. A dietary table from Plomesgate Union Workhouse in Wickham Market, Suffolk, reveals the poor diet that paupers were offered, says Philip Tallent, chair of the Wickham Market Area Archive Centre. TELL ME ABOUT THE DOCUMENT… The document is dated 1883. It’s a dietary table specifying the food that each of the inmates of the workhouse is allowed to have on a daily basis and meal-by-meal. It…

BOOK Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census Emma Jolly Pen & Sword, 2013 Emma’s comprehensive guide explains how you can get the most from the census records. WEBSITES SCOTLANDSPEOPLE’S RECORD GUIDE TO CENSUS RETURNS w scotlandspeople.gov.uk/ guides/census-returns This guide provides full details and search tips on all the Scottish censuses. VISION OF BRITAIN w visionofbritain.org.uk/ census/index.jsp Browse reports and statistical information from censuses up to 1971, or search for census data relating to a particular town or district. The site also includes historical maps.…

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London holds the largest collection of Christian missionary archives in the UK, spanning from the 18th to 20th centuries and including personal papers of individual missionaries (correspondence, reports, diaries, photographs and films). Represented organisations include the London Missionary Society, the Methodist Missionary Society, the Presbyterian Church of English Foreign Missions Committee and the China Inland Mission. More information is available at soas.ac.uk/library/archives/collections/ missionary-collections . SOAS has also published a general guide to resources for tracing missionary ancestors at bit.ly/soas ancestors . In addition, the Mundus database (mundus.ac.uk) has details of more than 400 missionary collections in UK archives. Lastly, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has searchable records and photographs of its missionaries at bit.ly/ldsdatabase.…

BOOKS British Architectural Styles: An Easy Reference Guide Trevor Yorke Countryside Books, 2008 This book illustrates the main changes to house architecture through the ages to help you date a particular property. Discover Scottish Land Records Chris Paton Unlock The Past, 2015 This useful guide is written by a regular contributor to Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine (see page 17). WEBSITES THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR LOCAL HISTORY w balh.org.uk The association publishes books and journals, as well as offering guidance and training in using records. GENUKI w www.genuki.org.uk/ indexes/OPC.html At this free site Online Parish Clerk (OPC) volunteers transcribe records for specific places not readily available elsewhere, such as land-tax assessments and parish rates. VISION OF BRITAIN w visionofbritain.org.uk This website includes data from census returns, together with…

As you file your taxes this April, spare a thought for your 18th-century ancestors, saysFelicity Day William Pitt, the prime minister, made a startling fiscal announcement in November 1797. The sum total of taxes paid by a household on so-called luxuries in the previous year – things like horses and dogs, servants and carriages, windows and watches – was to be arbitrarily increased threefold, or even five-fold in some cases, in the coming year. It was, he assured dismayed taxpayers, only a temporary measure, implemented “for the safety of the country”. Nevertheless, many of our ancestors were alarmed at the prospect of an unexpectedly hefty bill. Novelist Frances Burney, then in the process of building a new house, swiftly decided to part with four of its planned windows; and Lord…

Jad Adams presents a decade-by-decade rundown of the major events affecting our ancestors’ lives. This month he explores the ninth decade of the 19th century 1886 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS REPEALED Campaigners celebrated this year when legislation brought in to reduce VD among soldiers and sailors was scrapped. The unmentionable subjects of prostitution and venereal disease (VD) were thrust into national prominence this year with the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Three Acts had been introduced in 1864, 1866 and 1869 to reduce the level of VD among soldiers and sailors, by controlling prostitutes. In certain garrison towns and ports women labelled as ‘common prostitutes’ could be forcibly examined and, if they were found to be suffering from gonorrhoea or syphilis, could be detained in a VD ward (a so-called…

CALENDAR OF WILLS w bit.ly/arch-cambs-wills The Internet Archive at archive.org has all sorts of free digitised volumes relating to the county. This URL leads to the book Calendar of Wills Proved in Vice-Chancellor’s Court at Cambridge, 1501–1765 published in 1907. BTS w bit.ly/fs-cambs-bts Resources at family search.org include an index to and images of Bishops’ Transcripts (1599–1860) filmed at the Cambridge University Library. STUDENTS’ DETAILS w venn.lib.cam.ac.uk Although it looks dated, the very useful site ACAD – A Cambridge Alumni Database allows you to search biographical information relating to former Cambridge students. You can find contact details for individual college archives via map.cam.ac.uk/colleges. SPECULUM REGIS w speculumgregis.co.uk Explore an account of “all the Inhabitants of the Parish of Croydon in the County of Cambridgeshire” from the mid-19th century. DIRECTORIES w…

ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES CAMBRIDGE CENTRAL LIBRARY  a 7 Lion Yard, Cambridge CB2 3QD e cambridgeshire.collection@ cambridgeshire.gov.uk w bit.ly/cam-cen-lib Established in 1855, the Cambridgeshire Collection at Cambridge Central Library houses street directories for Cambridge, as well as county directories; playbills and theatre programmes; planning documents; registers of electors and poll books; newspapers back to 1762, on microfilm and in original print editions, and other periodicals; maps and plans; plus a collection of more than 50,000 catalogued and indexed illustrations dating back to the 1680s. CAMBRIDGESHIRE ARCHIVES a The Dock, Ely CB7 4GS t 01223 699399 e cambs.archives@ cambridgeshire.gov.uk w cambridgeshire.gov.uk/ residents/libraries-leisure-culture/archives This is the brand new home of the main county archive which looks after records relating to the former counties of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, including parish and…

WEBSITE THE FRUGAL FAMILY HISTORIAN  scotsancestors.blogspot. com Free Discovering your forebears broadens your mind, but can drain your wallet. This blog from Glaswegian genealogist Alison Spring highlights little-known free online resources to help you with your research, including worksheets, newspaper archives and apps. APP SNIPTAG MacOS Free with in-app purchases This app for Macs promises to simplify the task of scanning your old family photographs. Scan up to eight at a time with any scanner, or four with any phone or digital camera, before cropping the images and captioning them with key details. The captions are saved as image metadata. E-BOOK READING THE PAST  bit.ly/borthhand Free If you’re taking your family history further back and need some help deciphering old handwriting, you may well find this guide from the University…

1911 CENSUS Charles was traced through various census returns, and we eventually found him in 1911. This is the most recent census that is publicly available; the 1921 census will be released in 2022, although in the meantime the 1939 Register is a great substitute. Aged in his 80s, Charles is listed with two boys, one named George Maybury. The 1911 census can be found on ancestry.co.uk, findmypast.co.uk and thegenealogist.co.uk. The precise link to this particular image on TheGenealogist is bit.ly/gene-charles-1911. PASSENGER LIST Further searches for George Maybury showed that he emigrated to Canada the following year, in 1912. We located a passenger list showing him heading to Quebec. Passenger lists are available on all of the major subscription websites, and many can also be searched and viewed on familysearch.org.…

Everyone deserves to have their story told,” says Mike Christopher, and what an incredible tale he has found. Mike’s wife Pauline didn’t know that she had a great uncle James until Mike began exploring the family tree. Not only was James a brave gunner in the early days of the air force – he also had an astonishing link to the Red Baron. “I began researching our family history in 2009. Pauline’s family comes from Pontypool in Monmouthshire, and her maternal grandmother was called Annie Wynn. We found out by word of mouth that there was someone named Wynn on the War Memorial Gates in Pontypool. This was JH Wynn, listed under the Royal Flying Corps as a 2nd AM, or air mechanic.” Mike began his quest at Gwent Archives,…

Record survival is a random thing. Some counties will have a full run of a record set, while others may have nothing. On page 50 Michelle Higgs points out that, if you know an ancestor spent time in a hospital or asylum and their records don’t survive, you can look at other similar examples (many now online) to get an idea of what their treatment may have been like. It all helps to paint a picture of their lives.…

CHANNEL ISLANDS JERSEY FAMILY HISTORY FESTIVAL 20–22 March a Jersey Archive t 01534 833300 w bit.ly/jersey-fhs The theme of this year’s festival is ‘Discover Your Military Ancestors’, and regular WDYTYA? Magazine contributor Phil Tomaselli will deliver talks and hold one-on-one sessions. Free, booking essential. LONDON TRACING ANCESTORS IN WALES 14 March a Society of Genealogists, Clerkenwell t 020 7553 3290 w bit.ly/sog-wales Join Gill Thomas for a half-day course on Welsh ancestry, covering administration district and ecclesiastical records, surnames, memorial inscriptions, pre-census records, and Army and Merchant Navy records. £20. MIDLANDS CWGC – WHAT, HOW AND WHY 3 April a International Bomber Command Centre, Lincoln t 01778 421420 w bit.ly/ibcccwgc The Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Megan Kelleher will be talking about the history of the organisation at this event. £10.…

While researching your family history can be fun, it can also be an expensive business at times. It’s a massive benefit to remote researchers that so many resources have now been digitised and made available online, but some of the records are only available on subscription websites. In addition, travel can be prohibitively expensive if you need to visit far-flung archives and repositories, and there’s always the risk that they don’t even hold the correct document to break down your brick wall. However, with a little care and planning, and a heads-up on alternative resources, you don’t have to break the bank… TRIAL PERIODS AND FREE ACCESS The largest subscription websites for genealogical records, Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) and Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk), allow you to sign up for a free account to access…

The king of online free resources is FamilySearch (familysearch.org), the online platform of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), whose members have a theological requirement to research their ancestry. To help them in their quest, the church has employed a decades-long and continuing programme to photograph many archival resources across the world, which are then indexed and digitised. Many of these resources are freely available on the FamilySearch website through databases accessible via the Search page at familysearch.org/search, providing access to indexes for records and many images from photographed collections. Digitised books can also be found at familysearch.org/library/books. Other resources are also finding their way online as ‘digital microfilms’, for example the Irish Register of Deeds at familysearch.org/ search/catalog/185720. These additional free records can be found via…

The invention of the first photographic process, the ‘daguerreotype’, was announced in 1839. This ‘direct positive’ process produced a unique image that was often kept in a case, like a precious jewel. Later that year William Henry Fox Talbot introduced his negative-to-positive paper technique. The ‘calotype’ would become the basis of almost all of the photography of the future, up until the shift to digital processes in the late 20th century. As photography developed over the decades after its invention, so did its role in society and culture. Photography quickly became an important part of family life; a tool for creating memories, legacies and identities. And with the rise of popular photography from the turn of the century and a world in flux from global conflicts and imperial missions, photography…

What did my wife’s great uncle do during his military service? Q This photograph shows my wife’s great uncle, William Henry Phillips. He was born on 18 September 1873 in Timoleague, County Cork. I have no information on him until he enlisted in the Fife Artillery in Fife in 1890 (regimental number 75464). Records show that he won medals for service in China and for the Relief of Pekin, while in the Royal Field Artillery. He married in North Shields in 1903 and died in Perth, Perthshire, in 1909. Can you help? George McLean A I think it’s certain you’ve conflated two, possibly three, soldiers – probably because one enlisted in Perth and another died there, and two served in the artillery. Judging by the photograph, you’re looking for Quartermaster…

Q We have inherited an old photo album containing many lovely family photographs. Unfortunately, none of them has been labelled, so we have only been able to positively identify a few of them. It was originally a Christmas gift to one of my great aunts in 1902, but she came from a very large family! Among the photos are three showing young men in uniform. If you are able to identify the uniforms, it may help me to work out who they are. Ann Brick A A date of 1902 seems reasonable, provided we accept that some of the photographs might predate the album – if only by a few years. It’s also possible that the pictures might be of friends rather than family. All of the photographs appear to…

If any of your ancestors spent time in a lunatic asylum, the institution’s patients’ records can not only shed light on the reason for admission and their treatment – they may also go into valuable detail about family relationships, and how the patient’s behaviour changed when he or she became ill. More and more lunatic asylum records are now being digitised and made available online, either on the various genealogy subscription sites or on independent websites. One of my favourite examples is the Patients of Powick Hospital 1852–1916 database on the Worcester Medical Museums website, located at medicalmuseum. org.uk/powick-patients. Powick Hospital was the Worcester City and County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, opened in 1852. Although it was built for patients from Worcestershire, its intake included those from the surrounding counties, Wales…

Over 200 years ago, Britain sent out thousands of missionaries to countries all over the world. Some of the first Protestant missionaries and their wives went to Tahiti in the South Pacific, landing on 5 March 1797 on the ship Duff. Many of your ancestors who followed them would have had the same hopes and aspirations. The Missionary Society (renamed the London Missionary Society in 1818) opened two years later with the intention “to spread the knowledge of Christ among heathen and other unenlightened nations”. These missions would spread out to reach China, Madagascar, South and South-East Asia, Southern and Central Africa, North America and the West Indies. Your missionary forbears might have belonged to any one of the missionary groups set up with backing of the churches in the…

When it comes to digitising your old family photographs – whether to preserve or share – the scanning process is critical. You need to capture as much detail from the original as possible, but that’s not always possible with the free scanning software supplied with your scanner. This is where VueScan comes to the rescue. Although primarily designed to keep old, obsolete scanners working in newer versions of Windows and the Mac operating system (see hamrick.com/vuescan/supported-scanners.html for a comprehensive list of supported models), it works brilliantly with the latest models too, and provides a more comprehensive set of tools to help you maximise the quality of your scanned photos. To get started, download and install the latest trial version from hamrick.com – if prompted during setup, click ‘Install’ to add…

The Lloyd George Domesday Survey was created because David Lloyd George (pictured), the chancellor of the exchequer, had to raise money to help pay for the 1908 Old-Age Pensions Act, together with a planned National Insurance Act that would provide limited unemployment benefit. He first introduced a Finance Bill in 1909, which included some new land taxes. This was so controversial that it helped to bring down the Government, but was passed in 1910, following a general election. The main objective was to ensure that major private landowners paid tax on any increase in the value of their property that had occurred because of new provisions and improvements instigated by government expenditure, such as new roads, drains and public services. This became known as the incremental value duty. This was…

Most of us know who are grandparents are. It’s usually earlier generations that create the brick walls that genealogists love to hate. However, for Peter Williams this was not the case. His father, Frederick Ernest Williams, was adopted informally before the 1926 Adoption of Children Act laid down legal rules for adoption. Although Fred knew that the people who had brought him up were not his biological parents, he shared almost no other information with his son. Ten years after his father passed away, Peter decided to hunt down the truth, but the only evidence that he had for half of his family was a tatty old certificate from Frederick’s birth in Chorlton, Manchester, in 1906. MY BRICK WALL My father was brought up by Jon and Jane Naylor. I…

In 1788, revered Scottish poet Robert Burns turned to a surprising occupation. He became an excise officer for the Crown, responsible for inspecting taxable goods during manufacture and collecting the appropriate duties. Motivated by a yearning for financial security (the job came with an attractive annual salary of £50), his decision was frowned upon by his artistic patrons – excisemen were an unpopular breed, particularly in Scotland where the taxes on malt were detested. Yet Burns was no reluctant recruit, but a diligent, capable and respected tax collector. The role was a complex and arduous one involving frequent visits to premises, tireless record-keeping and knowledge of the law, all of which he combined with his literary work. It could be dangerous, too: he was involved in the seizure of a…

You could be in for a treat if your family comes from Croydoncum-Clopton. The Speculum Gregis is one of the more unusual volumes held by Cambridgeshire Archives. Compiled by a rector in 1843, it includes a house-by-house survey of all of the inhabitants of the village, with notes on age, character, religion, health, employment, literacy and numeracy, alongside details of marriages and baptisms, attendance at nonconformist chapels, and emigration to Canada and Australia. These sit alongside some rather frank character assessments: Ruth Lyons is described as “an abusive woman”, which might explain why her daughter Mary “bears a most shocking bad character”. Our return to the east of England this month follows hot on the heels of the long-awaited opening of the new county archive centre in Ely. This marked…

What inspired you to write this book? I became a father a few years ago, and when that happens you start reflecting on your own parents. I wanted to give my son that connection to the past, and tell him who his ancestors were. But in doing that I realised that I didn’t really know who I was, so it’s been this kind of revelatory experience. It’s painful in some ways, but it’s very intriguing in other ways. Did you experience any revelations? One of the things was the complexity of family history and the wider society. I was brought up with a deep sense of Irishness and Catholicism and all the usual tropes of an Irish writer, but when I started digging I realised that the actual historical record…

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Seeing recent articles about the British Home Children (Reader Story, August 2019, and News, January 2020) made me wonder if my grandmother Hedwig (AKA Hilda) and her sister Anna were the only British Home Children who were actually born in Germany. Hedwig was born in 1886 in Eckartsberga, Germany. In 1893 the girls lost their parents and were taken to England by an aunt in Liverpool. About two years later the aunt was no longer able to care for them, so they went to the Liverpool Sheltering Home, run by Louisa Birt. In 1896 at the age of nine Hedwig was sent to Knowlton in Quebec, Canada (her sister followed a year later). Luckily she was taken in by a family who treated her as one of their own, and…

Individuals with at least two grandparents from Orkney or Shetland can help medical research in a new genetic study from the University of Edinburgh. VIKING II will look at volunteers’ health and genetics, with the aim of understanding the causes of heart disease, eye disease, strokes, diabetes and other illnesses. The scientists are interested in the population of Orkney and Shetland because the Scottish islands’ isolation makes it easier to trace genes within the population. Volunteers will need to be over 16 and not have taken part in the Orkney Complex Disease Study (ORCADES) or the VIKING Health Study – Shetland. You will need to complete a questionnaire and give a sample of saliva. You can register to take part at www.ed.ac.uk/viking/volunteer-for-viking/register-interest.…

11 March 1906 Rector boycotted The Western Chronicle reports on the case of Rev Joseph Sorrell of Holton Parish Church in Somerset, who found his church boycotted by his own parishioners and had “Sunday by Sunday preached to empty pews” for the past five years. The minister attributed his problems to five important local families taking a “personal dislike” to him. He also said that his parishioners at one point barricaded him in his church by tying a sapling across the doors.…

Rather than using the ScotlandsPeople website at scotlandspeople.gov.uk from home, it may be considerably cheaper to visit the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh (nrscotland.gov.uk/research/ visit-us/scotlandspeople-centre), or one of the family history centres in Alloa, Glasgow, Hawick, Inverness or Kilmarnock offering access to the same database (see nrscotland. gov.uk/research/local-family-history-centres). Home access to ScotlandsPeople costs £7.50 for 30 credits, equivalent to £1.50 per birth, marriage, death, census or parish record, but a visit to a centre provides unlimited daily access for £15. This will be especially helpful if you have an ancestor with a common name, and otherwise risk ordering records for the wrong individual. ScotlandsPeople freely offers dates for baptisms, marriages and burials before 1855 in its Church of Scotland Old Parish Registers databases, but free indexes for pre-1855 baptism and marriage…

WEBSITE We update our website several times a week with news stories, features from the magazine, record releases and special offers: www. whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com. There’s also research advice, tutorials and episode guides from previous series of Who Do You Think You Are?. NEWSLETTER As well as rounding up the latest record releases and other major events in the world of family history, our unmissable free weekly email newsletter includes genealogy discounts, plus details of free-access weekends. Sign up at www. whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/newsletter. FORUM If you hit a brick wall, don’t despair – our hugely popular forum is full of expert, and very friendly, family historians from all over the world, who can share the benefits of their hard-won experience. Using the forum is completely free. Access it using your browser www. whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/forum…

What does this photograph reveal about my unknown relation? Q My aunt sent me this photo from her collection, but she doesn’t know who it is. Can you tell me any information? Sarah Williams, Editor, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine A This is a classic early carte de visite – the format that brought portrait photography to a wider population. Produced from c1860 to 1914, they were most popular from the 1860s to 1890s. Your ancestor is well dressed in a formal day gown of subtly striped silk material, its style displaying the modified crinoline line of the mid-1860s. By then, the vast circular crinoline skirt of the early 1860s was flattening in front and demonstrating a pronounced backward sweep and slight train, as here. Similarly, the bulky…

Mabbott brick wall bit.ly/mabbott-wall My 3x great grandmother was Sarah Mabbott. Her place of birth is listed as Boston, Lincolnshire, on the ’51, ’61 and ’71 census. Her date of birth is listed consistently on all three censuses as 1830/31. I have never found a baptism record for her or for any siblings in the area. I have found a Sarah Mabbott in the Boston workhouse on the ’41 census of approximately the right date of birth (1829). Unfortunately there are no other members of the family listed within the workhouse or anywhere else in the area. Sarah was a servant in Earl Shilton, Leicestershire, on the 1851 census. She is listed in the same household as her future husband Thomas Emery, who she married on 22 May 1851 in…

LEYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY w leylandhistoricalsociety.co.uk The society holds monthly meetings at the Civic Centre in Leyland, and the new edition of Peter’s book can be ordered from its website for £10 + P&P. He would love to hear from you if you’re a former Leyland and Farington factory worker, or if you’re able to help with the transcription work, which can be done from home – all you need is a computer. Please call 01772 641604 or email peter@leylandhistoricalsociety.co.uk.…

HIGH ROYDS HOSPITAL w highroydshospital.com Learn more about the former West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum. For Wakefield’s Pauper Lunatic Asylum, visit wakefieldasylum.co.uk instead. LINCOLNSHIRE HOSPITALS w bit.ly/lincs-hospitals Casebooks for the Lawn Hospital, Lincoln, and St John’s Hospital, Bracebridge Heath (formerly the Lincolnshire County Lunatic Asylum), are now available to view on Lincolnshire Archives’ website at www.lincstothepast.com. LOTHIAN HEALTH SERVICES ARCHIVE w lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk This website has all sorts of useful advice about researching both staff and patients at hospitals. MEDICAL REGISTERS AND DIRECTORIES w ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/61053 This Ancestry/Wellcome Library offering can help you trace health professionals in a number of registers, directories and other sources. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES w bit.ly/tna-hospital-records TNA has produced a quick guide to researching hospital records that’s a good place to start. PRESTWICH ASYLUM ADMISSIONS w bit.ly/fmp-prestwich Search…

BOOKS Gems from the Coral Islands Rev William Gill Ward and Co., 1855 This first-hand account from a missionary to Tahiti is available for free from the Internet Archive at bit.ly/gemsfromcoral. The Life, Times, and Missionary Enterprises of the Rev. John Campbell Robert Philip John Snow, 1841 This biography of a missionary to Africa is also on the Internet Archive at bit.ly/life-miss. Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission Rhonda Anne Semple Boydell Press, 2003 This book examines British Protestant missions to China and India, focusing on the experiences of wives and daughters, female missionaries, educators and medical staff. JULIE PEAKMAN is the author of Licentious Worlds: Sex and Exploitation in Global Empires (Reaktion, 2019)…

As anyone who has enjoyed the first two series of BBC Two’s A House Through Time will know, tracing the history of a house is as much about the people and place as the building. This means that many of the documents used, such as census records, will already be familiar to family historians and can easily be found online – often for free. However, to really build up a picture of your house’s history you will probably need to visit your local record office. Discovery, the online catalogue of The National Archives (TNA) in Kew, will list the office’s website, address and contact details: discovery.nationalarchives.gov. uk/find-an-archive. Some records, including some land records, wills and maps, may be held in national collections at TNA (nationalarchives.gov. uk), the National Library of…

BOOKS A Complete Collection of Abstracts of Acts of Parliament… John Smee Butterworth, 1797 This title, freely available from Google Books at bit.ly/smee-tax, contains fascinating examples of tax appeals, made by both disgruntled taxpayers and the surveyors who oversaw the work of local commissioners. In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon’s Wars, 1793–1815 Jenny Uglow Faber & Faber, 2014 This book explores the lives of ordinary people during the wars. Taxation in Britain Since 1660 Roy Douglas Palgrave Macmillan, 1999 The most accessible guide to the changes in taxation during the Napoleonic era is sadly out of print – try abebooks.co.uk. WEBSITES ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry has various taxation records for the UK and Ireland. CALGARY BURNS CLUB w bit.ly/burnscalg This Canadian site includes an interesting research paper about…

1109 Ely’s Church of St Etheldreda and St Peter is granted cathedral status. 1209 Cambridge University is founded. It receives a royal charter from Henry III in 1231. 1584 Cambridge University Press, the oldest publishing house in the world, publishes its first book, Two Treatises of the Lord His Holie Supper. 1636 Oliver Cromwell inherits a large Ely estate upon the death of his uncle Sir Thomas Steward. 1760 Abolitionist and author Thomas Clarkson is born in Wisbech. 1831 John Stevens Henslow, a botany professor at Cambridge University, recommends that his pupil Charles Darwin joins the second expedition of HMS Beagle. 1868 The original manuscript of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations is bequeathed to the Wisbech and Fenland Museum. 1951 Francis Crick begins working with James Watson at Cavendish Laboratory in…

BURLING  This name originates from Birling, in the Tonbridge and Malling district of Kent. CORNWELL  A parish in Oxfordshire is believed to be the source of this surname. DOGGETT  This surname may derive from the diminutive of the Middle English word for dog – dogge – used as a nickname. FEW  About 25 per cent of the 750 Fews who were recorded in the 1891 census were located in Cambridgeshire. HAYLOCK  This may derive from the archaic Old English personal name Hægluc. HITCH  This variant of Hick is quite common in Leicestershire, Essex and Cambridgeshire. ISON  This patronymic surname originates in the personal name Ida, used for both sexes. LOFTS  This surname possibly comes from someone living in an attic or upper chamber. Alternatively, it may be a contraction of…