Category: family history
-
A right Frosdick family for the Barnard bunch
Some quite interesting Ancestry hints
Some quite interesting Ancestry hints Since August I have been slowly clearing a backlog of ‘hints’ generated by the Ancestry site for the HowesWatkinsNealScott tree. These can be useful in pointing up records previously overlooked in researching an individual, but there are also plenty of duff leads and repeats of info already collected. New hints tend to appear in batches and it can be hard to keep up – with an accumulated total of just shy of 16,000 it was getting out of hand! A hard » »
-
A love is paid
The humble origins of the Vickery line
The humble origins of the Vickery line The parish registers from two hundred years or more ago can be rather basic in terms of the useful genealogical information we can glean. However, some of the quirks and comments of the old free form entries are fascinating, perhaps for baptisms in particular. Previously the Somerset parish records made available online on various sites have only been transcriptions, of varying quality, so the foibles are missing (and probably some parishes and periods too). Ancestry now has added many » »
-
The changing face of work
Electric job generation
Electric job generation The changing lines of work, along with developments in technology and society, come through clearly in searches on the September 1939 register {1}. Of course, many others continue to be employed in more traditional jobs of shop keeper, coal miner, metal worker, gardener, insurance agent, teacher, printer etc. {4} Some examples below, but this piece starts off with an oddity or two. Much call for this line of work? As already illustrated in Pitching for a job, occupation descriptions can be remarkably » »
-
The 1939 Bush Houses bulletin
A dwindling, but similar, population
A dwindling, but similar, population Having coughed up for a Findmypast annual sub to access the 1939 Register details {4}, it is time for Cutlock & Co to do its usual job, as per earlier censuses, transcribing the whole information for Bush Houses {see notes 1, 2}. The Cutlock Transcription Information on all households is shown on the Bush Houses 1939 spreadsheet, and here’s a pdf version, for those who don’t like spreadsheets. Out of 281 entries (individuals) a hundred were ‘locked’ (unavailable to » »
-
Pitching for a job
Work is unclear, but wedding photo sorted
Work is unclear, but wedding photo sorted September 1939 is not so far away as to think that a work description, certainly one for an English job, could be difficult to understand. But what exactly might be involved in being a ‘Trinidad Pitch Pourer’, as seen in this 1939 register extract? After a little digging on Wikipedia, Trinidad Pitch must be the product of Pitch Lake in Trinidad {1} – the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world. But was John H Roberts pouring it » »
-
An array of Osbornes
Knocking down a wall to see the wider picture
Knocking down a wall to see the wider picture [toc heading_levels=”2,3,4″] Up until the beginning of this month (April 2016), two of great grandmother Amelia Osborne’s siblings had proved elusive, despite looking for several years. The brick wall has well and truly been smashed through thanks to third cousin Alan Croad, for one of the two at least. Elizabeth Osborne, the middle child of the family, married Fred Tucker in Neath district, rather than the expected Pontypridd, in 1899. With this cracked, it is easy to » »