Category: Somerset and Dorset
-
Exploring DNA results and tools
Clusters and chromosomes
Clusters and chromosomes Almost two months on from first looking at DNA results, it can look like delving deeper has not come up with much. But there are some intriguing results, and it is interesting to see what the new tools and processes can come up with. Widening the net Several of the DNA testing companies allow you to upload an Ancestry DNA autosomal data file, which will provide matches against their own database of testers for free. However, the full features on their website’s » »
-
Wanted: a font of knowledge
Or knowledge of a font
Or knowledge of a font Great gran Amelia doesn’t like making it too easy finding the records of her early days. Not content with her birth certificate being elusive due to a stray H in the surname (recorded as ‘Hosborne’, see image below), the baptism record is proving hard to find too. There is an obvious place to look. Ancestry recently threw up a hint for her younger sister Ellen’s baptism, in April 1880 at Bournemouth’s St Clements, the church closest to the family home in » »
-
Squeals of delight
The wheeling dealing Osbornes
The wheeling dealing Osbornes Another delightful occupational title has come to light, after a little gap filling and “new” records checking on the family tree {1}. Previously I had somehow identified 4x great grandfather Joseph Osborne as a (farm) labourer, supposedly per his son Robert’s marriage registration {5}. However, on making use of Ancestry’s Somerset collection, the original image for this event shows him to be a ‘Pig Jobber’! As defined by a list of old occupations {2}, this is someone who “Bought pigs and then » »
-
A Major breakthrough in the Scott line
Taking a tank to knock down a small brick wall
Taking a tank to knock down a small brick wall [toc] The siblings – full, half, and step varieties – of great grandfather Charles Scott haven’t had much of a look in on Cutlock and Co so far (just ‘How to Brake the records‘). Sadly this is mainly because most of them died in infancy. Also Scott is another of those common names, and (unlike the Smith line) no unusual or fixed middle names to help. Of those that survived to adulthood: » »
-
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 » »
-
No flight of fancy
Taking to the air in WW1
Taking to the air in WW1 I had, until yesterday, concluded from researchs so far that it was unlikely that any family connection had served in the fledgling air services of World War One. But an ‘absent voters list’ entry in 1920 for William George Taylor of 40 Abbotsbury Road, Weymouth, a first cousin of grannie Scott, shows that I was wrong – described as 248748 Pte., R.A.F. As it happens, the ‘Best websites’ review section in the current (February) issue of Who Do You Think » »