Eek! Has it really been that long?

It’s eons since I updated this blog, sorry about that I’ve also noticed a teensy pile of comments, so if you’re waiting for a response, I’ll be with you asap.

I’ll try to update more often …

Who’s my 1000th?

I saw this game over at Jasia’s Creative Gene blog, and thought I’d play along. The idea is you open up your database, locate the 1000th person you entered and tell us more about them.

My 1000th was Bridget Basket who was the wife of my 11th great uncle, Colonel Thomas Phelips. Bridget and Thomas married on 2nd November, 1657. Unfortunately, it was a short marriage because Bridget died less than 4 years later and was buried in Corfe Mullen, Somerset on 8th September, 1661. I’m afraid that is all I know about poor Bridget.

Over to you, who’s your 1000th?

Changing things a bit

I’ve been publishing this blog for a while now, and although, I really like the set up here at WordPress, there are a couple of things that make life a bit difficult. One, the lack of javascript support – I know there is a good reason why we can’t use it here, but it’s frustrating none the less. The other problem I have is with uploading videos. It’s supposed to be easy, but I’m not finding it so. Both problems are quite minor, but I do feel that this blog lacks something because I can’t easily use the same tools as other bloggers. So, I’ve decided to split it into two blogs.

I’ll still update this one with information pertaining to my family – a lot of cousins have found me here, so it’s definitely worth keeping that going. However, I’ll be posting general genealogy advice at a new blog I’ve set up at Blogger, where I’ll be able to use the same bells and whistles all the other bloggers use. I hope you’ll join me there

Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture, 10th Edition

Fingers crossed, there should be a video above.

This post is my entry into the Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture which this time invites participants to share what they most love about Irish culture. My contribution (assuming the video appears) is Parisienne Walkways by Phil Lynott and Gary Moore for no other reasons than that they are Irish and it’s a great song. Saying that, they did make an enormous contribution to Irish popular music and certainly enhanced it’s reputation around the world, destroying the misconception that it was all middle-of-the-road pop, and bearded men trilling away in hairy jumpers.

Bloggers Unite: Because everybody has the right to know where their family is

I was going to write about this subject on my other blog but, on reflection, it fits better here.

“There have been refugees coming to this country for as long as records have been kept: Huguenots, Jews, French Catholics, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Ugandan Asians… If you can’t find any in your family you’re probably not looking hard enough.”
Mark Haddon

This month, Bloggers Unite is raising awareness of the plight of refugees with special emphasis on reuniting those who have lost contact with their families.

Like most people who had the good fortune to be born in a rich, western democracy I have no idea how it feels to be a refugee. My life has not been torn apart by war or famine. No one has ever persecuted me for my beliefs, ethnicity or gender. I have never lain awake at night wondering (literally) where on earth my children where.

Two branches of my family were refugees though. They came to England to escape religious and racial persecution. The Clesters were Anabaptists who arrived from Holland in the 16th century. A century later, the Jewish Toders made the journey, also from Holland. Both families set up home in Nottinghamshire, initially making a living from farming.

The England they arrived in was not an overtly tolerant and liberal one. Religious conflict was rife, but does not appear to have been as widespread as that found elsewhere. In rural areas particularly, people do seem to have adopted a ‘live and let live’ attitude. Both the Todors and the Clesters became part of their local communities, and married into local families. From the information I have gleaned about them, I think it is safe to say their lives improved dramatically, not least because they had been able to come here as almost complete families. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many modern refugees.

Sadly, conflict causes chaos which leads to people becoming separated and lost. Parents will often find a way to remove their child from danger – as seen during the famous Kindertransport in World War 2 – only for that child to end up thousands of miles away and, effectively, lost forever. For most people, losing contact with family is terrible in the best of circumstances. For it to happen at a time when you most need the support of the people who love you must be heartbreaking, and terribly frightening. To find yourself alone in a strange country, surrounded by people who can’t understand anything you say, whilst worried sick about the fate of your loved ones truly is the stuff of nightmares. Fortunately, there is a service which helps to reunite scattered families.

Refugees Reunited works in much the same way as the social networks most of us use everyday, giving people the tools to reconnect with family and friends they have lost contact with, but with one difference: It was designed for use by refugees. The site is free to use, available in a number of languages and, most importantly, anonymous, therefore giving any displaced person a safe way of reconnecting with their loved ones, and, no doubt, providing much needed peace of mind. It’s a wonderful example of the power of the internet which, underneath all the bells and whistles, is about bringing people together.

“Refugees United is an innovative tool to assist refugees around the world in finding family members. In a pioneering way the innovators of Refugees United have used modern technology to alleviate the terrible pain that separation from and uncertainty about family members bring. Our toolbox has been expanded with a very important new instrument”
Morten Kjærum, Director of Fundamental Rights Agency

Further Reading:

• British Red Cross Refugee Service
• United Nations Refugee Agency
• The Road to Refugee
• What is a Refugee?
• Life as a Refugee in Modern Britain – I think the Toders and the Clesters would be shocked and disappointed if they knew others were not receiving the warm(ish) welcome they received.

Pro Patria Mori

Poppies

Image courtesy of foxypar4

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

Tagged for a meme

Image via Wikipedia

I was tagged for a meme by the California Genealogical Society and Library blog, and it seemed like a good way of breaking the ice on this blog, because I haven’t posted for so long.

Ten years ago I was:

1) Newly arrived in the village I now live in (this may even be the anniversary of my arrival) and not quite sure if it was a good idea. I didn’t know anyone apart from my DH and his parents, and it was all very strange and new.

2) Working in sales and marketing and hating every minute. I don’t do that any more, thank God!

3) Totally unaware of the wonders of the internet, but that was about to change.

4) Undisputed Bubble Bobble champion of the whole house!

5) Feeling quite old, because I was 31 and my son had started secondary school, what little I knew LOL

Five things on today’s “to-do” list:

(I’ll do tomorrows because it’s Sunday evening and I don’t have a to-do list on Sunday)

1) Sort some bills out I’d be ever so rich if I didn’t have to pay any.

2) Give the kitchen a good going-over, it always looks like a tornado blew through by Monday morning.

3) Finish an article I’ve been working on for the past week – it doesn’t usually take that long, and I’ve no idea why this one has because it’s very basic and covers a topic I’m very familiar with.

4) Buy some pasta, it’s spag bol night, but it won’t be if we don’t have pasta.

5) Find a map of Cheshire from around 1790 – 1800.

Five snacks I enjoy [the healthy version]:

1) Marmite on crackers
2) Raisins
3) Bananas
4) Hummus on anything – love hummus
5) Tuna and tomato sandwiches made with wholegrain, seeded bread.

Five places I have lived:

I’ve only ever lived in Warwickshire or Yorkshire, apart from a brief spell in County Durham, but I was only there for a few months so I’m not sure it counts.

Five jobs I have had:

1) Various hotel and restaurant jobs – I was very, very bad at all of them.
2) Data input personage for a computer dating agency, which was both interesting and depressing.
3) Sales rep, I was good at that, but I came to loathe it.
4. PA, enjoyed this and have been thinking of setting up a virtual PA business.
5. Mum (the toughest, by far!)

Schelly included two more categories:

Five places to visit again:

1) Cologne in Germany
2) Oxford, England
3) Stratford on Avon, my home town
4) Malvern, Worcestershire (I think), it’s really lovely
5) Barry Island, Wales

Five places I want to visit for the first time:

1) Greece
2) Norway
3) New Orleans, USA
4) Edinburgh, Scotland
5) Rome, Italy

All the genealogy bloggers I know seem to have already been tagged, so I’ll just say if you read this, you’re tagged! If you have a go, don’t forget to leave a link in the comments so I can come over and have a read.

Because backing up is (not) hard to do

Jasia at the Creative Gene highlights the importance of backing up your blog to guard against losing all your posts should anything untoward happen. I admit, I’m as guilty as the next person of forgetting to do this, but it is important not just because of the risk of your blog being hacked, but also because servers and computer technology can be unpredictable at times and losing all your work because of a glitch would be heartbreaking.

Backing up is pretty simple -

If you are using WordPress (either .com or .org) go to ‘Manage/Export’ where you will be given the option to download the file to your computer. There are also plugins which can be installed if you have self-hosted WordPress which will create a backup automatically. You will find these in the plugins section of the wordpress.org site, just check the one you choose is compatible with the version of WP you are using.

If you use Blogger just click the ‘Settings’ tab and on the first page you will see the ‘Export’ link. Once again it is easy, you just save the file to your computer.

I’m not sure of the details for other blogging platforms but all good ones will have something similar.

If you have a traditional website, you will probably have copies of your pages saved on your pc. However, there is a free programme HTTrack which can be used to download your site in it’s entirety, so if the worst happens you can simply upload it again.

If you think you might forget to back up regularly, try setting up a weekly reminder using Google Calendar, Sandy or Free-minder so that you receive an email to nudge you to do it.

Edited to add: Thanks to Jasia for reminding me! If you want to back up your Blogger blog you need to use Blogger in Draft which is the Beta, or test version, of the Blogger dashboard. There are a number of extra features in addition to the Import/Export tool. Some don’t work quite as they should, and some disappear, but on the whole they are functional. To access Blogger in Draft go to this page. Once you are there you can make it your default dashboard by clicking the little icon at the top right of the page.

Just popping in

We are in the middle of the long summer holidays here, so I’m not doing a great deal of blogging or genealogy. However, I did have a rummage a couple of days ago looking for more information about the STALLAN family from Duxford in Cambridgeshire and, to my delight, came across the will of my 9 x great grandfather, John Stallan which not only provided some useful family details, but also revealed the fact that his wife Elizabeth, my great grandmother, had been a widow at the time of their marriage. Great stuff! I had assumed her surname at that time was her maiden name and had been trying to find her under that name for a long time. Not so good, the parish registers in Duxford (St. John) don’t include a mother’s maiden on baptism records, so she only appears as Elizabeth in the entries for the children from both her marriages Even more infuriating, I realised from the dates that my 10x great grandfather John SWANN was the curate at St. Johns when many of these babies were baptised and therefore may have been responsible for the omission.

You know those questions often posed on genealogy forums, the ones that ask ‘if you had a time machine who would you visit?’ I think my answer will now have to be, John Swann, to suggest he takes a bit more notice of mothers, not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because it might avoid his granddaughter banging her head against her monitor screen.

Dictionary of Old Occupations

If you discovered your great, great grandfather was a fripperer, would you know what he did for a living? What about a quarrel picker? Or a ganneker? Many old occupations have faded into oblivion while others are still in existence but have very different titles. You don’t need to scratch your head and wonder what the heck these jobs involved, head over to the Old Occupations website where you will find an easy to navigate dictionary listing hundreds of job titles.

I did notice that some of the jobs are not what you would call respectable. For example, I suspect you are more likely to find a fancy woman (a, umm, lady of easy virtue) on court transcripts than in the census. On the other hand, some sound quite dodgy, but are in fact legitimate occupations, such as a faker. Not a forger or a conman, but a photographers assistant.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, here are the definitions of the first three I listed:

Fripperer: Bought and sold old clothes and fripperies

Quarrel picker: Glazier

Ganneker: An Inn keeper

Finding ancestors who went to the US.

It’s been a while since I posted here. My apologies for that. My only excuse is that summer seems to have arrived in the UK so I’m enjoying it while I can – it could all go away as quickly as it arrived.

I’m just popping in to share the url of a site which will probably be quite familiar to family historians in the US, but perhaps less so to anyone on the UK. Ellis Island was a major point of entry for people emigrating to the US, and the records are available for free online.

I’m a little bit jealous of this because we don’t have anything similar over here. In fact, it seems that up until quite recently, people could come and go as they pleased – great for them, not so great for the people trying to trace them. And contrary to popular belief, Britain and Ireland were not a homogeneous monoculture in centuries past. There was quite a lot of immigration, it just didn’t get recorded in any formal way.*

Anyhoo, I digress. If you are researching in the UK and/or Ireland, and know your immediate ancestors were local, so to speak, you may still find the Ellis island site useful for locating branches of your extended family who did head off for pastures new. You may even find members of your immediate family who lived in, or visited, the US for a short period before heading for home. Entries usually include their name and age, the name of the ship they sailed on and the port of departure. You can search the database and view records for no cost, but they do ask for a voluntary donation if you find the service useful.

* I’ll write a further post (or series of posts)  about tracing immigrant ancestors in the UK at a later date.

How I discovered old things were once new.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m searching for my relatives in census returns I do like to click along to the next few households to see who their neighbours were. This can be a useful thing to do because you can often find members of an extended family living quite close to each other, but I would do it anyway because I’m nosey LOL. However, you can also discover other interesting facts.

Last night, while looking through the 1881 UK census for Yardley (Birmingham), I noticed a few of the houses in the area my great grandmother Blanche Wayne and her parents were living, were empty. Initially, I did wonder if they resided in some run-down location and others residents had moved out, but as I went on, I came across others that were only partly built. It was light bulb moment! I actually know that part of Birmingham quite well, and the houses would have been built around the 1880s. I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of this before, I suppose they just seemed like old houses and it hadn’t occurred to me that at some point they would have been new.  Now I know, it’s quite nice to think of them filling out the census in their new home in, what was then, a small suburb quite separate from the main city where they had been living at the time of Blanche’s birth.