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

sarah.williams@immediate.co.uk The first four episodes from Series 17 of WDYTYA? have been broadcast, and judging by your comments on social media they went down well. There’s much we can learn from how the researchers build up the stories they feature (page 15). I’m passionate about slow genealogy. Don’t get me wrong, I love the speed with which we can now search multiple datasets, but there is something really satisfying about spending time on just one story. This month I enjoyed reading about how Jennie Batchelor applied her genealogical know-how to her academic research (page 25). It’s important that we can now give some pioneering female writers the recognition they deserve. We also have some inspiring stories – I found John Wahlich’s account of his family fleeing the Nazis on page…

Carlisle Archives and local museum Tullie House are appealing to people to help them increase the representation of the area’s black communities in their collections. To mark Black History Month in October, they have launched the Black Memories Matter project, in partnership with community-interest company M-Unit. Anyone with stories, memories, reflections, letters, objects, writing and artworks relating to the history of black people in Cumbria is invited to get in contact. Submissions are welcome through 2020 and next year. To get involved, please email your contribution to carlisle.archives@cumbria.gov.uk.…

A new set of historic records of the poor of Bedfordshire has been digitised on Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk). Among the new set of workhouse and Poor Law records are admission and discharge registers, staff registers, out-relief records, removal orders and apprenticeship indentures. They cover five Poor Law unions: Ampthill, Bedford, Biggleswade, Leighton Buzzard and Luton. Only a few records can currently be searched by name, but the digitised documents are available to browse and indexes will be added in 2021. People who couldn’t afford healthcare would sometimes go to Poor Law union hospitals for medical care, and in some cases died there. The records in the collection that have already been indexed include the death records of these patients. One record from Three Counties Hospital near Arlesey, for example, shows that…

Sarah Forbes Bonetta A portrait of Queen Victoria’s goddaughter, a former slave, has gone on show at Osborne House, Victoria’s former residence 1.54 million Number of parish records from Norfolk added to thegenealogist. co.uk Living Memories Online A portal for archive films, which aims to help elderly people remember their past, has launched at livingmemories. imagencloud. com 3,723,139 Total number of free English and Welsh civil records indexed on the website freebmd.org.uk in the past year…

Once again, an intrepid group of celebrities has ventured out on a journey of discovery to explore their ancestral roots. I say “intrepid” because they don’t know what they will uncover, and it’s not always what they want to hear. As Jodie Whittaker discovered in her episode, your ancestors don’t always lean in the same direction as you politically. Jack Whitehall also felt uncomfortable about his anti-Chartist ancestor, while poor John Hurt found out that he was descended from a chronic liar rather than an illegitimate child of the Marquess of Sligo. One thing we do know though is that each episode will reveal fascinating stories, as they always have done. From gripping adventures to survival against the odds, the ancestors of these celebrities often seem to have led more…

Nigel Kasper of South Wales discovered that his 3x great grandfather Onuphrius Kasperowicz (born c1811) was a junior officer in the Polish Army, and fought in the uprising. Onuphrius fled to England where he received the monthly pension of £2 from 1834, and appears in a record from 1840 listing Polish refugees who received medical treatment (pictured). He married Lucille Le Scelleur from Jersey. The couple had a son, Alfred, in 1842, then moved to London. In 1849, Onuphrius commuted his pension in return for a lump sum, then unfortunately vanishes from the records. It is likely that he joined the Poles fighting in the Hungarian Revolution, and fled to Constantinople when it failed. By 1877, Alfred Kasperowicz was living in Constantinople where he married a Polish girl called Julia…

The Castle of Le Blanc, by “CDH”, gripped Lady’s Magazine readers between 1816 and 1818. When this suspenseful serial began, its author’s identity was unknown. In February 1817, subscribers learnt that she was female via a poetic puzzle called a rebus that cryptically alluded to an unnamed male lover. Three months later, a reader called Henry solved the rebus with the words “Golland’s the swain belov’d by thee”. Quite who Henry was or how he knew that “CDH” was addressing a young custom’s officer named John Golland is unknown. But he was right. Catherine Day Haynes (1793–1851) married Golland in January 1821. We established that “CDH” is Catherine Day Haynes from an 1818 novel called The Foundling of Devonshire by “Miss CD Haynes, Author of The Castle of Le Blanc”.…

BELGIAN STATE ARCHIVES w search.arch.be If you’re looking for a Second World War refugee who escaped via Belgium or a Belgian who became displaced, search the country’s state archives. CZECH REFUGEE TRUST FUND w nationalarchives.gov.uk The fund recorded the names of almost 20,000 wartime refugees, and these are held at The National Archives in Kew. If you want to order Czech relations’ birth, marriage or death records, try the National Archives of the Czech Republic (nacr.cz). KINDERTRANSPORT w worldjewishrelief.org Contact World Jewish Relief to find out if an ancestor was one of the thousands of refugee children who were brought to safety by the Kindertransport.…

Could this be my great great grandmother and my great grandmother? Q I’ve been told that this is a scan of an ambrotype from the 1850s or 1860s, and that it shows my great great grandmother and my great grandmother. In 1855, my great great grandmother was 52, my great grandmother 22, and her sister 24 – all older than the subjects appear. Can you date this picture so I can work out if they are my ancestors – or those of my cousin, to whom the picture belongs? Colin Wilding A This is indeed an ambrotype photograph, also known as a wet collodion positive. Ambrotypes were unique images created from the original glass-plate negative. The image was bleached and one side of the glass blackened to create an apparently…

Researching cemeteries can be a rather daunting task. Historic Environment Records (HERs) are an important starting point for anyone interested in the archaeology and historic environment of a defined geographical area. Previously known as Sites and Monuments Records, HERs provide an online database of historic sites and landscapes, combined with a useful digital-mapping system, which is accessible to the public. Nearly two-thirds of HERs are available online through the Heritage Gateway (heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/chr), where you can cross-search several national as well as local datasets on the historic environment. I live in the remote Highlands of Scotland, where gaining access to physical library collections is no simple matter, involving journeys of many hours and hundreds of miles. As such, Historic Environment Scotland (historicenvironment.scot) has been a valuable resource in my search for…

The medieval French term valet originally denoted a page or squire: a youth staying in a high-ranking household in order to learn courtly behaviour and gain a noble education. In England from the 1560s a personal manservant might be called a ‘valet’, from valet de chambre (implying the bedchamber), and well before 1800 the word signified the personal attendant to the male head of an affluent household. The valet had a prestigious position among domestic staff, for he was a trusted servant reporting directly to the master of the house. In the kinds of large establishments that employed a dedicated valet, he was easily distinguished from the lower male servants in their servile livery uniforms, for he wore regular dress that was typically even more formal than that of his…

One of the easiest ways to set up a website is through WordPress (en-gb.wordpress.org). Virtually all web-hosting packages offer WordPress, either as part of a dedicated WordPress hosting package, or as an app that you can install through your web control panel. If you’re in the market for web hosting, expect to pay about £5 a month for an entry-level package from a reputable host such as Ionos or tsoHost. Your web host should include instructions for setting up your WordPress website – it’s usually a wizard-based process, and once set up websites like wpbeginner.com can help you to learn the ropes. One of WordPress’ strengths is its support for plugins, which allow you to add all kinds of features to your site. Several family history-themed plugins exist, and in…

Shipwrecks are of interest to genealogists not only because of their victims, but also because of their survivors. However, finding out about survivors is often less easy. Historical newspaper articles, available via the British Newspaper Archive and Findmypast, are a good starting point, and may well list them. John Munro, David Main and James Wilson were the only passengers to survive the wreck of the SS London in the Bay of Biscay during a violent storm in 1866. They are identified in national and local newspaper accounts of the tragedy, and they each gave interviews. Munro recounted how he desperately tried to persuade a young woman to abandon ship with him, but she was too frightened. He also had to bid an emotional final farewell to a friend who decided…

The Second World War and its aftermath left lasting ripples in many family trees. Fathers had fewer rights in the mid-20th century and if a woman was prepared to bring up a child alone, she could end the relationship forever. Nicola Crawley is a keen family historian who encountered a huge brick wall on her dad’s side. A journey of twists and turns began. MY BRICK WALL I started my research in 2009 and at that point I believed that my dad Peter Hogan was the eldest child of James Hogan and his wife Alice (née Conway). They lived in Manchester, and had six children. I didn’t know Grandma Alice well because she passed away in 1974, but I spent a lot of time with Grandad James and idolised him.…

Thomas ‘Tom’ Smith was born in Newington, then in Surrey, in 1823. At the age of just seven, Smith began work as an apprentice in a bakery and ornamental confectioner’s shop in London. His years in the shop enabled him to learn the skills that would make him both a master confectioner and a household name. By the 1840s, Smith had opened his own shop in Clerkenwell producing wedding cakes and confectionery, but also experimented and designed new ideas in his spare time. Smith travelled to Paris in 1847, bringing the French ‘bonbon’ – a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of paper – back to British shores, which gradually developed over the years into the familiar Christmas cracker we know today. Smith died in 1869, aged 46, at his…

1460 Henry VI is defeated at Northampton in a battle during the Wars of the Roses. 1532 Lawrence Washington, a wool merchant and forebear of the first president of the USA, becomes the mayor of Northampton. 1587 Mary Queen of Scots is executed at Fotheringhay Castle. 1675 The Great Fire of Northampton is started by sparks from an open fire in St Mary’s Street, near Northampton Castle. The overwhelming majority of the town’s buildings are destroyed. 1844 The influential landscape painter Alfred East is born in Kettering. 1858 Workers form the Northamptonshire Boot and Shoemakers’ Mutual Protection Society to fight mechanisation. 1935 Production begins at the massive Stewarts & Lloyds steelworks in Corby. 1965 The Soke of Peterborough, historically associated with Northamptonshire, merges with the county of Huntingdonshire. 1998 Local…

The most influential thinker on population was Thomas Malthus, a clergyman who was born in Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey, in 1766. Malthus challenged the prevailing view that society was constantly improving, and suggested that the development of civilisation would always tend to misery. He published his key work An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society in 1798, and expanded it in subsequent editions. Essentially, he claimed that population had been growing geometrically (2, 4, 6, 8) while agricultural production grew according to an arithmetical progression (1, 2, 3, 4,). With this in mind, population growth would lead to a semi-starving underclass. The “positive checks” to population disaster were starvation, disease and war to increase the death rate. The “preventive checks” were…

BOOKS The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker Roger Hutchinson Abacus, 2017 Hutchinson reveals the changes to the census since 1801, and what it tells us about society. Making Sense of the Census Revisited Edward Higgs Institute of Historical Research and TNA, 2005 Higgs’ handbook covers census records for 1801–1901. The Official History of Britain: Our Story in Numbers as Told by the Office for National Statistics Boris Starling with David Bradbury HarperCollins, 2020 You can read a review of this brand-new book on page 84.…

What inspired you to write this book? It was a mix of different reasons. I had quite a complicated childhood. So I wrote it partly to make sense of my past, and I wrote the material about museums because I’ve always loved them and wanted to find a way of communicating how fascinating I find them. It occurred to me that museums are really about making meaningful patterns out of confusion, and that’s what we’re doing when we try to understand our pasts. You say in the book that we’re museum makers. To me, that is completely true. We all hold on to things. They may not be very valuable or expensive, but they’re very meaningful to us, and we hold on to them and use them to try to…

PROBATE INDEX The first clue to John’s troubles was found while looking for his will. We discovered from his entry in the England and Wales probate index that he died intestate – without leaving a will. The index can be searched for free at probatesearch.service. gov.uk/#wills. His entry is at probatesearch. service.gov.uk/calendar?surname=boorman& yearofdeath=1963& page=2#calendar. HOSPITAL ADMISSION RECORDS The probate index stated that John died in Cane Hill Hospital in Coulsdon, Surrey. A search of The National Archives’ Hospital Records Database at nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords revealed that the psychiatric hospital’s records are held by Croydon Museum and Archive Service: nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords/details.asp?id=48. SILVER WAR BADGE We found further evidence of John’s psychiatric problems in his military records from his time in the Grenadier Guards. On Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) we found him in the collection ‘UK, Silver…

MARK DALY A recent project for timesleuths.com led Mark to a little-known event that caused an influx of émigrés from Poland 190 years ago. Turn to page 22 for more information. JENNIE BATCHELOR Jennie is professor of 18th-century studies at the University of Kent. Her recent book Jane Austen Embroidery is based on patterns taken from the Lady’s Magazine (page 25). SIMON WILLS Simon is an expert in nautical genealogy who has worked on many episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? and helped Liz Carr with her research. He discusses shipwrecks on page 61.…

Deceased Online adds Exeter cemetery records A new set of 103,900 burial records covering three centuries in Exeter is now available on deceasedonline. com. Following a deal with Exeter City Council, the burial records website added 73,779 records from Higher Cemetery (1862–2019); 23,387 records from Exwick Cemetery (1877–2019); and 6,747 records from Topsham Cemetery (1856–2019). The records include information about each of the graves and their occupants. British Library’s George III collection put on Flickr The British Library has made 17,860 digital images of historic maps, views and texts from the Topographical Collection of George III available at flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/ albums/72157716220271206. The images have been created as part of a seven-year project to catalogue, conserve and digitise the collection, which was begun in 1660 and was presented to the nation in…

A mudlarker has returned a dog tag lost in the River Thames over 100 years ago to the family of the original owner, thanks to family history research. Jason Sandy found a dog tag bearing the name and address “S SMITH, 13 DELORME ST, FULHAM PALACE RD” on the banks of the Thames while scavenging in the river’s mud. He shared his discovery on a Facebook group, then fellow mudlarker and family historian Karis Lacy uncovered a Samuel Smith living at 13 Delorme Street at the time of the 1911 census by using Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk). Sandy was able to return the tag to Joan Shayers, the widow of Samuel’s grandson Peter, who sent him a thank-you letter and a photograph of Peter as a boy with Samuel and the dog.…

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the launch of one of the most influential publications of the 18th and 19th centuries. When the Lady’s Magazine (no relation to The Lady) first reached readers in August 1770, few likely foresaw its success. Periodicals had grown in popularity since the 17th century, but by the 1760s the market was saturated. All but the most resilient journals disappeared within weeks or months after first publication. The Lady’s Magazine bucked this trend in style, running to nearly 800 issues containing more than 45,000 pages before it ceased publication in mid-1832. Subscription information from this period is hard to obtain, but best estimates indicate that the Lady’s Magazine had about 15,000 subscribers at its peak, and a much higher readership because a single subscriber’s…

BOOKS The Lady’s Magazine (1770–1832) and the Making of Literary History Jennie Batchelor Edinburgh University Press, 2021 The biography of the first modern women’s magazine is due next year. Women in Print Alison Adburgham George Allen and Unwin, 1972 This remains the best study of 18th-century women’s periodicals. WEBSITES THE BAVARIAN STATE LIBRARY w bsb-muenchen.de/en Digital copies of the magazine from 1770 to 1802 are available here. Many later volumes can be found via hathitrust.org, while archive.org also has some at bit.ly/arch-ladys. THE LADY’S MAGAZINE BLOG w blogs.kent.ac.uk/ladys-magazine Jennie Batchelor, Koenraad Claes and Jenny DiPlacidi discuss the title’s articles and contributors. THE LADY’S MAGAZINE INDEX w research.kent.ac.uk/ the-ladysmagazine/index Here you can download an open-access database in Excel format indexing the more than 14,000 items published in the magazine between 1700…

I’ve been trying to find john Raynor’ birth for over 15 years - can you help me smash this brick wall? Q For more than 15 years I have been trying to trace my ancestor, John Raynor, born in Patricroft, Lancashire, c1846. There is no record of him before he married Eliza Waterhouse in 1886. On the marriage certificate, he gave his age as 28; address, 7 Mill Gate, Rawtenstall; occupation, coal miner; and father as William Raynor, deceased, cotton worker. The family moved to Blackburn, where Eliza came from, and John and Eliza separated. John spent time in Burnley Workhouse in 1900 giving Mary Chadwick, sister, who lived “near Brown Cow Inn, Winton” as his next of kin. How can I find his birth? Marilyn Wilkes A When you…

When the coronavirus lockdown started in March, many of us were left scrambling for ways to keep busy and meet people as our usual ways of socialising were upended. The University of the Third Age – a charity that brings people in their ‘Third Age’ together to develop their interests and continue their learning – stepped into the breach, setting up Trust U3A, a community where U3A members can form online groups to pursue their shared interests. ‘These women were as good as – if not better than – modern women’ Verne Hardingham is a retired civil servant and adult-education tutor with an MA in local studies. She came up with a very appropriate project for a time when we’re all fighting a pandemic – discovering the lives of the…

ADUR & WORTHING BURIALS w adur-worthing.gov.uk/burial-search Always check with local councils to see if there’s online access to records of municipal cemeteries. This example is from Sussex. BELFAST BURIALS w bit.ly/3obdrNI Search 360,000 Belfast burial records from three cemeteries dating back to 1869. FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org/wiki/en/England_Cemeteries This wiki page describes some of the records and other resources available for English cemeteries. FINDMYPAST w search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/ yorkshire-monumental-inscriptions The site has all sorts of burial records, including these memorial inscriptions from Yorkshire. IN FROM THE COLD w infromthecold.org This project aims to address omissions from the lists of casualties supplied to the CWGC. IRISH WAR MEMORIALS w irishwarmemorials.ie Explore a database of cross-conflict memorials in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. MANCHESTER BURIAL RECORDS w burialrecords.manchester.gov.uk Search burial and cremation records from…

BOOKS The Footman’s Directory, and Butler’s Remembrancer J Hatchard and Son, 1823 This guide to manservants’ domestic duties is available for free from the Internet Archive at bit.ly/arch-footmans. Gentlemen’s Gentlemen Rosina Harrison Sphere, 2015 First published in 1976, this collection of memories and anecdotes relating to male servants includes valets. My Ancestor Was in Service Pamela Horn Society of Genealogists, 2009 This guide includes many references to the occupation and role of valet. Yes Mum, No Mum Mave and Ben Chapman Hutton Press, 1991 This book about life in domestic service includes a dedicated chapter on lady’s maids and valets, detailing the necessary skills and duties of these two parallel positions.…

BRITISH ARMED FORCES AND OVERSEAS DEATHS AND BURIALS w bit.ly/fmp-armed-overseas Findmypast’s collection includes records from TNA about deaths at sea in the 19th century. WRECK REPORTS w southampton.gov.uk/arts-heritage/ southampton-archives/plimsoll.aspx Search by ship’s name for scanned copies of inquiries into wrecks from 1876 onwards. WRECKSITE w wrecksite.eu For named wrecks, this database reveals the date, location and details of the incident and may have names, photos and helpful links.…

GIVE YOURSELF TIME If you’re not sure of the date when ordering a birth record (https://www.gro. gov.uk/gro), request a three-year span. If other criteria match exactly then you should be able to select this option. TRACK AND TRACE Try a DNA test. 23andme.com (above) has 10 million users and offers additional information on health and traits, while ancestry.co.uk has 18 million users and matched Nicola with a second cousin. DNA DETECTIVES This Facebook group with over 148,000 members helps anyone with unknown biological parentage to trace relations: facebook.com/groups/DNADetectives. Nicola found the group very supportive.…

BOOK Tom Smith’s Christmas Crackers Peter Kimpton The History Press, 2004 Kimpton charts the history of Tom Smith and his crackers. WEBSITES BRITISH PATHÉ w britishpathe.com Highlights include The Gentle Christmas Cracker (1933) which shows the process involved in making a cracker by hand, and footage of an oversized promotional cracker at Tom Smith’s offices during the First World War: bit.ly/bp-tomsmiths. TOM SMITH w tomsmith-crackers.com The website of arguably the original cracker company has pages dedicated to its history, including a timeline and archive. VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS w bit.ly/bl-vic-xmas This article on the British Library’s site traces the links between Christmas traditions and 19th-century industrial and commercial interests.…

HISTORICAL IMAGES w bit.ly/northants-images There are lots of free-to-download documents, images and maps in the Northamptonshire Archives Image Library. NONCONFORMIST RECORDS w familysearch.org/search/ collection/2806100 This FamilySearch collection includes christening, marriage and burial records from various religious groups in the region dating from 1840 to 1894. TRADE DIRECTORIES w bit.ly/2T9KqnH Explore county directories from the Victorian period up to the early 20th century digitised by the University of Leicester. PARISH REGISTERS w bit.ly/hath-northants HathiTrust has a Phillimore volume of seven transcribed marriage registers, which was first published in 1909. BAPTISMS w archive.org/details/registersofmoult47moul This volume of registers from the village of Moulton was published in 1903 and covers 1565–1812.…

ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES DISCOVER CENTRE  a Northamptonshire Central Library, Abington Street, Northampton NN1 2BA t 0300 126 1000 e centlib@firstforwellbeing. co.uk w northamptonshire.gov.uk/ centrallibrary The Discover Centre holds a large collection of resources, such as photographs, newspapers, maps, and microform copies of parish and other records. NORTHAMPTON GENERAL HOSPITAL ARCHIVE  a Cliftonville, Northampton NN1 5BD t 01604 544868 e sue.longworth@ngh.nhs.uk w bit.ly/north-hosp-arch The archive’s website has lots of information about the history of hospitals in the city as well as the archives held here. NORTHAMPTONSHIRE ARCHIVES a Northamptonshire Record Office, Wootton Hall Park, Mereway, Northampton NN4 8BQ t 01604 362513 e archivist@northamptonshire. gov.uk w bit.ly/3duY8L4 The county archive holds court records; electoral rolls; hospital, workhouse and asylum records; and parish material. There are also wills dating back to 1462. The…

On a moonlit night in June 1942, Private Neville Wood and three soldiers drove out into the Libyan desert in wagons loaded with mines. They were heading for an Allied defensive box, and knew that they would pass perilously close to the Germans’ lines. Halfway into the journey a howling sandstorm engulfed the wagons, but they kept driving. As the sands cleared, they emerged into the gunsights of two Panzer tanks. The men were captured and taken behind enemy lines. ‘Dad said that the opening barrage at El Alamein was like hell on Earth’ The following morning, Neville observed three German officers examining a map. One took his cap off, and Neville realized that it was the Desert Fox himself, Erwin Rommel. Suddenly, RAF bombs began to rain down and…

The images of 671,599 Irish civil death records have been released on Irish Genealogy (www.irishgenealogy.ie/en),the Irish government’s free website for genealogical records. The records, created between 1871 and 1877, were previously available only as transcriptions. Each image includes details of the date and place of death; marital condition, age and profession of the deceased; and the cause of death and duration of any illness. They also include the name and address of the informant of the death (often a family member) and their signature, or mark if they were illiterate. The Irish Genealogy website now holds more than 15.5 million civil records, covering births from 1864–1919, marriages from 1845–1944 and deaths from 1871–1969. One notable Irishman who can be found in the new records is the physician Sir James Murray,…

The Society of Genealogists has announced that its Family History Getaway will be hosted via Zoom this year. The course, which takes place on 8–10 December, focuses on research before 1837. It offers a programme of 10 talks and workshops, Q&A sessions and group discussions, from 10.15am to 5pm every day. The course costs £200 (£160 for society members), and suits those with some family history experience. Find out more at sog.org.uk/books-courses/events-courses/ family-history-getaway-online-family-history-research-before-1837-2.…

What is a traditional British Christmas dinner, I wonder? Probably most people would say roast turkey and all the trimmings, although others would think of Olde English roast beef. When I was a child we had a chicken, then regarded as something special, but when my mother was growing up that was an unaffordable treat for a large and poor family in inner-city Manchester during the Depression. Years ago she wrote her autobiography, and here’s what she says about Christmas dinner: “We never ate chicken that I can remember – that was pure luxury. At Christmas we had pork. Christmas Day was spent at Grandma’s, two doors away, with all her side of the family and their wives, husbands and children. Grandma had a large leg of pork with home-made…

BOOKS Bloody Foreigners Robert Winder Abacus, 2013 The arrival of political refugees in the 19th century is included in this history of British immigration. Exiles from European Revolutions Edited by Sabine Freitag Berghahn Books, 2003 Essays on the French, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech and German refugees from the revolutions of 1848/1849. History of the Late Polish Revolution, and the Events of the Campaign Joseph Hordynski Boston, 1833 This eyewitness account from a major in the Lithuanian Lancers is available for free from the Internet Archive (archive.org) at bit.ly/arch-polish-rev. WEBSITES ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk/search/places/ europe/poland Many of Ancestry’s Polish records are free to search. FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org/wiki/en/ Poland_Genealogy The site’s country guide for Poland is unmissable. MEMORIALS IN PORTSMOUTH w memorialsinportsmouth.co.uk/ cemeteries/polish.htm Pictures of the memorial to the Marianne, and the list…

One of the most difficult contributors to pin down was partially identified before the project even began. “R” was ubiquitous in the Lady’s Magazine between the 1770s and 1780s. She translated dozens of French short stories and oriental tales for the periodical, and also submitted many essays and poems. EW Pitcher first identified “R” as Miss R Roberts in the 1980s, noting that she was the sister of Rev Dr Richard Roberts, high master of St Paul’s Church School, and an author of ephemeral works. Miss Roberts even has a short entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, although it lacks her first name. Attempts to uncover “R” via her brother’s life yielded little. Then, after hours lost in endless searches for Rachels, Ruths and Rosinas, we found a…

My aunt seems to vanish from the records. What happened to her? Q I’m trying to find out what became of my aunt, Annie Sarah Fox. She was born in 1918 in Carlow, southern Ireland, and went to live with her mother’s family in Wardington at the age of 11. In 1937, she briefly trained as a nurse in Southampton or Portsmouth. The paperwork records her guardian as Willoughby Wallace of Holyrood Cottage, Wardington, Banbury. Later she lived in London and the family believe she married a Polish airman and left England. I’ve had a DNA test to try to find any family she may have had. Wendy Barker A According to the birth record on www.irishgenealogy.ie/en, Annie Sarah Fox was born on 20 July 1918 to Patrick Fox and…

‘One of the things that helped the prisoners was their sense of humour’ During the Second World War Jim Tyrie (1919–1993) served as a flight lieutenant with 77 Squadron. He was captured in 1941 when his plane was shot down, and spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps – including Stalag Luft 3, the site of the ‘Great Escape’ breakout. The Digital Archive of the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln now holds copies of the two wartime logs Tyrie kept. As archivist Dr Dan Ellin explains, they provide a remarkable record of life as a prisoner of war. DESCRIBE THE LOGS… Jim Tyrie’s wartime logs are effectively diaries or journals or scrapbooks. They were donated by the Red Cross. The one pictured is from the Young…

MUSEUM NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM  a Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4HT t 020 7730 0717 w nam.ac.uk Find out more about the lives of soldiers during the Second World War. The museum has reopened, but visits must be booked online in advance. WEBSITES BRITISH MILITARY HISTORY w britishmilitaryhistory. co.uk This comprehensive website provides a wealth of information about how units were structured and operated during the war. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA w bit.ly/lac-military This long list of acronyms and abbreviations will help you decipher service records created by armed forces all over the world. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES w bit.ly/tna-guide-ww2 TNA has created a vital guide to finding records of British Army operations in the Second World War, including unit War Diaries. WW2 PEOPLE’S WAR w bbc.co.uk/history/ww2 peopleswar/categories/c1182 Browse thousands of…

Named ancestors can be discovered in the 1841–1911 census records, described variously as “Valet Domestic”, “Gentleman’s Valet” or simply “Valet”. Records created by larger employers (mainly members of the aristocracy and landed gentry), including servants’ wages books, household accounts, and letters and diaries, may itemise the hiring and firing of servants, their pay, etc. Some such papers remain with the family concerned, while others are deposited in local archives, libraries and major collections such as the British Library. Valets occasionally left their own personal letters, diaries or memoirs, published or unpublished. From the mid-1800s onwards they may also have been photographed at their place of work, along with other household servants. Several copies of such photos may exist in private or public collections. Old newspapers and magazines included adverts inserted…

The Register of Wages and Effects of Deceased Seamen (1852–1889) is held by The National Archives at Kew in series BT153. The record has been digitised and is available via Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) and Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) 1 NAME OF DECEASED This column details the surname and the first name of crewmen who died in a shipwreck. Some other BT series at The National Archives include more details, for example the crewman’s age. 2 SUPPOSED LOST This means that the ship disappeared in 1855, and is assumed to have been wrecked, but wasn’t recorded here until 1859. 3 NAME OF SHIP The entry for the Agenoria notes its official number underneath, which can help you to identify a wrecked vessel precisely. 4 PLACE AND DATE OF DEATH These are often estimated based…

BOOK Shipwreck: A History of Disasters at Sea Sam Willis Quercus, 2013 This overview includes the Titanic, the Mary Rose and an attack by a sperm whale that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. MUSEUM SHIPWRECK MUSEUM, HASTINGS  a Rock-a-Nore Road, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 3DW t 01424 437452 e info@shipwreckmuseum. co.uk w shipwreckmuseum.co.uk Reopening in spring 2021, this museum is not large but offers a wealth of intriguing and personal insight into local shipwrecks. WEBSITES MARITIME MEMORIALS DATABASE w memorials.rmg.co.uk Search the National Maritime Museum’s collection of over 6,000 church, cemetery and public memorials to seafarers and the victims of maritime disasters. PASTSCAPE w www.pastscape.org.uk This website from English Heritage features detailed accounts of some of the shipwrecks that have occurred on England’s coast, although note that it is no longer…

Family historians all know that unusual entries often crop up in the pages of parish registers. If you happen to look at the register for the parish of Walgrave, which today survives at Northamptonshire’s county archive, then you will find a good example. The entry in question records the marriage of Prince Pekowisca and Madam Fatima, which was supposedly witnessed by Napoleon Bonaparte together with his adopted son Eugène de Beauharnais. “It’s interesting to speculate on the identity of the prankster,” says collections officer Katie Stewart, “as access to the registers should have been limited to the clergyman, the churchwardens and the parish clerk. The joke was perhaps motivated by the fact that a new register had been ordered by the parish, which was started in 1811, and this left…

BUSWELL  This variant of Boswell is common across Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. DRAGE  This name may originally derive from Drage near Hamburg in Germany. DUNKLEY  According to britishsurnames. co.uk , out of every million people in the UK, approximately 93 are named Dunkley. LETTS  In 1881 the registration districts of Northampton St Sepulchre and Long Buckby were hotspots for Letts. LINNELL  Roughly a quarter of all of the Linnells who were recorded in the 1891 census were living in Northamptonshire at the time. PANTER  This was an occupational name for a servant in charge of the supply of bread. STARMER  Nearly half of all of the Starmers who were recorded in the 1891 census were living in Northamptonshire, with significant spikes in Cosby and Kettering. TARRY  This surname derives from the…

NATIONAL LIST w bit.ly/fh-pre-1841 WALES w bit.ly/genuki-wales-1801 SCOTLAND w bit.ly/nrs-scot-pre-1841 DARTFORD w bit.ly/fmp-dartford-1801 DEVON w bit.ly/ genuki-devonpre-1841 EALING w bit.ly/fp-ealing-1801-1811 FORDINGBRIDGE w bit.ly/hants-ford-1801a w bit.ly/hants-ford-1801b w bit.ly/hants-ford-1801c w bit.ly/hants-ford-1801d LIVERPOOL w bit.ly/fmp-1801-lpl NORFOLK w bit.ly/ genuki-norfolkpre-1841 WALSALL w bit.ly/walsall-1801…

WARTIME CHRISTMAS ANTHONY RICHARDS Imperial War Museums, 176 pages, £12.99 This Christmas will likely be different from any that most us have known, but this little book puts it all in perspective. Christmas in both world wars is covered, including the Christmas Truce in 1914 and the exhortation to “Make Do and Mend” in the 1940s. Most of us think of people sitting in air-raid shelters and getting by on meagre rations, but Anthony Richards shows that families and friends would muck in together to make the best they could. Entertainment was either homegrown or supplied by the perennial favourite, the pantomime. Children’s toys were very basic and often homemade, sometimes coming from fathers or older brothers recovering in military hospitals. Even prisoners of war celebrated as best they could…

ABSOLUTE HISTORY bit.ly/absolutehistory Free This YouTube channel is crammed with “fun, shocking and curious tales from throughout history”. Highlights include historian Suzannah Lipscomb’s series Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home and episodes of the series Edwardian Farm , recreating how our ancestors cleaned their houses and made cider and gin. ELEPHIND elephind.com Free Elephind is a new search engine that aims to “make it possible to search all the world’s online historic newspapers from one place”. Simply type in a name or keyword to search old newspaper collections, including obscure titles that aren’t easy to find through mainstream search engines. It features collections from the USA, Australia and New Zealand. MAKING SHEFFIELD anchor.fm/makingsheffield Free This podcast from Sheffield Star journalist Nik Farah sheds light on the city’s fascinating industrial history…