Note: privacy policy below
Cutlock and Co – why? Well, Cutlock is a rare name, often wrongly transcribed in the records and belongs to my paternal great grandmother, Ann Harriet. So, relevant and distinctive. And Co – when I started out on locating some ancestors, with only one ‘real’ aunt and one cousin and just a sprinkling of great aunts already known, I only expected to find a small number, perhaps getting a tree of 150 at most.
In just two years, the main database had over 2,000 individuals in about 800 different places, although only a handful of key towns and villages. A small company has grown somewhat, and keeps on growing, with only a few records pre-dating the 1837 start of registration/1841 census – latest stats on the annual reviews or the Research page. Nearly all sources used are online apart from internal family notes (and Trealaw burial records CD).
Cutlock and Co brings together data and stories from the ‘Howes Watkins Neal Scott’ family tree. Key places include Norfolk, south Somerset, Rhondda and Neath, Manitoba and Nebraska.
For those who need a starting point: Sydney Charles Howes married Emily Elizabeth Neal August 1919 Norwich, Norfolk, Levi ‘Len’ Watkins married Mary Ann Scott November 1916 Clydach Vale, Glamorgan. With a bit of luck you can navigate around this site following the links to specific surnames. Online tree details (Ancestry etc.) are towards the bottom of the Research page.
But why the website? For a start, I like evolving content (and structure) on the web, making it a useful way of refining the information I’ve collected. There’s also the opportunity for contributions from other people. The original motivation was so family members could browse when they wanted, but the possibility of making new connections has become an important feature too. At December 2021, over 30 second cousins and 60 third cousins have made contact here, via the Ancestry website or in other ways. There are plenty more to be found, whether Howes or Neal in Norfolk, Watkins or Osborne descendants from Wales, or wider Watts family in America.
Note: no info directly identifying living individuals is given on the site, except with permission. Please let me know if I’ve slipped up.
Site banner and design
The header photo was taken at Cuckoo’s Cup (also known as Raven’s Bowl), The Wrekin, Shropshire – Neal sisters plus a niece and a nephew, about 1916. Uncropped version here.
The header was re-processed in May 2015 for a switch to the ‘Gazette’ design – site now moved on to Twenty Twenty-Three theme. Thanks to Pete for help with the logo.
Before March 2011, the header photo showed the churchyard at Llandefalle, near Brecon – searching for clues to Watkins ancestors, 2009. As below:
Finding Us
Please use the web address www.cutlock.co.uk – not the old version on wordpress.com. The contact form should reach me quickly, or send emails to ‘ahc’ at the web address (no www). Your email address won’t get abused, promise.
My actual name – John Howes. New articles on this site are tweeted at twitter.com/john_howes and should also appear on my Facebook page (I’m the one with the sunny but stony face). A personal website at johnhowes.uk includes some life history.
Privacy, cookies, legal bits
Various site features may set cookies, which are small files stored via your web browser.
Cookies under our control are anonymous visitor tracking for stats purposes, and those needed by the site software for user log-in, for access to protected pages and similar purposes. Some of the Share buttons also set cookies.
Most current web browsers have privacy settings which can block or wipe cookies.
Advertising on Cutlock and Co has been discontinued – this also used cookies (from Google AdSense and a few Amazon promos).
Comments and contact forms
Your email address is needed when leaving comments or using the contact form. For the latter, this makes it possible to reply/follow-up, and for comments it is a mixture of eliminating spammers and being able to give a direct response if this is more appropriate than replying on the web page. Email addresses won’t go anywhere else, or be used for any other purpose.
The Akismet anti-spam facility, used when processing comments, has its own privacy policy included in this rather dense Automattic web page.
Copyright
Content is generally copyright of John Howes, unless otherwise stated. Extracts of both text and images from sources such as Ancestry are done on the basis of fair use. Please note that it has not been possible to verify copyright status for a few images.
Cutlock & Co gratefully acknowledges and thanks the many contributors of photos and stories, who will usually retain copyright.