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

Did your ancestors have green fingers?

I spent this morning working in my garden and while I was out there, my mind wandered and I began to think about allotments. For the uninitiated, an allotment is an area of land which is subdivided into smaller sections which are then rented out to members of the public to use to grow fruit and vegetables, or even keep a few chickens. Most allotments are owned by the local council, but some are in private hands.

Now you may be wondering what all this has to do with genealogy. Well, the provision of allotments goes back a very long way. In their present form they date from the 19th century when land was set aside in towns and cities for the use of working class people who lived in back to back housing with no gardens. They could rent an allotment and use it to grow fresh food to supplement what was probably quite a basic diet. However, the roots (no pun intended) of allotments go back to the days of common land. You can read more about the history here.

I wasn’t sure if any records of allotment holders would exist, but a quick search of the National Archives for the term ‘allotment holders‘ has revealed that, in some cases, they do. Glancing at the results they do seem to be mostly for the early to mid 20th century, but even so, they may help to fill in some gaps in your knowledge of the more recent generations of your family and provide some interesting background information.

Net Nasties – they aren’t big and they aren’t clever

This is a post I never really expected to write for this blog, but after a couple of encounters in the last month, I feel I must. I’m sure the topic won’t apply to you, but you may recognise the kind of behaviour I refer to.

Before I begin, I should say, I’m not naive, I know there are some rude people online, and some who are downright aggressive. I have been blogging for a number of years and, for the uninitiated, the Blogosphere can be extremely adversarial. However, I do not expect to find this kind of behaviour when I’m researching my family tree, and to be fair, I rarely have.

On the whole, the members of genealogy mailing lists and forums are friendly, helpful and polite. However, as with anything, there are always a couple of bad apples. In the last few weeks I have had the misfortune to come across such people. One who was rude (and patronising) to me directly, one who sneered at someone else. I won’t go in to specifics about these people, but I would like to discuss list etiquette. The idea of etiquette may seem old fashioned, but it does exist on the internet, and it can help to make the experience of using a forum a little more pleasant for everyone.

1) Do not type your whole message in caps – this is the internet equivalent of shouting. You may not mean to be rude, but many people reading a message WRITTEN LIKE THIS, will think you are.

2) Leave your prejudices at the door – you may have preconceived ideas about groups of people or individuals, but these have no place on someone else’s mailing list. It is very rude to expect others to listen to opinions which they may find offensive either generally or specifically. In addition, many lists are hosted with external companies which have strict guidelines in order to comply with the laws of the country they are based in. Just because you think the law is an ass, does not give you the right to cause trouble for someone else.

3) Accept you do not know everything – you may be highly intelligent, you may have a PHD in quantum physics, but you are not the font of infinite knowledge.

4) Agree to differ – this follows on from the point above. Sometimes, people disagree, often neither party is wrong because the issue they disagree about is a subjective matter. Accept this, do not indulge in ridiculous circular arguments and certainly don’t resort to personal attacks. Agree to differ and move on.

5) Remember the list guidelines do apply to you – even if you think they should not, or you think they are stupid. The list moderator is perfectly entitled to say what can and can’t be published on his or her list. And do not, whatever you do, cite free speech as an excuse for rudeness. Very few mailing lists are run as democracies, most are benign dictatorships.

6) Do not feed the trolls – in others words, don’t get into a heated debate with someone who is clearly looking for just that. I know it can be extremely tempting, but it’s really not worth it. Such people thrive on the oxygen of attention, so cut off their supply and they will go away.

As I said above, I’m sure these pointers will not apply to you, but you might like to keep them in mind if you ever encounter a ‘net nasty’. And if you are looking for tips to help you get the most out of mailing lists and forums, try this post.

Something for the weekend

Here in the UK we are entering into a bank holiday weekend, the second this month. It seems rain has been forecast, this is to be expected. So, if you are stuck indoors this weekend, here are few things to occupy your time.

You could take a look at Project Gutenberg, a database of free books. Unless, your ancestors were highly noted, you probably won’t find anything which mentions them directly – although it’s always possible – but it is still a good place to find historical and geographical information.

Pay a visit to Wikipedia to find free images or maps. The maps seem to be mostly from the US, but other areas are covered too. The images cover a wide range of themes including some posters from World War 2.

Make specialised searches of Google. Not all the options will be of use to family historians, but many will, especially the translated and book searches. Once you have done that, find out how you make your ordinary searches more productive.

Finally, why not add some content to the National Archives wiki, a collaborative effort to provide information which isn’t currently in the archives.

Have a lovely weekend, wherever you are!

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.

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.

5 Reasons why a family historian needs a blog or website

There are numerous websites which offer members the facility to upload a gedcom file and create an online family tree, so some might ask whether there is any point to creating and maintaining a stand alone blog or website. I say yes, and this is why:

1) Visibility: It’s more likely to be found. I’ve noticed some of the places I have stored copies of my tree do not turn up on the results page of search engines. Your own site or blog probably will, which means long lost cousins are more likely to find you – and maybe share some valuable info!

2) Customisation: It’s an obvious point, but an important one for some people. You can make your own site fit your taste and preferences more easily, and also decide what kind of material or content you wish to display.

3) Community: You can build up a community consisting of family members, friends and others who are interested in your research. And if many hands make light work, many historians make lighter research. Well, that’s the theory anyway LOL

4) Sharing: You can share all the advice, tips and resources you have gathered on your journey. I often find the most useful information on a personal blog rather than a mainstream site.

5) Background: This fits into a couple of other categories, but it’s important, so I’ll mention it separately. Having your own site or blog means you can add information which would not fit into a standard online tree. Subjects such as; folklore, history and culture provide fascinating background information which will help you create a more vivid and colourful picture of the kind of lives your ancestors lived.

So, over to you. Do you have a blog or website? What kind of information do you publish? Do you have any tips for anyone who is about to start their own?

Money, then and now

I’ve just added a really useful link to the sidebar, Current Value of Old Money contains a wealth (sorry, bad pun) of useful information and resources for calculating the value of old money in modern terms. The resources provided include such things as average wages for specific jobs, prices of food and other essential items and one site I found particularly useful, Measuring Worth, which features a calculator you can use to automatically translate an old value into a modern one, or vice versa.

In 1638, my 10 x great grandmother, Sabina Worsley (mother of Anna Wigmore) was left a legacy of £1300 in her step father’s will. She received this money when she married in 1640. Even today, £1300 would be a worthwhile amount, but back then it would have been equivalent to receiving £175, 768 in modern values. A very generous gift which must have given the newly married couple a great start to their marriage. But what about people who weren’t so fortunate?

Most of my ancestors would have been lucky to see that kind of money in a lifetime, but how much, or little, would they have earned? In an article at the website of The International Institute of Social History, Jan Luiten van Zanden estimates labourers earned about 10 pence a day in the period between 1580 and 1626. In today’s world, 10 pence a day would be worth about £5.57. Not a great amount, especially when you consider that the minimum hourly wage is currently £5.52. Of course, prices have also gone up, but just how far would that 10 pence go?

In an account taken at Southampton in 1625, we can see that 1lb of cheese cost 2 1/2 pence, and two lean chickens were 6 pence. Ale is also mentioned with the good stuff selling for 3 shillings for 18 gallons. The amounts shown on the page are often for large orders and the total costs reflect this. To get an idea of how much an individual, or family would spend you will need to convert the archaic measures into the standard ones used to day. And if you aren’t sure how much a bushel is, or how many gallons are in a hogshead try this page.

Genealogy Needs You!

Everyone likes to get something for nothing, and that goes for family historians too. Amongst the UK genealogy community websites such as Freecen, Free BMD and Freereg are incredibly popular, and why not? They offer a great starting point for further research and, speaking personally, they have broken down more than one brickwall by providing me with the information to finally locate an elusive ancestor.

While the sites mentioned above do not cost the user anything to use and they are staffed by volunteers, they do cost a lot in terms of time. Each and every entry in a free database was submitted by a volunteer who took the time to transcribe the available documents – which were often hard to read. In my opinion these people are the heroes of genealogy and each and every one of them deserve our thanks. However, we can give them a little more than that. We can help them in their efforts.

All the free online transcription services are calling for volunteers. I suppose it is a case of so many records, so few volunteers. But it doesn’t have to be that way – you can help out. Transcribers aren’t a special breed, they don’t have super powers. They are ordinary people who spend a little time each week transcribing records for the benefit of others. Transcribing isn’t difficult, it is simply a matter of typing the information you see in an entry and uploading. You will be given comprehensive instructions by the project coordinator who will be happy to answer any questions. You won’t be paid, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have given a little back for the help you have received.

If you would like to help out, try some of the following links:

• Online Parish Clerks – UK: the home site of the UK OPC project which includes links to all the current county sites.
• Freecen: the volunteer transcription page for the free census project
• Freereg: the volunteer page for the free parish records project
• Free BMD: the volunteer page for the free births, marriage and death records project

If you know of another project which is calling for volunteers please leave a message in the comments.

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.

5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Message Boards and Mailing Lists

Message boards and mailing lists are brilliant places to find information, discover long lost cousins and get to know other family historians. If you haven’t already done so, why not find a few which match your research interests and subscribe. Rootsweb and Yahoo are good places to look, or take a look at the links in the right sidebar for some of my favourites.

Once you have signed up, you may not have much information to share if you are just starting out, but you will find the posts helpful and often highly informative even if they aren’t necessarily about your family. Most of the lists you join will have their own guidelines about the kind of posts which can be made to the list and the sort of behaviour which is expected of members. However, the following tips are usually applicable to all lists and should help you to get the most out of your membership.

1) Write surnames in capital letters. For example BLOGS, not Blogs. It is not always obvious that a surname is just that, some are also first names, or place names, or occupations. So Fred George, could be a full name, or it could be two forenames. Fred Carpenter might mean Fred who was a carpenter.

2) Write descriptive titles. Try to explain what your message is about in a short, succinct title. For example ‘Fred BLOGS, date of birth?’ lets other members know you are asking about the date of birth of someone called Fred Blogs.

3) Post to the correct list or board. If a mailing list or message board has been dedicated to a particular place, name or other topic, try to avoid posting unrelated queries there. People who are searching for their ancestors in Aberdeen are unlikely to know about yours from Southampton.

4) Use a signature message. But, only if it is allowed! Ask the moderator or list owner if you are unsure. If it is OK, append a short message – no more than 2 or 3 lines, including the surnames of a few of the families you are looking for, or a link to your online family tree. This can be a great way to find other people who have information about your ancestors.

5) Try to give back. If you are a newcomer, you may not have much advice or information to offer. However, you can help in other ways. Maybe you know about a particular occupation. Or maybe you have a lot of knowledge of a particular location – for example, your home town. Read the other messages on the list, and if you see one you can help with, send off an answer.

Those are my tips, if you have any why not share them in the comments