Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i Who Do You Think You Are?

We all suffer from photo chaos in our lives. We have photos on phones, laptops and memory sticks, as well as albums and boxes of loose photos tucked under beds. Luckily, there are a number of companies now offering different solutions to help us curate and share our family photos, as well as safeguard them for the future. Turn to page 14 to have a look at what's on offer. It's time for us to roll up our sleeves and start sorting things out. The next generation will thank us for it. And talking of future generations, the Office for National Statistics is running an important consultation on the future of the census (page 20). I would encourage everyone to take part, so that the needs of the family historians…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST MORE RELATIVES OF RALPH PEGGE I was fascinated to read Margaret Smith's ‘Reader Story’ in the August issue. There are plenty of useful tips and information in the article which should help my investigations a lot. I have been researching my granddaughter's family tree, and it appears that she is also descended from Margaret's 11x great grandfather Ralph Pegge. My granddaughter now has a child and when I recently researched his father's tree, it appears that he is also descended from Ralph by a completely different line. I suspect that this type of coincidence is far more common than one would think, although since the father was born in the Walsall area, I wasn't expecting that. There are links I…

We all know the importance of photos in our family history – both old and new. These days, most of our photographs are digital – including the old ones we've scanned or captured using tools like PhotoScan from last month's ‘Tech Tips’. But how secure are those photos? Have you had time to organise them properly? How easy are they to distribute to your family? And how do you document (and share) the stories behind those photos? If you're looking for the answer to any (or all) of these questions, then you'll find potential solutions online. We've tracked down four services that between them cover all of these key areas: safekeeping, organising, storytelling and sharing. Each of them is aimed at family historians, and while none of them is completely…

UNDERSTAND THE PROS AND CONS Get to know the wide range of documents held in county repositories, together with their relevance, strengths and limitations for your family history research. LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION Identify the archive/record office that you need to visit. Remember to check how the boundaries of your ancestors’ county have changed over the centuries. MAKE NOTES Record the names and references of the sources you want to examine. A document with thousands of names may have a oneline entry in a catalogue – cast your net wide! CHECK GENEALOGICAL WEBSITES See if any of the material that you're looking for is on sites such as Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk), FamilySearch (familysearch.org) or Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk). SEARCH THE ONLINE CATALOGUE TNA's Discovery (tinyurl.com/tna-disc) and in Scotland SCAN (tinyurl.com/sco-scan) have details of holdings…

ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry's criminal registers and workhouse records reveal the hardship that many of our ancestors endured. Helen was also able to chart Bartholomew Curtain's adventures using the website's passenger manifests. FINDMYPAST w findmypast.co.uk Helen discovered where her 3x great grandfather Patrick Curtain came from after finding Westminster Catholic records at Findmypast. On a marriage record, he stated that his birthplace was Castleisland, County Kerry, Ireland. NEWSPAPERS.COM w newspapers.com Old periodicals, gazettes and newspapers can help to build a social history of our forebears’ lives. Helen used Newspapers.com to discover more about Bartholomew's life in the USA, including his elopement.…

Q I am trying to find the burials of my great grandparents. Herbert Eastey Weatherley was born in 1863. He died on 30 July 1914 of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis in Brompton Consumption Hospital. Did the nature and location of his death predetermine his place of burial? He had been living in Hornsey, so he died quite a way from home. His wife Emily Maud Weatherley was also born in 1863. At the time of Emily's death on 4 January 1940, she was living at 19 Chase Side Crescent, Enfield. Bob Weatherley ABrompton Consumption Hospital opened in 1842. Its archives are now part of the Barts Health NHS Trust Archives, located at St Bartholomew's Hospital in Central London (bartshealth.nhs.uk/barts-health-archives). Barts Archives told me that they have no relevant death or mortuary…

Q It's thought that one of the boys in this photo may be my grandad, Cyril Coates, born 1914 in Hull. He had four brothers: John (1909–1910), Edward (1912–1916), Arthur (1918–2003) and Kenneth (1921–2001), as well as a half-brother William Henry Crowther (1900–1980). Could you tell me which two the boys are likely to be? Helen Coates A Your photograph is a professional studio portrait, the reverse revealing a postcard mount. This means that the earliest the photo could have been taken is 1902, because in that year divided-back postcards were authorised for postal communication. Postcards as a popular photographic format were most common in the 1910s–1930s. This offers a broad timeframe, so we must carefully study the appearance of these boys for clues. Your ancestors wear juvenile garments typical…

Q I am trying to get beyond my great grandparents without luck. They were Matho/Matthew McCoy (c1819–1873) born in Kilronan, County Roscommon, died in Newcastle upon Tyne; and Honora Guiheen (c1825–1865), his wife, whom I presume came from the same area in Roscommon. Her death was also recorded in Newcastle upon Tyne. Eddie McCoy A I have found Matthew McCoy with a wife, Hannah, in Newcastle at the time of the 1861 census. Matthew, age 42, and Hannah, age 40, and their children, James (born c1839), Ann (born c1842) and Mathew (born c1847), were all born in Ireland. Their younger daughter, Hannah, was born c1855 in Newcastle, which suggests that the family emigrated between c1847 and 1855, during or just after the Great Famine (1845–1849). There are baptismal records for…

Hitting a stumbling block while researching a grandparent can be unusual given the wealth of 20th-century records at our fingertips. Kay Washbrook was perplexed when she couldn't find any trace of her husband David's grandfather in official documents. Years of elaborate sleuthing followed. MY BRICK WALL I enjoyed researching my family tree so much that in 2001 I decided to trace my husband's ancestry as well. I had no idea that it would take me over a decade to unravel. My father-in-law John was the second son of James Washbrook, who was a miner. After John died in 2002, we found James’ death certificate from 1962. He was 81 when he passed away. I didn't have much more to go on, just vague information that the family came from Wolverhampton,…

AROUND BRITAIN Alexander Graham Bell was enumerated in St George's Parish, Edinburgh, in 1851, when he was four years old. The household included his parents, his two brothers, a resident pupil and two servants. While Bell would eventually achieve global fame for his invention of the telephone in 1876, it was in Edinburgh that he made his first forays in experimental sound, when he and his brother Melville built a rudimentary talking machine modelled after our vocal organs. By blowing into it, the siblings managed to create a realistic “Mamma” that was loud enough to startle their neighbours. The year before Bell's telephone made headlines across the world, an illegitimate child named Louis Bruce was born at Paradise Cottage in the Morningside area of Edinburgh. The birth was registered in…

A startling coincidence emerged when Terry Sheppard began researching his paternal family history. He had two personal connections to civil war. After many years of research, Terry traced his family back to his 8x great grandfather Caleb Sheppard who was born in 1618 in Keynsham, near Bristol. Records prove that Caleb was the town's parish constable during the English Civil War (1642–1651). “Keynsham was occupied by Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarian army in 1645, and they used the Lock Keeper Inn as a guard post,” Terry explains. “Caleb, as parish constable, would have been up close and personal with the troops during the Siege of Bristol which led to a Royalist defeat.” During the affray, Henry was slashed by a sabre and struck from his horse More than 200 years later, one…

DO Sign in at reception – you will probably have to show the member of staff photographic proof of identity such as a driving licence or passport. You may be issued with a reader's card or ticket. Treat documents with care – they are unique and irreplaceable, and will be useful for generations of family historians to come. Touch them as little as possible. Ask the archivist's advice if they are difficult to handle. Leave your bag and coat in the locker provided. You may be given a clear plastic bag to hold the items you want to take into the searchroom – do check whether you're allowed to bring a laptop or digital camera. Return the documents that you're consulting exactly as they were given to you. Keep any…

Until Britain's railways were nationalised in 1948 they were run by private enterprise. These companies provided secure employment, and in many families being employed on the railways was generational. Each company kept staff records with varying degrees of complexity, but unfortunately some of them have not survived. The National Archives (TNA) at Kew holds records of private railway companies before nationalisation; see the two research guides on its site at tinyurl.com/tna-guides-railways-trains. However, an earlier consolidation took place in 1923, as a result of the 1921 Railways Act. The vast majority of the UK's hundreds of railway companies, many running small branch lines, were grouped together into new companies often referred to as the ‘Big Four’: the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London and…

As part of my work with the Caribbean Family History Group (caribbeanfamilyhistorygroup.org) I nearly always start with FamilySearch (familysearch.org). Recently we ran a helpdesk at the Windrush 75 celebration at the Royal Museums Greenwich. On day one, an entire family group came to our table, collectively pushing the matriarch to the front. I helped her fill in an ancestral/pedigree chart, then we looked on FamilySearch together and were able to find her grandmother's death certificate, which contained a reference to a fondly remembered aunt. Her reaction was amazing – smiles and laughter, as if receiving an unexpected gift. And all of her family shared in this response. At times, on the second day, we were swamped, so did some searches for individuals while the small crowd looked on. The impact…

Q This photograph is believed to be my ancestor William Henry Stanton (1866–1902), from Aston, Birmingham. Can you tell me when it was taken? William joined the North Staffordshire Regiment on 6 April 1884. Family folklore says that he ran away and joined the Marines, but was sent home. However, I cannot find him in any of the records. Geoff Powell A This is a studio photograph of a Royal Marines recruit taken in the early 1880s in Birmingham. The answer to your query lies, I suspect, in the pamphlet Revised Instructions for Recruiting Officers of the Royal Marines issued in June 1869 and still in force in the early 1880s. Rule 1 states that “(recruits) are only to be received as are between the ages of 18 and 30…

Born in London in 1831, Dorothea Beale grew up in a family that took female education seriously. Until she was 13, Beale was taught by her mother, a governess, and her father, before attending a school in Essex. However, its teaching was insufficient, so Beale returned home and instead taught herself by studying in libraries and attending lectures. It was then that her love of mathematics began. After a year in Paris was cut short by civil unrest in 1848, Beale enrolled at Queen's College, London, and, in 1849, became the school's first female maths tutor. She resigned seven years later because of the lack of female influence in the school's teaching. Beale went on to preside over Cheltenham Ladies’ College – where she introduced science and maths to the…

1314 Sir Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray, acting on behalf of his uncle Robert the Bruce, recaptures Edinburgh Castle from the English during the First War of Scottish Independence. 1440 William, 6th Earl of Douglas, and his brother David are invited to a feast at Edinburgh Castle in honour of James II, only to be ambushed and beheaded. 1567 Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate while imprisoned at Lochleven Castle. She is succeeded by her infant son James VI. 1822 The Union Canal, which is designed to carry coal the 30 miles between Falkirk and Edinburgh, opens. 1869 Seven female campaigners including their leader Sophia Jex-Blake become the first women to study medicine at a British university when they enrol at the University of Edinburgh. 1876 Arthur…

Many records we use for family history have a standard format, so you know what information they contain. However, municipal and private cemeteries developed their own records so you may get surprisingly useful details. I loved the sample document in Judith Batchelor's article about cemetery registers on page 42. Having a register that recorded the deceased's place of birth is a real bonus!…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk to feature your event here for free PICK OF THE MONTH Don't miss this conference in the Peak District 11TH U3A PEAK DISTRICT FAMILY HISTORY CONFERENCE 16 September a Palace Hotel, Buxton e taylor.ian9@gmail.com w tinyurl.com/docs-google-11th-u3a This event is open to anyone interested in family history, not just members of the u3a (formerly the University of the Third Age; u3a.org.uk). There will be four expert talks: ‘Chasing Those Brick Walls!’ by Mary Evans, ‘Death & Taxes’ by regular WDYTYA? Magazine contributor Dave Annal, ‘Digging into the Parish Chest’ by Jackie Depelle and ‘Why the Welsh Left Wales’ by Dr Penny Walters. There will also be stalls by family history organisations, refreshments and a two-course finger buffet lunch. Delegates will be offered a free goody bag and prize draw.…

rare collection of British naturalisation records from the 17th century are now available on Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk). The family history website's new record set contains 12,959 names from the book Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603–1700, edited by William A Shaw and published by the Huguenot Society of London in 1911. The company has indexed the records so that they can be searched, and its website also includes scans of the book's pages. Huguenots were French Protestants. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which protected their rights, in 1685, thousands of Huguenots left France, and many settled in Britain. The book includes Huguenots, but also immigrants from other countries. Denization and naturalisation granted the rights and duties of an English subject…

A chance remark by a genealogist friend reminded me of Wilkie Collins’ celebrated novel The Woman in White (1859–1860). The plot is too complex to set out here, but the key feature from our point of view is that the villain, Sir Percival Glyde, baronet and prosperous landowner, has a terrible secret. He is illegitimate, and his inheritance was fraudulent. Seeking the truth, the hero, Walter Hartright, undertakes genealogical detective work by visiting Old Welmingham Church to look at the marriage register. He finds the marriage of Sir Percival's parents in September 1803. The entry is smaller than the space occupied by the marriages above and after, but otherwise “the register of the marriage of Sir Felix Glyde was in no respect remarkable… The information about his wife was the…

VISITING ARCHIVES The web is a wonderful thing! And thanks to digitisation, census schedules and most parish registers – two of the basic genealogical sources – are now available online for researchers everywhere. Libraries are wonderful too, and are the place to turn for printed collections of other records. That does not, however, mean that all genealogical sources have been digitised or printed. Far from it. County archives/record offices hold many more documents than are ever likely to be digitised or printed. If you are serious about tracing your family history, you really need to visit a record office. Before you do, of course, you should check whether any relevant documents are available online or in print. FOLLOW THE TRAIL Once you have done that, your first port of call,…

During the 19th century, countless Irish people fleeing hardship and famine were forced to make their home amid the back alleys of London's slums. Desperately poor, they lodged in overcrowded, dilapidated and frequently filthy dwellings with little to live off but hope. This is the world that Helen McKee's ancestors faced when they emigrated from Ireland in the 1830s. Helen lives in Egham in Surrey, and teaches medieval languages at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has been interested in family history since she was a teenager. “I was delighted when Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) released a tranche of Roman Catholic records from the Diocese of Westminster in 2017,” she explains. “These revealed the exact area where my 3x great grandfather Patrick Curtain was born, which was Castleisland in County Kerry. EMBASSY…

William Arthur Stanier was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, in 1876. His career began at the Great Western Railway (GWR), following in his father's footsteps. William worked as a draughtsman in GWR's Drawing Office from 1897, and three years later was made an inspector of materials. Between 1904 and 1912 he held the role of assistant to the divisional locomotive superintendent in London, before returning to Swindon as the assistant works manager. In 1920 he was promoted to works manager, his position until his appointment as chief mechanical engineer of rival company the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in 1932. It was William's job to update LMS's rolling stock with more modern and more powerful locomotives. He built many successful engines for the company, including the mixed traffic Black Fives…

ARCHIVE NATIONAL RAILWAYS MUSEUM a Leeman Road, York YO26 4XJ t 033 0058 0058 w railwaymuseum.org.uk The museum's archive includes staff magazines from railway companies. BOOKS A Gazetteer of the Railway Contractors and Engineers of Central England 1830-1914 Lawrence Popplewell (editor) Melledgen Press, 1986 This title can help you locate the company a navvy worked for, and can be borrowed from the Internet Archive for free: tinyurl.com/arch-popp. Railway Ancestors, 2nd Edn David T Hawkings The History Press, 2008 Find out more about the records of the various railway companies in England and Wales up to 1947. WEBSITES RAILWAY AND CANAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY w rchs.org.uk This useful site for anyone interested in the history of British transport includes details of special-interest groups and research advice. WIKIPEDIA w tinyurl.com/wikipedia-pre-1923-railways Here you'll find…

ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1129 The website's free collection of slave registers includes their name, year of birth, owner's name, colony, and sometimes parish where resident. CARIBBEAN IN 1914 w nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/a-global-view/the-caribbean The National Archives’ online material created for the centenary of the First World War includes a section on the Caribbean in 1914. DIGITAL LIBRARY OF THE CARIBBEAN w dloc.com/collections Founded in 2004, the Digital Library now boasts material from more than 70 partners in the USA, the Caribbean, Canada and Europe. JAMAICAN FAMILY SEARCH w www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com This old but still functioning website boasts about 297,000 names of people who lived in Jamaica at one time or another. PAUL CROOKS w paulcrooks.info Paul has written a number of books on Caribbean genealogy. On his website you can find out about his talks,…

BOOK Cemeteries and Graveyards Celia Heritage Pen & Sword, 2022 This informative guide for family historians may help you locate your ancestors’ final resting place in England and Wales. WEBSITES BILLION GRAVES w billiongraves.com Billion Graves is the largest online resource for GPStagged headstone and burial records. DECEASED ONLINE w deceasedonline.com Here you can search the most comprehensive collection of UK cemetery records. Simple searches by name and surname are free for all users. WDYTYA? MAGAZINE w whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/cemetery-records-online/ Our online guide offers a large number of websites from around the UK that provide burial information. JUDITH BATCHELOR is a genealogist, writer and tutor. You can find out more information at genealogyjude.com…

TECH TIPS Many family historians researching their English and Welsh kin have looked at the cheaper and quicker options for ordering Scottish civil registration records with envy in the past. However, the General Register Office (GRO) has just launched a new service that lets you order a digital version of a birth or death record at a hugely reduced price. The records available are those that were digitised some years ago for a project that was later abandoned due to spiralling costs. Unfortunately, no marriage records were scanned, but researchers can now order digital copies of birth records from 1837–1922, in addition to records of death from 1837–1887. Digital images should be available immediately after purchase with an option to ‘View Image Online’ when your order is completed. However, due…

Take your research further BOOKS Bluestockings Jane Robinson Viking, 2009 Robinson explains how women won their right to education. Pioneering Women's Education Sally Waller Pen & Sword, 2022 Waller provides a colourful biography of Dorothea Beale. The Edinburgh Seven Janey Jones Pen & Sword, 2023 Uncover the struggles of the first women to study medicine. MUSEUM RAGGED SCHOOL MUSEUM a 46–50 Copperfield Road, London E3 4RR t 020 8980 6405 w raggedschoolmuseum.org.uk Thomas Barnardo's school was set up in the East End in 1877. WEBSITES BLUECOAT SCHOOL w bluecoathistory.co.uk Learn more about the charitable schools that educated poor children in Greenwich. HISTORY OF EDUCATION w historyofeducation.net Harley Richardson's blog is full of fascinating information. HISTORY OF EDUCATION SOCIETY w historyofeducation.org.uk Here you'll find free articles, publications and podcasts. WOMEN AT…

Many of us are lucky enough to own photographs of long-dead ancestors, and know there's nothing like being able to see what your relations looked like. Kings Lynn-based family historian Simon Howard has a business making books of customers’ family history, and shares stories from both his own and his clients’ trees on his Facebook page (facebook.com/findmyfamilyKL). In 2021, he was contacted by a local woman who wanted his help identifying the people depicted in a photo that she'd found hanging in a house she'd bought. “First I found out how old the picture was,” Simon explains. “I then looked up the family history of the gentleman who lived there before, and established that the photo showed his grandmother with her two children, his father and his aunt. He was…

APPRENTICE REGISTERS w tinyurl.com/arch-srs Volumes from the Scottish Record Society (scottishrecordsociety.org.uk) are on the Internet Archive – here are Edinburgh apprentice registers back to 1583. NEWSPAPERS w tinyurl.com/news-ggl-edin-adv Google News’ historical titles from the area include The Edinburgh Advertiser. ROLL OF HONOUR w tinyurl.com/midloth-roll View information about over 1,300 casualties on war memorials in the Midlothian area. DIRECTORIES w tinyurl.com/nls-dir-edin The National Library of Scotland's website has directories from Edinburgh and Leith. MAPS w tinyurl.com/nls-maps-edin Explore maps of Edinburgh and the surrounding region thanks to the NLS. WAR MEMORIALS w tinyurl.com/wlfhs-war West Lothian Family History Society's site has a gallery with pictures of every war memorial in West Lothian, accompanied by lists of those commemorated.…

ARCHIBALD The root of this Scottish personal name lies in Germanic words for someone genuine and brave. BLACKIE This Scottish diminutive of Black is found across Midlothian, East Lothian and Berwickshire. DALGLEISH Dalgleish/Dalgliesh/Dalglish was scattered across Midlothian, Dumfries and Lanarkshire in 1881. DENHOLM In 1881 Liberton, a southern suburb of Edinburgh, was a Denholm stronghold. HAMILTON This habitational name comes from a deserted medieval village in Leicestershire, although later bearers got it from Hamilton near Glasgow. LAWRIE Like the variant Lawry, this name derives from the pet form of Lawrence. MELROSE Melrose is a locative name from the Scottish Borders town, historically in Roxburghshire. PRYDE This nickname for someone vain or haughty comes from the Middle English word prid. TOD In 1881 there were more than 1,000 Tods in Scotland,…

Terezín is a town in the Czech Republic where approximately 140,000 European Jews were imprisoned in a ghetto by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945. An estimated 33,000 men, women and children died at Terezín (known as Theresienstadt in German), while 88,000 more were deported to concentration camps. Holocaust Centre North in Huddersfield holds a collection of postcards sent by the Friedmanns, an Austrian family who were imprisoned in Terezín and ultimately killed. As archivist Hari Jonkers explains, they provide a precious personal story from the Holocaust. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE POSTCARD COLLECTION? The postcards were written by the Friedmann family from Austria – Hugo and Hilde Friedmann (born 1901 and 1902) and their children Hans Georg and Liselotte (born 1928 and 1932) – while they were in Terezín. There…

LISTEN LISTEN TO A LIFE oxforddnb.com/page/listen-to-a-life Free Most of the online entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography are subscriber-only, but more than 250 of them have now been made into podcasts, so you can listen to the biographies of notable British people for free. The themes include ‘Wartime Lives’, ‘Literary Lives’ and ‘Science, Invention, and Business’. LISTEN THE WARSAW GHETTO: HISTORY AS SURVIVAL tinyurl.com/bbc-sounds-warsaw-ghetto Free Between 1940 and 1943, up to 460,000 Polish Jews were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. But within the ghetto, historian and archivist Emanuel Ringelblum and a team of others compiled a secret archive, recording their lives. This recent Radio 4 series poignantly brings their work to life. WEBSITE TWENTY TREASURES scottisharchives.org.uk/explore/twenty-treasures-v2 Free The Scottish Council on Archives launched in 2002, and last year…

SOCIAL HISTORY MICHAEL ALPERT Pen & Sword, 224 pages, £22 Living in Early Victorian London covers the period from 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, to 1853. The book focuses on the lives of lower-middle-class Londoners, exploring various aspects of their experiences including fashion, diet, economics, transport, health, religion, politics and leisure. Written in an accessible style using contemporary source material, the author moves effortlessly from macro to micro histories of London. Michael Alpert also makes use of storytelling to effectively bring the period to vivid, sometimes visceral, life. The well-selected and relatively short 12 chapters add to the accessible nature of the book; it is an enjoyable read cover to cover, or can be dipped into and out of for those who have a particular interest. When…