Category: family history
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Getting excited by an obituary
As is quite often the case, a quick tidying up exercise of my Family Tree Maker records this weekend led to some interesting discoveries and a longer research session than planned. Plus the first helpful online British obituary. The extension to the probate calendar on Ancestry (now to 1966, rather than 1941) meant that it was worth checking through all fairly close cousins of about the right birth year. This threw up that one Cullum cousin hadn’t even been put through the process to check for » »
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The interconnectedness of Tonypandy Osbornes
Another illustration of how inter-connected the Osborne family was/is in the Tonypandy area emerged recently. For Matilda Osborne, born about 1884 in Misterton to Levi (brother of 2x great grandfather William) and wife Elizabeth, the finished 1911 census records on Ancestry had been awaited to put more flesh on her husband and their children. Annoyingly it is still not clear whether his name is Edwin or Edward Sheldon, but it seems likely that he went by Edward in life, but was born and died as Edwin. » »
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Unexpected revelations from great gran’s will
You never quite know where new data releases will lead you. Ancestry has recently extended the coverage of the National Probate Calendar up to 1966 – seemingly a dry record of the basic details of wills but occasionally giving a lot more than just an idea of how much someone was ‘worth’ when they died. Great grandmother Amelia Scott nee Osborne died in 1964, at the age of 85 and some 20 years after husband Charles. As expected, probate was granted in Wales (Llandaff, nowadays part » »
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A little gift of 1940s American records
Another free selection from Ancestry.co.uk for a limited period, this time to celebrate the release of 1940 USA census images (or to distract us from the fact that they aren’t all on Ancestry with a big bang but are coming bit by bit). As they say, they’ve made “all our American records covering the ‘1940 era’ completely FREE!” from 2nd April to midnight 10th April. Over 750 million records from 139 different collections including various birth, marriage and death records, passenger lists, military records and the » »
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The return and disappearance of the missionary Mays
It has been the best part of a year since I wrote about the Kiwi Cousins – the May branch of the Scott family, mum’s maternal line. As of this article, I have now probably gone as far as I can from the online records, and can only hope to discover a living relative to fill in the gaps. Returning from India What had eluded me until today was pinning down all of the family’s return from India after the Second World War. The Reverend Spencer, » »
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Making a Case for the Myhills
Samuel Myhill (born about 1856, Dilham, Norfolk) featured here almost a year ago with the first results of a scanning session on old family photos. He married my great great aunt Mary Watts in 1879. I have finally been able to get a better picture of what happened to most of their children, appearing as adults in one of the photos, largely thanks to the latest 1911 census update on Ancestry. Original caption: Uncle Sam and family: Laura, Syd, Emma, Kate, and Sam To work backwards, » »