Tag: Harper Smith
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Going to see Uncle
An everyday tale of pawnbroker folk
An everyday tale of pawnbroker folk A bonus, month, subscription to FindMyPast has enabled another trawl of the British Newspaper Archive records. There are more digitised journals than the last time round, but a new target seemed a good idea. Who in the family tree might be most likely to appear in a regional or local rag? The answer was pretty obvious, given that the latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are magazine {1} turned the gaze of its regular occupation pages onto pawnbrokers. » »
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Word-Smithing from Smyrna
or: Lyrical lines from Lydia {2}
or: Lyrical lines from Lydia {2} A year ago, ‘Hanging by a thread‘ traced the delicate strands which led to establishing the family of John Harper Smith junior, master mariner {1}. I speculated that the reasons he and his spouse couldn’t be found in 1871 and 1881 England census was that they could be on voyages out of British waters. Now there is some indication of this, in the shape of a poem of his penned from port: Update: here’s a plain text copy » »
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Hanging by a thread
Discovering the Smith family
Discovering the Smith family Discovering more about the Smith part of the family tree has proved remarkably easy, after having put off looking for ages due to the very common surname. See Entirely to the Water from Birth for first stages. Now it was time to find great great grandmother Harriet Smith’s siblings and their immediate offspring. The practice of using the mother’s (or grandmother’s) surname as a middle name was very helpful – Bacchus for two of the girls, Harper (the grandmother’s name) for one » »
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Entirely to the Water from Birth
The nautical Harper Smiths
The nautical Harper Smiths It is not often nowadays that an article in Who Do You Think You Are? magazine sends me off immediately to follow it up. But the March issue, received yesterday, has a Focus article on ‘Masters and Mates Certificates’ {4} which indicated it was worth checking to see if the 3 x great grandfather who had the title Captain could be found. He was born in the 1790s, so was already a master mariner when certificates came in from 1850. There was » »