Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i Who Do You Think You Are?

When I was a child we had no car, so all of our holidays involved travel by train (nobody I knew flew anywhere). We would pack up a large trunk, and the railway service would pick it up and deliver it to my grandparents in Suffolk. The last train would have individual compartments. which felt old-fashioned even then. This month marks the 200th anniversary of passenger rail travel, and on page 14 we remember the railway workers who toiled behind the scenes, and offer advice for discovering more about their lives through surviving records. The Post Office was another huge employer with a similarly vast array of records; turn to page 38 to find out more. However, most employment records have been lost, so it's great to see that Guinness…

Recently, at the Western Cape Archives in Cape Town, South Africa, I had to suppress my tears as I finally read the horrifying details about my late mother's tragically cruel early childhood. Iris Aletta Maria Carver, née van der Sandt, barely remembered her parents Jacob and Violet, believing that they both perished in Cape Town during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic when she was six. She often narrated tales of her subsequent life on an Afrikaner farm, where she and her brother Charles were sent. Treated as farm and domestic slaves with no schooling and living in the most basic accommodation, their lives were miserable. When Mum was about 13, the teenage siblings escaped to search for and then live with their English grandmother's sister and husband in Cape Town.…

Rosemary Collins reports on the latest data releases and genealogy news Almost nine million parish records from Suffolk have been added to the family history website Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk). The site has released four sets of records from the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich: 4,576,549 baptism, marriage and burial records (1538–1812); 2,213,998 baptism records (1813–1924); 1,532,634 marriage records (1754–1949); and 514,948 burial records (1813–1999). The records were digitised from collections held at The Hold archive facility in Ipswich (www.suffolkarchives.co.uk/about-suffolk-archives/the-hold/). Ancestry is a subscription-based website, but the records will be free to view on computers at The Hold. Philip Faircloth-Mutton, Suffolk County Council's cabinet member for environment, communities and equality, commented, “This project is a fantastic step forward in making Suffolk's rich history more accessible.” He continued, “Whether you're overseas, have…

ARCHIVES MODERN RECORDS CENTRE a University Library, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL t 024 7652 4219 w warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/ The MRC holds the archives of such trade unions as the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. NATIONAL RECORDS OF SCOTLAND a HM General Register House, 2 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH1 3YY t 0131 202 0451 w nrscotland.gov.uk Here you'll find staff registers and accident records for Scottish firms, plus Fatal Accident Inquiry records. BOOKS Railwaywomen Helena Wojtczak Hastings Press, 2005 Find out about female workers. Tracing Your Railway Ancestors Di Drummond Pen & Sword, 2010 This is a very helpful introduction. MUSEUMS LOCOMOTION a Shildon, DL4 2RE t 033 0058 0058 w locomotion.org.uk Locomotion is part of the Science Museum Group, like the NRM. NATIONAL RAILWAY MUSEUM a Leeman Road, York…

Looking at proceedings from the Chancery Court, which are held by The National Archives at Kew (TNA; nationalarchives.gov.uk), is like shining a torch back into people's lives in past centuries. No other source gives such a personal insight, except perhaps letters. No other source can give so much genealogical information, with several generations often outlined in one document, recording names, relationships and sometimes even exact dates. The rich and the poor used the Chancery Court, although as a rule of thumb it is generally the type of family who might leave a will, ie those who owned a small amount of property whether land or goods, who tended to use it. Agricultural labourers and servants seldom appear as parties in Chancery records. However, they are often called as witnesses, or…

Acting legend Sir Derek Jacobi was the subject of an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in August 2015. His 6x great grandfather Joseph de la Playn was a Protestant refugee from France who had escaped to London, and in 1703 he brought a Chancery case that revealed his history. In April 1690 Joseph was planning to flee from persecution in France, and wanted to get his money out of the country and into England. He enlisted the aid of a friend, another Protestant who wanted to leave France. Joseph helped Jane de Beynac to escape via Geneva and Amsterdam to London where she arrived in September 1691, while remaining in France himself. Using merchants he managed to get his money sent to Jane in great secrecy between…

When researching pubs and breweries, I feel people should be at the very heart of the story. That's why I've found the Lost Pubs Project (closedpubs.co.uk) such a useful resource. It has a simple, unassuming interface, but is packed full of insight about more than 45,000 closed pubs across the UK, and includes over 33,800 photos. It is a site driven by user input so some pubs inevitably have more information recorded about them than others, although you will generally find that most establishments are recorded here to one degree or another. The website proved to be invaluable when I researched my own book on the topic, which was published earlier this year. For many of the pubs I featured, the site was a treasure trove of colourful testimonies, helping…

Q I've recently discovered that one of my ancestors was a Royal Navy seaman. His name was Adolphus Pixton, and his service number was 10888a. He was born in Ardwick, Manchester, on 21 July 1843. How do I research his maritime career? Jacqueline Moore A The National Archives at Kew (nationalarchives.gov.uk) holds service records for Royal Navy seamen, and I've managed to find Adolphus Pixton's by searching its online catalogue Discovery. The record (reference ADM 139/509/10888) can be downloaded for free from discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D7899441. It describes Adolphus as 5 feet 1½ inches tall and of fair complexion, with brown hair and hazel eyes. He was only 16 when he enlisted in July 1860 as a Boy 2nd Class, which was essentially the rank of rating for boys aged 16–18, and Adolphus…

Q This is a photograph of my grandad, Owen Lloyd Owen (1913–1983), taken during the Second World War. I know nothing about his time in the Army, and wonder if you can tell me anything from his uniform. Nia Llwyd A This is a photograph of a young Royal Engineers driver/mechanic, pictured in his new uniform. It was taken in a studio, possibly on a visit home before joining his unit. Owen appears in the 1939 Register as a lorry driver. He probably learnt to drive in the Army, and it became his trade in civilian life. As a qualified driver, it's possible he might have transferred to another army unit. In case he went to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (many Engineers transferred), I checked their service records,…

There's nothing more frustrating than finding yourself at a dead end when researching an ancestor. Often, it's not because you've exhausted all possibilities, but rather because you've not realised what other information is out there. All you need is a nudge in the right direction, and if you're a Windows PC user, Legacy's Research Guidance tool can provide you with that push. The tool allows you to select a person and choose which of their facts to focus on before it offers up a selection of potential online avenues to search. They include possible sources (complete with links to the websites that house them) as well as more general areas of research, such as websites where others share their own discoveries or congregate on message boards to offer words of…

MUSEUMS MUSEUM OF ENGLISH RURAL LIFE a University of Reading, 6 Redlands Road, Reading RG1 5EX t 0118 378 8660 e merl@reading.ac.uk w merl.reading.ac.uk MERL is devoted to the history of the countryside and its people. You can visit in person, or explore collections online. The museum holds extensive archives as well. RURAL LIFE LIVING MUSEUM a Reeds Road, Tilford, Farnham GU10 2DL t 01252 795571 e info@rural-life.org.uk w rural-life.org.uk This open-air museum has a collection of relocated historic buildings, as well as agricultural implements and other artefacts. Its summer season concludes at the end of September, after which it is shut until January. WEBSITES BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk The archive is a rich source of harvest-related articles from the late 18th century through to more recent times, from…

Rosemary Collins highlights three digital resources that caught our eye this month RADIO HISTORY'S HEROES tinyurl.com/bbc-snds-hh  (UK only) or bbc.com Following on from History's Secret Heroes and History's Youngest Heroes, this new series from BBC Radio 4 sees historian Alex von Tunzelmann celebrate more inspirational figures. They include film star Katharine Hepburn, author Hans Christian Andersen and Harold Gillies, who pioneered plastic surgery to help servicemen wounded in the First World War. Free. VIDEO FORGOTTEN LINES youtube.com/@Forgotten  LinesPodcast/videos James Doherty's YouTube channel has a US focus, but features stories that family historians around the world will find compelling. In each short video, Doherty explains how he solved a genealogical mystery, including identifying people in old photos, and tracing the woman a street was named after. Free. EXHIBITION PRISONERS OR PATIENTS?…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST BRUSH WITH DEATH Jan Gore's feature in your August issue about the V1 bombing campaign was very informative, and arrived at an interesting time as my wife and I recently stayed with our sister-in-law. With failing eyesight she had asked us to help her read some of her mother's wartime diaries. Iris Ellis, a part-time auxiliary firewoman, had lived on her parent's farm at Ringmer in Sussex. Although the village was quite rural it was close to the Channel coast, so had many alerts of Nazi bombers within the area. On 4 August 1944, a Doodlebug hit the post office at Shortgate, a short distance from the village. Five people were killed, including Harold Lewis French, a First World War…

Records of conscription tribunals released online Family history website Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) has added a collection of 1,376 records of First World War conscription tribunals from Southwark in Surrey, digitising material held by Southwark Archives (tinyurl.com/southwark-archives). After conscription began in 1916, tribunals were set up across the country to hear appeals from men who claimed exemption on grounds such as ill health, family hardship, essential civilian work, or conscientious objection. NLS site gets early maps The National Library of Scotland has added 356 maps of England and Wales, dating between 1610 and 1890, to its free historic maps website maps.nls.uk. They include 167 county maps covering 40 counties; 106 town plans including 64 of London; 62 maps of the whole of England and Wales; and 21 nautical charts. They provide a…

This year sees the celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world's first steam-worked passenger line. It is an occasion to reflect on the differences that the railway subsequently made to the lives of our mid-Victorian forebears. For some families, of course, railways were everything. Generations of men and boys (and a not inconsiderable number of women) worked for the railway company, proud of its locomotive livery and its impressive uniforms, posing in those formal photographs of the employees of a country station that you often see in books and museums. In my mother's family, Uncle Arthur was an engine driver – one of the most glamorous jobs that a young boy could imagine. He worked for the London, Midland and Scottish…

Many clients come to genealogists with family stories of connections to aristocratic families, or famous historic figures, that they want verified. These cases typically fall into two categories. First, the clients have been told that they are related to a specific person, or family, with whom they may, or may not, share a surname. Second, the story that has been handed down concerns an illegitimacy. The mother was said to be in service at “a big house” and the father a member of the gentry. How do we set about proving such links, and what are the challenges we face? The first thing we are likely to discuss with our clients is taking a DNA test. Being able to work with DNA is an essential tool for genealogists these days,…

Covid-19 has had a lasting impact on all our lives in one way or another, but when Gemma Duggan (née Lupton) developed long Covid after contracting the virus in 2020, she was forced to give up her job. While many of us were home-schooling or doing star jumps with Joe Wicks, she was putting her history degree to good use. “Mapping my family history has been a great way to keep my brain engaged,” she says. Gemma, who lives in Lichfield, Staffordshire, knew that she had some notable ancestors on her father's side – from artists to gentlemen and clergymen – but also discovered interesting stories from ‘ordinary’ folk behind closed doors, including a murder attempt, marriage scandals and the enigmatic Frances Pook. Mary, covered in blood, claimed John had…

BOOKS Researching With English Court Records SE Brown, L Flannigan and J Newman (eds) Routledge, forthcoming This upcoming book includes a chapter by Susan that discusses the records of the equity courts. Tracing Your Ancestors in the National Archives: the Website and Beyond, 7th Edn Amanda Bevan PRO Publications, 2006 This guide was written by a senior archivist at TNA. Tracing Your Ancestors Through the Equity Courts Susan T Moore Pen & Sword, 2017 Susan's research guide is aimed at local, social and family historians. WEBSITES FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org/en/wiki/England_Chancery_Court_Records FamilySearch's wiki has a good entry on Chancery records, although much of the information about online cataloguing is out date. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES w tinyurl.com/tna-guide-chancery TNA's ‘Civil Court Cases: Chancery Equity Suits 1558–1875’ is the best quick research guide to the…

BREWERY HISTORY SOCIETY w breweryhistory.com The society's ‘Brewerypedia’ has 55,870 pages of text and photos relating to UK breweries. GENGUIDE w tinyurl.com/gen-guide-pubs “The genealogists’ guide to reference sources and research material” details the records that may survive for breweries, victuallers and pubs. HISTORICAL DIRECTORIES OF ENGLAND & WALES w tinyurl.com/uni-leic-sco Trade and street directories are full of references to inns, alehouses, pubs and breweries. NATIONAL BREWING LIBRARY w brookes.ac.uk/nbl/ Oxford Brookes University preserves the libraries of the British Beer and Pub Association and the Institute of Brewing and Distilling. PUBWIKI w pubwiki.co.uk This is a treasure trove of English pub history. SCOTTISH BREWING ARCHIVE ASSOCIATION w scottishbrewingarchive.co.uk The association's archive is held by the University of Glasgow. THE LABOLOGIST'S SOCIETY w labology.org.uk The website of the society for those interested…

BOOKS Post Office Workers: A Trade Union and Social History Alan Clinton George Allen & Unwin, 1984 This comprehensive look at how postal workers came together to campaign for better pay, working conditions and quality of life can be borrowed for free from the Internet Archive at tinyurl.com/arch-pow-clint. Royal Mail: The Post Office Since 1840 Martin J Daunton Athlone Press, 1985 Daunton's book includes a detailed chapter that explains the differences between established and unestablished staff. MUSEUM THE POSTAL MUSEUM a 15–20 Phoenix Place, London WC1X 0DA t 0300 030 0700 e bookings@postalmuseum.org w postalmuseum.org The museum's website has expert advice about searching for ancestors who worked for the Post Office: postalmuseum.org/collections/the-archive/family-history/. The archive also offers a paid family history research service, and staff are happy to answer questions about…

1 JOHN MACHILL A marriage bond was a legal document that allowed a licence to be issued, and meant that there was no need to publish banns. The guarantor Machill may have been a relative of the groom or the bride. 2 HENRY AINSLIE The groom is named here, as well as the bride: Agnes Ford. If the couple's claims about the legality of their marriage were false, a forfeit of £200 (equivalent to about £27,200 today) had to be paid to the Church.…

BISHOPS’ TRANSCRIPTS w tinyurl.com/fs-essex-bts FamilySearch has an unindexed collection of images of baptism, marriage and burial records from Essex (1779–1892). There are also parish register indexes at tinyurl.com/fs-essex-reg. MEMORIAL INSCRIPTIONS w records.wffhs.org.uk You can search memorial inscriptions, and other records, transcribed by Waltham Forest Family History Society here. PARISH REGISTERS w freereg.org.uk FreeREG provides useful indexes to 3.26 million parish registers from Essex. VICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY w tinyurl.com/vch-essex At British History Online you can browse the Essex volumes of this encyclopaedia. For details of the latest volumes, visit tinyurl.com/ihr-vch-ess. TRADE DIRECTORIES w tinyurl.com/special-essex Explore Kelly's directories for 1874, 1882, 1894, 1902 and 1914 via the University of Leicester's Special Collections Online.…

One of the most romantic names from the Age of Sail is the Cutty Sark, the 19th-century British tea clipper that sailed across the world. The ship is now a museum in Greenwich, South-East London, but West Dunbartonshire Council Archives in Scotland holds a collection of papers donated by its first captain, including a logbook from an 1872 voyage. Archivist Jennifer Lightbody tells us more about the logbook, and what it shows about life for sailors on the high seas. The logbook provides insight into the day-to-day activities of a famous vessel WHAT IS THE LOGBOOK? It is the extract log of the Cutty Sark, for its journey from Shanghai to London in 1872. An extract log was, as the name suggests, an extract from the comprehensive ship's log, and…

HISTORY OF LONDON Victoria Shepherd Oneworld, 400 pages, £20 In a cellar in Cheapside in the City of London in 1912, navvies excavating the site literally struck gold. Under layers of clay dating to the Elizabethan and Jacobean city, they hit upon a hoard of jewellery. They secreted the ancient gems out, and sold them to an antiques dealer known as Stony Jack. Jack's real name was George Lawrence and, as well as his shop in Wandsworth, he held the post of director of excavations at the London Museum in Kensington Palace, which is where the hoard ended up. It consisted of several hundred rings, brooches, amulets and chains which were probably a jeweller's working collection, stashed in the basement of a road famous for its goldsmiths’ shops. The straightforward story…

Steve Thomas’ answer to Jake Sanders’ question (‘Q&A’, page 47) is a masterclass in reading all the clues on the page of a record. Jake wanted to know why the name of the mother wasn't included in the baptism record of his ancestor Charles Shelley. By looking at the parish register carefully, Steve opened up a Pandora's box of answers (and more questions). Jake assumed that Charles’ mother was Ann, as he thought that he had found the right marriage record, but Steve showed that actually his mother was Lydia who died in childbirth. A tragic story uncovered by some expert insight.…

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland is currently available to download as a free e-book. The dictionary was published by Oxford University Press in 2016 and edited by Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates and Peter McClure, and has entries for more than 45,000 English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish and immigrant surnames, with information including the name's origins and lists of early bearers. The hardback costs £440, or £115 for a concise edition. However, at the time of writing the Kindle edition is free to UK customers of Amazon (tinyurl.com/am-oxf-dic). You will need a Kindle or the Kindle app to read the dictionary.…

ACCIDENT RECORDS As well as the Railway Work, Life & Death database (railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk), Ancestry's ‘UK, Railway Employment Records, 1833–1956’ (bit.ly/anc-rail-emp), based on material at The National Archives (TNA), has accident records. PUNISHMENT BOOKS ‘Black books’ tell us about staff misdemeanours and disciplinary action. Surviving English and Welsh records are preserved at TNA. Some are included in the Ancestry collection mentioned above. UNION REGISTERS For the most part these are held at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/). Some membership details are on Findmypast in ‘Britain, Trade Union Membership Registers’ at bit.ly/fmp-trade-reg. COMPANY MINUTES Railway-company committee minutes often mentioned individual staff – not least if they needed additional support or had done something noteworthy (good or bad). Try TNA. STAFF MAGAZINES These can reveal promotions and staff…

BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk Coroners’ reports, death notices, classified ads, court accounts – Gemma has used all of these items, which she found at the BNA, to break down her Pook brick wall and give her a more rounded view of her ancestors. You can also search the now more than 93.8 million pages, dating back to the 1700s, via Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) with an ‘Everything’ subscription. DNA TESTING DNA is being increasingly used in genealogy to fill in the gaps when the paper trail goes cold. In order to verify what had happened to her grandfather's missing siblings, Gemma contacted some of her Wilson relatives and asked them to take DNA tests so that they could double-check some of the links. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS Portraits and other photos can offer…

Q Mary Ann Bell Cosgrave, my great grandmother, was born in Wexford, Ireland, c1853. She married John Picthall in 1873 at St Alexander's, Bootle, Liverpool, naming her father as Thomas Cosgrave, shoemaker. Her sister, Catherine, married in 1879 at St Mary's Church, Bootle, and provided the same details for her father. Both appear in Liverpool in the 1871 census. Mary is 23 and Catherine 28 (however, I don't think this can be right). After the girls married, they can both be found in census returns in the Liverpool area. I'm trying to find the sisters’ birth records. There is a Confirmation record for a Mary Cosgrave in Piercetown, Wexford, in 1859, but nothing for Catherine, who I think was born c1850. Lesley Wilson A Have you checked the church marriage…

Q Can you tell me when this photo was taken? I believe it may be of my great great grandfather, William Andrew Stone (born 1855); great great grandmother, Eliza Gray (born 1860); and two of their five daughters: Gertrude Ellen (1880–1900); Edith Kate (born 1881); Annie Harriett (born 1886); Eva Elizabeth (born 1888); and Florence Maud (born 1899). Mike Perkins A This portrait was taken by the photographer MB Olley, based in London and noted in a contemporary trade directory (1905-1906). With the floral buttonhole worn by the man, it seems to mark an important occasion. The photograph dates from c1906–1908, which will hopefully help you identify the sitters. It shows off many of the typical features of Edwardian fashion, particularly the large hats and complex rolled and built-up women's…

Q My 7x great grandfather, Charles Shelley, was born on 24 October 1733 in Badger, Shropshire, to George Shelley (also listed as “Georgius”). However, his birth record does not name his mother, unlike the other entries in the register at that time. George married Ann Wright in 1731, but why was her name not included? Was Charles the result of an affair, or is there some other explanation for the form this entry takes? Charles married Alice Matthews in 1757 at St Chad's Church, in nearby Pattingham, outside his home parish. Jake Sanders A The vicar and his aide, the churchwarden, were responsible for keeping the registers. The primary responsibility lay with the minister, but entries might be transcribed from a day book or scrap of paper into the register…

Robert Stephen Hawker was an Anglican priest, poet and antiquarian. Born in Plymouth, he was known to his parishioners as Parson Hawker. As a writer, he anonymously published the Cornish patriotic poem The Song of the Western Men in 1825, which became a popular song, and was acknowledged as its author by Charles Dickens. Ordained in 1831, Hawker became curate at North Tamerton, north-east Cornwall, before settling in 1834 as vicar of Morwenstow in the north of the county, where he remained throughout his life. Hawker was renowned to be eccentric, wearing bright colours and allegedly even dressing up as a mermaid. He also purportedly excommunicated his cats for mousing on Sundays (yet welcomed them into his church), talked to birds, and kept a pig as a pet. The harvest…

For many years, my existence was a true case of “Who do you think you are?” I was born in 1952, and grew up thinking that my mum's first husband was my father. His surname was Cassidy. Mum died in 1988, and I found an affidavit among her papers that named my biological father as W Trevor Ainslie. I was astonished and saddened at this discovery, because it meant that dear Nana Cassidy was not my grandmother. Who was W Trevor Ainslie, and was he still alive? For years, I searched through phone books trying to find my father. On discovering that Ainslie was a Scottish Borders name, my husband Jim and I visited the region searching for clues. It was all to no avail, and every day for 16…

WW2 LISA ROGAK Footnote, 240 pages, £16.99 This is the story of four women who, during the Second World War, were recruited by Colonel William Donovan, director of US intelligence agency the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Jane Smith-Hutton, the actor Marlene Dietrich, Zuzka Lauwers and Betty MacDonald came from different walks of life, but all had skills that Donovan utilised in the propaganda campaign against Germany and Japan. They forged letters and military orders, distributed fake newspapers and, in Berlin-born Dietrich's case, recorded propaganda songs in her native tongue that were broadcast in Germany. Their shared aim was to demoralise enemy soldiers by making them think that they were on the losing side. The four women's interwoven journeys give the reader an insight into how they proved themselves in…

The door to the past flew open on a spring day in 2004,” says Nicola Hanefeld. “Out of the blue, my father Hans-Peter Vogel sent me a Czech passport dated 1935. It belonged to Grete Lanzer, a person I'd never heard of before. “Daddy had annotated the passport with the words, ‘This is my father (Bruno's) sister who was murdered in a concentration camp.’ He also wrote that another of Bruno's sisters had been murdered, and his mother-in-law. “I found my father's message stunning. He was 78 at the time, had terminal cancer and died the following year. As his life was ending, he seemed to be unloading unspoken traumatic facts about our family to the next generation. Bruno was 54 and had lost everything, including their lovely home in…