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.

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.

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.

My software ate my ancestors

Actually, it turned my gedcom into a complete mess, but that isn’t such a snappy headline.

Being serious, I downloaded a new programme, which seemed to work very well, only to discover it did some really odd things to the data. Not content with turning my notes into some kind of computer language – great for machines, not so good for people – it mixed families up, so that folk who married in the 17th century were shown to be the parents of others who weren’t really related to them and who arrived in the world a couple of centuries later. I’m not even going to discuss the problem of multiple duplicate entries and the lack of a merge tool.

Fortunately, I have an earlier copy of the file at Ancestry, several dozen people are missing but at least I was able to make some kind of fresh start using Legacy, which isn’t as pretty, but does do what it says on the tin.

How Google Maps can help eliminate false leads

Click image to see larger map

I have noticed that, on the whole, my ancestors did not move around a great deal and tended to marry people who lived within a 10 mile radius of their home. While this isn’t always the case, this knowledge can be useful when it comes to finding alternative locations to search for information. The problem is, sometimes my family lived in places I’m not familiar with, so even if I know they lived in Village A, but I find a record of their marriage in Village B, it isn’t immediately obvious that I have found the correct people. This is when Google Maps can be very useful. Not only is it a great way to find and explore the home towns of our ancestors, it also features a route finding tool which shows you the exact distance between two or more locations.

The map above shows the results of a search I made for the distance between Rempstone and Normanton on Soar which are in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. Several branches of my family came from these villages, but because they are in different counties, I was initially unsure that the families were connected. However, as you can see, the two places are less than five miles apart.

Using distance as a way of eliminating incorrect results isn’t foolproof. Sometimes people did travel very long distances but in my experience these tended to be people who had a good reason to do so, for example: soldiers, sailors and journeymen. Farmers, on the other hand, tended to stay close to home. Therefore, distance can be helpful but only when combined with other known facts.

Presentment Bills of the Archdeaconry of Nottingham

I have posted about the Presentment Bills of the Archdeaconry of Nottingham before, but only in passing. They are such a fascinating resource that I thought they really deserved a post of their own.

What are they: The presentment bills are a collection of documents created by church wardens in the 16th and 17th centuries detailing the names (and often other information) of people who had broken church law. Typical ‘offences’ would be such things as failing to attend church, failing to have a new baby baptised or indulging in immoral behaviour. As far as I know, all parishes maintained such records, but only Nottingham has created an online catalogue.

Which areas do they cover: The bills cover the Bingham, Retford, Newark and Nottingham deaneries. To find out which area your ancestors lived in try the table on this page.

How can they help: If you happen to have ancestors from Nottinghamshire, there is a good chance you will find some reference to them in these bills. Or, if not your direct ancestors, then members of their extended family. Some entries are quite detailed and will provide more than just a name. I have found spouses and occupations in entries pertaining to my relatives.

Furthermore, they can tell you a little about the kind of people your ancestors were. I discovered one branch of my family were regularly penalised for not attending church. This makes sense. The family were Anabaptist therefore they did not recognise the authority of the Anglican church and were classed as non-Conformists. Another branch received similar penalties, they were recusant Catholics. Of course, if your ancestors were penalised for non-attendance, that does not mean they followed a non-conformist religion. It could simply mean they were not particularly religious at all. Then as now, many people only really felt the need to attend church for ‘hatches, matches and dispatches’ and would have resisted attempts to force them to attend every Sunday.

You can find a longer and more detailed description of the bills here.

Examples: The easiest way to search, is to open the page you want to view and use your computers built in search tool. I clicked on the link for the Bingham Deanery for Easter 1608 and didn’t find any of my relatives listed – they must have been behaving themselves LOL However, there a few interesting entries.

AN/PB 293/2/47 24.9.1603 Wilford
Summer and winter 1603/4
Churchwardens present the following: Joan Stafford, widow, a railer, a scold and an uncharitable liver.
Bound together with other documents from the same series, AN/PB 293/2.

Thankfully I’m not related to Joan – although I do wonder if she really was as unpleasant as that description suggests.

AN/PB 293/2/49 24.9.1603 Shelford
Summer and winter 1603/4
One churchwarden presents the following: Wm Smyth for detaining the surplice from the parish, and for using very uncomely words as ‘turd in the churchwardens teeth’, which was spoken in the church porch.
Bound together with other documents from the same series, AN/PB 293/2.

Not much to add there except to say Mr Smith sounds like a very rude man.

AN/PB 293/2/56 1603 (c) Barnby in the Willows
Summer and winter 1603/4?
Churchwardens present the following: John Burt and Alse Nealer for a common fame that John Burt said that he lay on the bed with the said Alse in the night time; Robert England for a slandering of his neighbour Edmund Ward, saying that he lived upon ’sheefts’ and made a benefit of cavilling with other men, and the said Robert said with slanderous speeches on 10 July last that Edmund Ward had practised this two years to take his house on his head; the said Robert was slandered by Roger Richardson’s wife that he came to her bed and would have lain with her, and that he brought her some plums in his hat.
No place name given; identified as Barnby in the Willows from names of churchwardens.
No date given; found in series of presentment bills from 1603 and 1604.
Bound together with other documents from the same series, AN/PB 293/2.

Trying to seduce a woman with a hat full of plums – it sounds like a scene from a Carry On film LOL I suppose this was the pre-chocolate era so the poor chap would have had to make do with whatever was at hand.

And finally, my favourite entry . . .

AN/PB 294/2/66 7.5.1607 East Markham
Easter 1607
Churchwardens present the following: Elizabeth Cowper for fornication with Thomas Browne, as she says; Nicholas Storke for being absent from church on the Sabbath day and being at bowls; we asked him a reason for his absence and he answered ‘he can reade as much at hoam & that he knoweth our reder for no lawfull minister’, but we know our reader has a licence by one Mr Dodsworth of York for Mr Field’s absence.
Written in another hand above each of the names: ‘emt’.
Written in another hand at side of page: ‘R’.

If I were in Mr Storke’s shoes I think I would have gone bowling rather than spend my Sundays with a bunch of people who felt the need to police my morals LOL

That Was A Year That Was

The online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, receives a lot of criticism for inaccuracy. To an extent this criticism is warranted, there are some bogus entries. However, Wikipedia is a good starting point for further research. It is particularly useful for adding background to your research because of it’s pages devoted to the events of specific years, or even specific days.

I’m one of those people who like to add background to the lists of dates and names I compile. I don’t think I’m unusual in this, most family historians do like to study local and national history, culture, etc. in an attempt to bring some colour to the basic details which are all many of us have about our ancestors. Even if we know more, it is useful to know what was going on in the society our ancestors lived in, often this information can help to explain why they did certain things, for example: moving to a new town. This is where a comprehensive encyclopaedia is extremely handy.

So, if you are curious about the world your ancestors were born into, pop over to Wikipedia, type a date into the search box, and browse the resulting page. To give you an example of what you might find, I did a search for 1682, the year my 8 x great grandmother, Elizabeth Holmes was born in Rolleston, Nottinghamshire. The page for that year includes a few interesting entries.

• March 11 – Chelsea hospital for soldiers is founded in England.
• September 14 – Bishop Gore School in Swansea, Wales is founded.
• October 27 – The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded by William Penn.
• October 31 – The city of Bideford, England two men and one woman were some of the last to be executed for witchcraft in England. They were accused of speaking in unknown languages as well as practicing knowledge beyond their natural abilities, and acting in peculiar manners. The woman, Guenevere Damascus, as well as her lover (name unknown) and their spiritual mentor were burned at the stake.

The latter entry tells me it was still quite a brutal and superstitious society, but the first two hint that it was becoming more enlightened. The third entry is interesting because it shows that even at that early date, the New World was growing and thriving.

While none of these incidents directly affected my grandmother they were, in a small way, indicative of the way her society functioned and what it was becoming.

Social history television you might enjoy

If you are looking for some interesting television this weekend, head over to BBC iPlayer where you will find Dr Alixe Bovey going In Search of Medieval Britain using the earliest known map of the country as her guide. The programme is available for another 5 days and provides a fascinating insight into medieval society.

If the middle ages aren’t your thing, try Coal House, a series which takes a group of volunteers and immerses them in the life of 1927 coal miners. This episode is available for another 4 days and offers an interesting way to learn about how your grandparents and great grandparents might have lived.

18 resources for family history beginners

The following post is taken from an email I put together a while ago for a friend who asked about the best places online to start his research without spending too much cash. I know many of the sites listed will be obvious to someone who has been involved in family history research for a while, but if you are just getting started have a browse, I hope you find something useful.

I should say, my family are from the UK and Ireland, and the sites do reflect that, but some will be of use if you are looking in other parts of the world. I’ve included a number of free to use sites, because they can be useful places to start to look especially if you only want to find the details you need to send off for certificates.

• GENUKI is a UK and Ireland family history site full of useful links, mostly organised into counties, then sub-divided. It is a huge site, but worth looking around because it is packed with really helpful stuff. Read their beginners guide before you start, it is long but worthwhile because it is full of advice and tips about things you need to know.
• Cyndi’s List is similar to GENUKI but has an international theme. There is still a lot of British and Irish stuff there, plus a range of other bits and pieces that you may find helpful for example: occupational information.
• UK National Archives is the main repository for records, censuses, military information and pretty much everything else that is, or has been recorded in the UK. You can search for free, but there is a small charge to view most records. The exception is anything held on A2A (linked below).
• Ancestry have some free searches, most you have to pay for, but you can find a lot using the former. At the moment the 1881 census for England and Wales is free, so are all the birth, death and marriage records from 1837 provided by the Free BMD. To search these go here. Remember, the dates given there are only the date of registration, and are divided into quarters. (You can also search this database at the link below, but sometimes it can become very slow due to the amount of traffic it receives.) You will be able to search the actual registrars transcripts, some later ones include such things as the mothers maiden name, or the name of a spouse, but not all. You need to be a subscriber to use these though. Ancestry also have wills, directories indexes from places such as universities and military records. Actually, they seem to add new stuff all the time so it’s probably not possible to include everything here.
• Free BMD is a voluntary project to upload all birth, marriage and death records from 1837. It’s not complete, but more and more data is being added every day. If you find a marriage record using the search on ancestry, Free BMD can be useful for finding the spouse. They list all marriages in a district in that date period, so if you know that Fred Blogs married a Freda you can usually match them up. Even if you don’t know the name of the other person, you can at least narrow it down to a few potential candidates then use other records to find the right one. Once you have located the record you want you can use the link provided to send off for a full copy which will contain a lot more information for example: names of parents on a birth certificate, the name and occupation of fathers on marriage certificates.
• Freecen is a sister project of the Free BMD working to compile a database of census returns from 1841 – 1891. Once again, it’s not complete, but I have found plenty of useful stuff there, and you get to see more info than you would on the Ancestry site which is really useful if you find you have several possibilities but need to see other information to be sure of a match.
• Freereg is a similar project but listing parish returns (baptisms, marriages and burials. Some records are brief with little more than a name and date, others are more detailed and include similar information to civil records.
• UKBMD has lists of local sites some of which have searchable databases. Plus you will find other useful info, some may not seem that important at first but as you progress it is helpful (and interesting) to know about such things as local industries, the location of churches and so on.
• Family Search has a range of records, the 1881 census and a lot of parish records. Just be careful. They also allow their members to edit the database, so check the source. If it is from a parish register or some other official document it should be accurate. However, if it was supplied by a member be wary. Some of this info is wrong. It is free to use, and can be helpful, just make sure you check the source and then double check the data.
• A2A is a database of directories, family documents, maps and other interesting stuff. It doesn’t have any BMDs or census returns, but it is handy. For example you might find a relative who worked in particular trade and want to know more, this would be a good place to look.
• Historical Directories is similar but with an emphasis on trade directories
• There is also BOPCRIS – that has mainly government archives.
• And British History Online is another similar idea, but that allows you to bookmark texts for future reference. This is a great place to look for detailed county histories.
• OldMaps is a good place to get a look at the layout of an area in the past. If you find a street or area that isn’t mention on a modern map, try having a look there.
• Rootsweb has loads of mailing lists and message boards covering areas, surnames, occupations and more. It is worth subscribing to any relevant ones because the members are usually very helpful.
• Rootschat is a family history forum with threads covering England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and their counties, plus occupations, surnames and other topics. Once again the members are friendly and will try to help you with any questions – in fact Rootschat offers a free look up service. (Both Rootsweb mailing lists and Rootschat are good places to go to learn more about your Irish relatives. I have found the online material to be less than helpful, and it’s been more useful to join a list and find people researching the same names or areas.)
• The 1901 Census Decoder is a free programme which lets you search the 1901 England and Wales census – the idea is you can find all the member of a household before you send of for the record, sometimes people can end up on different pages, so you may not be sure you have found the family you are looking for.
• The Parish Locator programme is also free and you can use it to find all parishes within an area. It also details parishes of different denominations.

That’s all! But if you have any tips or suggestions why not leave them in a comment

Social Bookmarks:

Spotlight on: Clergy of the Church of England Database

If you discover you are descended from an Anglican clergyman, there is an excellent database online which you can use to find out more about your ancestor. The Clergy of the Church of England database is free to search and in many cases the information provided is very detailed.

The link above will take you to the home page, from there click the link marked ‘Database Home’ in the left sidebar and then ‘Search’ on the subsequent page. Type your search into the box provided and if there is a match you will see the results in a list in the left sidebar. You simply click on a name to open up the full results.

I just tried a sample search using the surname ‘Wigmore’. There are four results – all related to me, although, I’m not sure how one chap fits in – opening up the file for my great x 10 grandfather, Gilbert Wigmore, gives me some really useful information about him. For example, it tells me when he graduated from university and which college, when he was ordained, which ranks he held and in which parishes. This is all really useful stuff to know, and a great starting point for further research.

Looking at the dates pertaining to Gilbert, it is quite apparent that he would have served as a rector during the years of the English Civil War – and that opens up a whole new area of research. Which side was he on? Or did he do what many country vicars did, and try to stay out of it? I’m not sure if I will ever be able to answer those questions, but knowing what kind of environment he lived and worked in is very useful and does help to add some background and colour to the simple dates and statistics I already have.

Social Bookmarks:

Scam Warning and Some Tips to Help You Stay Safe

I spotted this post over at UK Chat Genealogy warning of bogus sites mimicking genuine ones with addresses that are so close to the real thing only the most observant would notice the difference. Pop over and have a read, and take note of the urls used – whatever the reason for the fakes, it is unlikely to be to your benefit so you really wouldn’t want to stumble into the wrong place.

This isn’t the first scam to affect the genealogy community, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. As with all things online and offline, there are unscrupulous people willing to exploit any situation. However, don’t panic and don’t let that thought put you off your research. Scams are quite rare, and keeping your eyes open for discrepancies can often be enough to protect you from them.

One more thing. Since I have been writing a family history blog, I have received a number of spam emails from people claiming to be professional genealogists, or offering membership of genealogy sites I have never heard off. If you receive similar emails from strangers, send them straight to the trash folder. They are often scams – it’s known as ‘phishing’ – and by clicking any links contained in the message you are letting the scammers know that your address is live. Even worse, if you visit the site and input any data, that will then be in the hands of unscrupulous people. Not good! If you are unsure about the validity of a site or service mentioned in such an email, search Google (or another search engine) for information about it.

If you are using the Firefox browser, you can install the Google toolbar which now comes with a function called Google Safe Browsing which can alert you if you attempt to visit a bogus site.