Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i Who Do You Think You Are?

For many of us researching our family history, we wouldn't want to be without the wealth of records on the main paid-for genealogy websites, but subscription costs shouldn't put anyone off this fascinating hobby. I hope our article on free websites (page 14) will inspire you a a all to explore what's available. This month, we head off on a two-day genealogy jaunt to Dublin (page 19). This was inspired by a reader who wrote in asking for advice on how to get the most out of a trip to Ireland. Get in touch if you've got topics you would like us to cover. I'm starting to get excited about the Olympics this summer (enjoy our short history of the event on page 52), so the ‘Best Websites’ article on…

JONATHAN SCOTT A regular contributor to Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine and author of The Family History Web Directory, Jonathan shares some of his favourite free websites on page 14. NICOLA MORRIS Often busy doing Irish research for the TV series, Nicola is just the person to guide you on a research trip to Dublin (page 19) where she is a director of Timeline Research (timeline.ie). SIMON WILLS Simon has been our maritime expert for over 10 years, and consults on the TV series. On page 29 he sets out on the high seas looking for treasure in the form of privateers’ records.…

Suffolk County Council has decided to shut Suffolk Archives’ branches at Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and transfer their collections to the archives facility The Hold in Ipswich (tinyurl.com/suff-arch-hold). The closures were announced in January, as part of the council's “difficult decisions” to save £64.7 million, and opposed by local campaigners. The two branches will shut by the end of August, and Suffolk Archives explained that the archives and the John Blatchly Local Studies Library areas at The Hold will close to the public for three months from the beginning of October to facilitate the move.…

YORK CAUSE PAPERS w dhi.ac.uk/causepapers Search a free catalogue of more than 14,000 papers from cases heard in the church courts of the Diocese of York (1300-1858). HEARTH TAX DIGITAL w gams.uni-graz.at/context:htx Hearth-tax returns from 1662–1674 provide a useful census of heads of families. This ongoing project already has data from many counties. LONDON PICTURE ARCHIVE w londonpicturearchive.org.uk Among the more than 250,000 searchable images here are 80,000 photos from London County Council. PRONI w tinyurl.com/nidirect-proni-arch-online The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland's free-to-view highlights include a database of will calendars from 1858–1965. SHEFFIELD INDEXERS w sheffieldindexers.com This site provides data from a raft of sources such as census returns, burial records and memorial inscriptions, parish records, schools and directories.…

CELEBRATING YOUR DISCOVERIES My mum Felicity used to say that we had a family connection to Haiti, although she thought it was just a rumour,” says Philippa Larard. “We were also told that my great great grandfather was the Prussian consul in Haiti during the 19th century.” Philippa lives in Lyndhurst in Hampshire, and works as an advanced nurse practitioner at an inner-city doctor's surgery. Naturally, she faced great challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We were all working long hours, and the stress among patients was tangible. I was giving first-round immunisations to people who were frightened to leave the house. To escape the pressure of my job, I needed something to immerse myself in fully. Tracing our family history proved the perfect distraction.” I was giving first-round immunisations to…

Privateers have always been controversial, none more so than Christopher Myngs. He joined the Royal Navy as a ship's boy in the 1630s, but rose rapidly to become a senior officer who distinguished himself several times wars against the Dutch. He was dispatched to the Caribbean as a privateer with authority to attack the Spanish and operated mainly from Jamaica, capturing ships and raiding their colonies. Myngs earned a reputation for savagery that led even the British governor of Jamaica to doubt his sanity, calling him “unhinged”. In contrast, his friend the diarist Samuel Pepys described him as a “very witty well-spoken fellow”. However, what Britain saw as legitimate privateering, Spain viewed as common piracy and murder – claims they had levelled at many other British privateers including Francis Drake.…

BOOKS A Voyage Round the World by the Way of the Great South Sea George Shelvocke J Senex, 1726 This firsthand account of privateering is available for free through Google Books (tinyurl.com/ggl-shel). Commerce Raiding: Historical Case Studies, 1755-2009 Bruce A Elleman and SCM Paine US Naval War College, 2013 This report considers privateers in the context of ‘commerce raiding’, and can be downloaded for free at tinyurl.com/usnwc-raid. Pirates and Privateers in the 18th century Mike Rendell Pen & Sword, 2018 Rendell's account includes case studies of individuals. Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period John Franklin Jameson (editor) Macmillan, 1923 This volume of transcribed historical documents related to privateering (1636–1762) is available for free from the Internet Archive (tinyurl. com/arch-jfj). WEBSITE LLOYD'S REGISTER OF SHIPPING w tinyurl.com/hec-lros Many privateer ships…

BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk Local newspapers often printed results, photos and reports from school matches together with smaller regional leagues. MCC MUSEUM w lords.org/mcc/heritage-collections/what-we-do The museum holds records of the Marylebone Cricket Club, as well as material relating to individual cricketers. MODERN RECORDS CENTRE w warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/nca/ The MRC at the University of Warwick holds the National Cycle Archive. NATIONAL FOOTBALL MUSEUM w nationalfootballmuseum.com The museum is in Manchester, and has about 2,500 items on display. More than 40,000 items are held at its Research Centre in Preston. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND w tinyurl.com/nls-coll-sport This web page can help you find details of sporting archives in the NLS, including material relating to curling, golf and the Highland Games. TENNIS ARCHIVES w tennisarchives.com This labour of love has data on thousands…

BOOK Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records Chris Paton Pen & Sword, 2019 As well as interpreting civil registration and church marriage records, Chris’ book examines the law and traditions surrounding Scottish marriages. WEBSITES STATUTORY REGISTER OF MARRIAGES w tinyurl.com/scotpeople-statutory-rom This detailed online guide from ScotlandsPeople explains what to expect from records of both regular and irregular marriages. THE SCOTTISH WAY OF BIRTH AND DEATH w tinyurl.com/gla-swo-marr This site from the Centre for the History of Medicine at Glasgow University includes a useful examination of the law behind marriage, as well as birth and death, divorce and other issues.…

BIG QUESTION Q I'm trying to find out where and when my husband's grandmother, Annie Webster, was born. The first confirmed documentation I have relating to her is of her marriage to Herbert Alcock in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, on 30 December 1919. She was 27 and gave her father's name as William Webster. Herbert died on 9 April 1928 leaving Annie with two children. As Annie Alcock, she married William Crowther in Barton on Humber, Lincolnshire, on 21 February 1939. She was 46 and gave no father's name. On the 1939 Register, she gave a birthdate of 17 November 1893. She died on 24 June 1940 age 47. According to the family, she was born in 1892/1893 and spent time in an orphanage or workhouse in Sheffield, Yorkshire, but we can't…

TECH TIPS Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has just brought its Pro Tools to UK users. These provide additional advanced facilities on its website (but not the Ancestry app) to help you do more with your Ancestry-hosted trees. The tools themselves will be familiar to anyone who also uses family history software, and include a Tree Checker that alerts you to possible errors and duplicates. There are also advanced filters for viewing specific parts of a tree, various charts and reports, and access to a small selection of insights about your tree. Rounding things off is a map allowing you to pinpoint ancestors (and their movements). The Pro Tools are only available to family historians who have an active Ancestry membership, and require you to pay an additional monthly fee of £4.99/€5.49/$10 on…

BOOKS Fast Girls Elise Hooper HarperCollins, 2020 This fact-based novel tells the story of three American female athletes at the 1936 Olympics. The Games David Goldblatt Macmillan, 2016 This history of the Olympics since the 19th century can be borrowed from the Internet Archive for free via tinyurl.com/arch-gold-gam. MUSEUM MUCH WENLOCK MUSEUM a The Square, High Street, Much Wenlock TF13 6HR t 01743 258885 e shropshiremuseums@shropshire.gov.uk w shropshiremuseums.org.uk/much-wenlock-museum Olympic artefacts are on show. WEBSITES INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE w olympics.com/ioc/history The IOC's site has a section on the history of the Games. OLYMPIC MUSEUM w olympics.com/museum/explore/virtual-360-tours The museum is in Lausanne in Switzerland, but you can take virtual tours online. OLYMPIC RESULTS w tinyurl.com/oly-results The IOC's website also has the results and medallists’ names for every event since 1896. WENLOCK OLYMPIAN…

CUTLERS DATABASE w hawleysheffieldknives.com The site Is Your Name On A Knife? provides a synopsis of many Sheffield cutlery firms – makers of knives, edge tools, scissors, silver and tableware. PARISH REGISTERS w tinyurl.com/fs-yk-pr On FamilySearch ‘England, Yorkshire, Parish Registers, 1538–2016’ includes baptisms, banns, marriages and burials. HISTORIC NEWSPAPERS w tinyurl.com/bna-sheff-adv The British Newspaper Archive has issues of the Sheffield Public Advertiser available for free (1760–1793) provided you create a free user account. DIRECTORIES w tinyurl.com/sco-dir-yorks The West Riding directories on the University of Leicester's website Special Collections Online cover modern South Yorkshire. SHEFFIELD INDEXES w sheffieldindexers.com Here you can search transcribed sources relating to Sheffield and its surroundings. FIRST WORLD WAR ROLL OF HONOUR w tinyurl.com/sheff-gov-hon Sheffield Council's research guide to the First World War includes a link to…

The Philanthropic Society, later the Royal Philanthropic Society (RPS), was founded in London in 1788 to provide aid to homeless children in the city. In 1849 the society opened a Farm School at Redhill in Surrey, where orphaned boys or juvenile criminals lived while learning farm work and other trades. When the children became teenagers, the society sponsored many of them to emigrate. The Surrey History Centre in Woking holds the society's records including a book of letters from emigrant ex-pupils, as Jane Lewis, the centre's genealogist, explains. Rarely are we able to hear stories from the least fortunate in society WHAT IS THE BOOK? The book of emigration letters from the Royal Philanthropic Farm School in Redhill, Surrey, contains edited transcripts of letters from boys who were encouraged to…

Alan Crosby's answer to Evan's question about his forebear's Northumberland home in ‘Q&A’ (page 44) encouraged me to ‘walk’ the street using Google Street View. Using old Ordnance Survey maps and Google Maps together, you can often track down and see the houses your family lived in. I was also excited by the release this month of more recent OS maps from the National Library of Scotland (‘News’, page 11). It was fascinating to see maps of Bristol from 1949 showing the wartime damage the city was still living with.…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST WIN an AncestryDNA test kit from ancestry.co.uk WORTH £79 The writer of our star letter wins an AncestryDNA test worth £79 – so drop us a line and share your thoughts with us. WOOLWICH ARSENAL IDENTITY SPOTTED As I was reading the May issue of your magazine, I squealed with delight when I turned to the ‘Local Industry’ article and saw the picture of the women working at Woolwich Arsenal in 1918. My grandmother, Ellen Allen, worked there at the time, and I'm pretty sure she is the woman standing to the far right of the photo. You can see the similarity if you compare the picture you published to a photograph I have of Ellen, taken in about 1927,…

Ancestry adds Lancashire nonconformist records Family history website Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has released a new collection of 447,396 nonconformist records from Lancashire. The records date from 1762–2005 and include baptisms, marriages and burials. They are a useful resource for tracing the lives of ancestors who didn't worship in the Church of England. The records are primarily Methodist. The collection can be searched by name, and includes digitised images of the records. Society of Genealogists names new chief executive London-based charity the Society of Genealogists (sog.org.uk) has appointed a new chief executive. Philip Spedding, former director of development at The London Library and executive director at Arts & Business, started his new role on 1 July. He has 25 years’ experience in the creative and cultural sectors, including through holding senior roles…

Last month I wrote about the emergence of penny savings banks at the beginning of the 19th century, aimed at encouraging the principles of thrift and financial caution among the working classes. The first of these banks were founded a few decades after the establishment of the early major commercial banking houses such as Barclays. But before the early 18th century there was no organised private banking system in Britain – and therefore no institutional mechanism for borrowing or lending. Lending money at interest was frowned upon and condemned as sinful by the medieval Church. In the 16th century in England the practice was made legal, but it was still surrounded by much wariness and suspicion. Nonetheless, there were always those who needed to borrow money, and those who had…

ANGLO BOER WAR w angloboerwar.com This labour of love has more than 753,000 soldiers’ records as well as a buzzing forum, and covers not just the Second Boer War (1899–1902) but other South African conflicts too. BOMER COMMAND LOSSES w tinyurl.com/ibcc-losses- database The International Bomber Command Centre Losses Database records the details of 58,438 BC deaths from 1936-1968, often with biographical information and photographs. GREAT WAR WEST SUSSEX 1914-18 w tinyurl.com/west-suss-gwws The First World War centenaries produced a wealth of free-to-view data. This web page from West Sussex County Council has a link to an index of 14,000 individuals mentioned in newspapers. NATIONAL ARICHIVES OF AUSTRALIA w tinyurl.com/naa-war-records The national repository has been overseeing the mass digitisation of Second World War records, including army records, navy service cards and air-force…

MORNING Start your day at the NAI on Bishop Street and take advantage of the free genealogy advisory service, available Monday to Friday 10am–1pm and 2pm–5pm. Professional accredited genealogists are on duty to advise and assist you with your family history research and will direct you to the relevant repositories, with hand-out maps and lists of online resources. If you have already identified manuscripts in the NAI, get your order in quick to maximise your first three research hours of the day. Except for Mondays the building, frustratingly, closes for lunch between 1pm and 2pm. With permission, you can photograph all records. If you have the time then coffee and a toasted sandwich at Network Café on Aungier Street will restore you for the stroll through leafy St Stephen's Green…

FAMILYSEARCH w bit.ly/fs-haiti-reg You can explore civil records of births, marriages and deaths in Haiti (1794–2012) online at FamilySearch. The collection provided Philippa with a major breakthrough, but note that the records are in French – one of the country's official languages. FIND A GRAVE w findagrave.com Philippa located her great grandfather Alfred Berger's memorial at Find A Grave. He was buried in Spain, and the stone included his mother's maiden name (Mathélier), which is common practice there. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FRANCE w tinyurl.com/bnf-moniteur The digital resources available on the library's website include an incomplete collection of issues of the Haitian newspaper Le Moniteur published between 1845 and 1872. Via a link on Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), Philippa's daughter Rosi found an article that mentions the arrival of Philippa's ancestor Reinhard Berger…

1 WILLIAM DEATH The name and address of the officer who was in charge of the privateer and had overall responsibility – ie the commander of the vessel – is recorded here. 2 CARRIAGE GUNS Privateers were more heavily armed than naval or merchant ships of similar size, and carried multiple types of heavy armament: here carriage guns and swivel guns. 3 TWO HUNDRED & TWENTY MEN Terrible was a small ship, but the large crew of 220 was needed to overpower enemy crews by sheer force of numbers. 4 VICTUALLES A ship had to have enough food (victuals), spare sails and rope to last out its commission. 5 OFFICERS The gunner was in charge of armaments, the boatswain enforced discipline, and the carpenter was responsible for repairing privateers and their prizes after each action.…

RECORD MASTERCLASS The civil registration of marriages in Scotland began in January 1855. As with birth and death records, two copies of marriage registers were created by local registrars. One was retained in the local registration district, while the other was transferred to the General Register Office in Edinburgh, now part of the National Records of Scotland (NRS; nrscotland.gov.uk). Boys as young as 14 and girls as young as 12 could wed until 1929, when the age for both increased to 16, still the case today. From 1567 being too closely related could prohibit a marriage: a person could not wed an ancestor, descendant or sibling, aunts/uncles or nephews/nieces, an adoptive parent or child, a wife's sister (until 1907) or a brother's widow (until 1921), although marriage between first cousins…

Q My 5x great grandfather, John Byron, was a private in the Derbyshire Militia, according to the Brighton baptism entry of my 4x great grandfather, Robert Byron. I am interested in discovering more about the Derbyshire Militia, whether there are any associated records concerning John and where he and his family went after his time in the militia. Robert lived in Nottingham, where he was a bricklayer. In the 1851 census, his birthplace is given as Brighton. He married three times, and his father John is recorded in his second and third marriage entries as a bricklayer too. Jo Darrow A The Militia were part-time soldiers, recruited locally, often by parish ballot (every eligible man's name was entered and randomly selected), fully trained for six months, then sent home to…

CELEBRATING YOUR DISCOVERIES John Major Green was born in 1815, when people lived by candlelight and travelled mostly by horse and cart. Jane Austen's novel Emma was published that year, the Prince Regent was on the throne and the Napoleonic Wars were still raging. Life expectancy in Britain was only 41, due to disease, poverty and lack of sanitation. Despite such challenges, John reached the age of 100 and was Middlesbrough's oldest known resident. Barbara Greenwood, John's great great granddaughter, and her family have joined forces to pay tribute to this amazing man. INCREDIBLE LONGEVITY My niece Elizabeth Hails sparked my interest in genealogy. In 2010, she joined Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) and found connections to the village of Hunmanby, near Scarborough in North Yorkshire. My maiden name was Green, and I…

AROUND BRITAIN Yorkshire's ancient subdivisions are known as Ridings. East Riding is the smallest of the three, while North Riding extends from the Pennines to the North Sea, and West Riding – the largest – is home to the industrialised cities of Leeds and Sheffield. The modern county of South Yorkshire, created in 1974, is made up of four metropolitan boroughs – Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield – all of which were historically within West Riding. We visited archives from the four districts, finding a variety of projects and digitisations coming to fruition. A team from Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has been busy in Barnsley, for example. “We've been working with Ancestry to get a huge tranche of material photographed,” says Paul Stebbing, Barnsley's archives and local studies manager (experience-barnsley.com/our-archives). “It won't…

DENTON This locative name comes from West Riding. HARDCASTLE Hardcastle is also a locative name from West Riding, specifically Hardcastle in Bewerley. HINCHLIFF(F) There are several Yorkshire surnames that share the root ‘Hinch’. HOBSON This patronymic surname originated in the personal name Hobb. LONGBOTTOM Longbottom is a topographic name for someone who lived in a long valley. OXLEE/OXLEY This name might come from Ox Lee in Hepworth. PARKIN Nearly 400 Parkins were recorded living in Sheffield at the time of the 1881 census. RUSHFORTH Just under 1,000 Rushforths were living in Yorkshire in 1881. STANIFORTH This name is particularly common near Sheffield, and derives from the Old English for a stony ford. WILBURN The surname Wilburn is thought to derive from Welbourn in Lincolnshire.…

ADVERTISING t 0117 300 8804 e sophie.keenan@ourmedia.co.uk EDITORIAL & WEBSITE QUERIES t 0117 300 8621 e wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk MAGAZINE APP SUPPORT w ourmediaapps.co.uk/digital-contact-form Q&A QUERIES e wdytyaquestions@ourmedia.co.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS HELP & FAQS t 03330 162120* t +44 1604 973728 (overseas) w ourmediashop.com/contactus w ourmediashop.com/faqs *UK calls will cost the same as other standard fixed-line numbers (starting 01 or 02) and are included as part of any inclusive or free minutes allowances (if offered by your phone tariff). Outside of free call packages call charges from mobile phones will cost between 3p and 55p per minute. Lines are open Monday to Friday 9am–5pm.…

Birmingham-based arts and culture organisation Bertz Associates (www.bertzassociates.net) is hoping to hear from members of the public about their memories of roller skating at the recently demolished Tower Ballroom at Edgbaston Reservoir. The aim is to include stories from local people focusing on the history of roller skating in Birmingham. These would be used in a short documentary film, funded by an Everyday Heritage Grant from Historic England. The ballroom opened in 1876 as the Edgbaston Roller Rink. In the 1980s, it hosted roller-skating events, concerts, boxing matches and beauty pageants. It finally closed in 2017. Bertz Associates is also keen to hear from anyone with related photographs, home films, memorabilia and objects. You can enter submissions at bit.ly/bertz-skating, email your stories to projects@bertzassociates.net or call 0121 572 0685.…

BEST FREE WEBSITES Every now and then it can be valuable to step back and marvel at where we are. Just a few years ago, family historians had to spend a significant amount of time travelling to repositories to consult the records they needed in person, all with no guarantee of success. Today, the rapid growth of digitisation has changed everything. For example, researchers living anywhere in the world can now trawl a database of 65 million passengers arriving in New York between 1820 and 1957 using the website Ellis Island Passenger Search (heritage.statueofliberty.org/passenger) – without paying a single penny. Here we've brought together some of the most useful free websites out there, from generalists to specialists. It should be noted, however, that many of the commercial websites that won't…

CREW LIST INDEX PROJECT w crewlist.org.uk CLIP has data on British merchant seafarers compiled from disparate records. There are also more than 750,000 names in the database Crew Lists of the British Merchant Navy – 1915: 1915 crewlists.rmg.co.uk. FAMILIES IN BRITISH INDIA SOCIETY w tinyurl.com/fibis-arch-data This database has over two million records derived from ecclesiastical returns, newspapers, censuses, military lists, shipping records, memorial inscriptions and civilservice records. RAILWAY WORK, LIFE AND DEATH w railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk This site has details of accidents on Britain and Ireland's railways from the later 19th century until the Second World War. THE COALMINING HISTORY RESOURCE CENTRE w cmhrc.co.uk Some of the material on this site is no longer free, but it's worth a visit for accident and fatality reports, and regional reports from an 1842 royal…

FOCUS ON Privateers and pirates are sometimes assumed to be the same, but this is not correct. Pirates were highwaymen of the high seas who operated entirely outside the law. They attacked vessels of all nations indiscriminately during wartime or peace – including British ships – plundering cargos, capturing ships to add to their fleet, pillaging coastal settlements, murdering and raping. Privateers, on the other hand, were legal businesses a bit like a privately owned navy. Each ‘private ship of war’ could only operate against a nation with which Britain was at war, and captured their ships and cargos for profit. It was a dangerous trade, but potentially highly lucrative as well. Many former privateers are notable persons in history such as Francis Drake, the explorer Martin Frobisher, the founder…

1812 PRIVATEERS w 1812privateers.org Register entries for letters of marque against France (1793–1815) and the USA (1777–1783) are indexed here by ship and captain's name (click the ‘Great Britain’ tab). BOOKS BOXES & BOATS w maritimearchives.co.uk/lloyds-list.html This website has issues of Lloyd's List, a daily digest of shipping news including actions of privateers (1741–1826). You can access a partial index at cityoflondon.gov.uk/lloydslist. DISCOVERY w tinyurl.com/discovery-dec You can search transcriptions of privateers’ declarations for 1689–1697, 1744 and 1756–1761 in TNA's series HCA 26 from this page. Just type the name of an officer or ship.…

Since this is an Olympic year, it seems right to draw attention to archives that preserve the history of the Olympic Movement. The British were important to this process, and the Olympic Games can trace their modern origins back to athletic competitions that were held at Much Wenlock in Shropshire. But the modern story was internationalised by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who co-founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894. If you want to find out more, the website of the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, is an excellent starting point: olympics.com/ioc/olympic-studies-centre. It has sections on the history of the Games, the ancient Games, the Olympic symbol and art collections. London is the first city to host the Olympics three times (1908, 1948 and 2012), and The National Archives’ online…

Q I'm hoping you can tell me the approximate date that this photograph was taken. I believe it portrays my grandfather's mother, who was born in 1871. Dru DeVore A This fine outdoor scene was taken by a local professional photographer commissioned to come out and visit your ancestors at home. From the late 1800s, technological advances facilitated outdoor photography on location away from the studio. This often proved convenient for clients who were, for instance, very elderly or who included infants: those who might not easily travel into town. Usually, the setting was the family garden, giving a rare glimpse of our forebears’ domestic surroundings. Frequently a chair was brought out from inside the house, the composition arranged like a studio portrait. Online data for early East Anglian photographers…

The first woman to win a gold medal at the Olympics as an individual was Charlotte Cooper, known as ‘Chattie’. She was born at Wadham Lodge, Ealing, Middlesex, on 22 September 1870 to miller Henry Cooper and his wife Teresa. She showed early promise at the Ealing Lawn Tennis Club, and went on to win the Wimbledon Singles Championship for the first of five times in 1895. At the 1900 Paris Olympics she won two gold medals: for the women's singles and the mixed doubles. In 1901 she married Alfred Sterry, a solicitor, and took his name so her later wins are recorded as Charlotte Sterry. Her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a fascinating note: “Mrs Sterry had been deaf since she was twenty-six and in…

DECEASED ONLINE w deceasedonline.com This company works with crematoria across the UK to digitise their records and host them online. The database is free to search, but viewing records requires payment. FIND A GRAVE w findagrave.com The world's largest online database of grave sites lists more than 238 million memorials, often with photographs and inscriptions transcribed by volunteers across continents. FINDMYPAST w bit.ly/fmp-nbi This collection contains details of more than 17 million burial records. The site also has Scotland and Ireland cemetery indexes from BillionGraves (billiongraves.com).…

1249 A royal charter allows Barnsley to hold a weekly market on Wednesdays and an annual four-day fair at Michaelmas. c1475 What will become known as the Old Queen's Head pub is built at Pond Hill, Sheffield. The building was Grade II-listed in 1952. 1743 Sheffield cutler Thomas Boulsover accidentally fuses copper and silver, and discovers that the resulting material Sheffield Plate can be used as a less expensive substitute for solid silver. 1936 Author George Orwell lives with Barnsley miners while researching his non-fiction book The Road to Wigan Pier, published the following year. 1938 Actor Diana Rigg is born in Doncaster. Her sixdecade professional career includes many acclaimed roles on stage and screen, not least her breakthrough: Emma Peel in The Avengers (1965–1968). 1969 Ken Loach's film Kes…

WEBSITE NORFOLK RECORD OFFICE norfolkrecordofficeblog.org/snapshots-from-the-archives The record office's blog includes entries on fascinating documents in its archives, from the medieval Great Yarmouth Borough court rolls to the diary of an elderly local woman during the Second World War, as well as useful advice on family history research and ‘Behind the Scenes’ posts revealing how the record office is run. Free. LISTEN FREE THINKING: THE GREENWICH OUTRAGE tinyurl.com/bbc-free-bour In February 1894, the French anarchist Martial Bourdin was killed in Greenwich Park when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely. In this episode of Radio 4’s Free Thinking presented by Matthew Sweet, historians Charlotte Jones, Ruth Kinna and Thomas Jones discuss the ‘Greenwich Outrage’ and its aftermath. Free. PODCAST WW2 POD: WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU TALK Podcast services In this…

CELEBRAING YOUR DISCOVERIES On 26 October 1918, a local newspaper published a loving message from a heartbroken young woman to her late husband. It would be the first of several tributes to her first love. More than a century later, her great granddaughter Beth Freeman discovered these ‘love letters’ while searching online. Time collapsed in a moment when the two generations connected. “I loved history at school and began researching our family tree as a teenager,” Beth explains. “Even after years of looking we can still find amazing gems of information out there.” Beth made her discovery this year after researching her great grandfather Maurice Watts, a market gardener who was born in Moggerhanger, Bedfordshire, in 1894. He married Mary Lincoln of nearby Biggleswade in March 1917. My great grandmother…