Over the last year and a half I’ve been focussing much of my research on the County of Kent, in the south-east of England. I’m fortunate in that many of the parish registers are available online at FindMyPast and/or FamilySearch, while Ancestry also has the Frank Watt Tyler‘s various indexes (parish registers/records/wills/family names). For that… Continue reading Research Resource – Kent Wills Index
I’m working on a longer piece right now, but don’t want to go too long between regular posts, so I decided to share my excitement over a recent find at the Internet Archive. In the course of my recent research, I found a book at this valuable site titled Ickham : the friendly village by… Continue reading A gem uncovered at the Internet Archive
Over the past few weeks, I’ve built out a family for Elizabeth Beake, daughter of William Beake and Mary Gibbs, and connected her to Thomas Tickner (?-1779), and illustrated much of my process in a succession of blog posts. The final pieces of evidence I’ve left til last, although I did allude to them in… Continue reading Which Elizabeth Beake…Part 5 – the final piece of the Beake and Tickner “puzzle”…
While I’ve met with success lately in writing about Sarah Taylor and her family, I now realize I’ve been very lax again about methodology. It’s so easy to dive down the rabbit hole without any real goal – we do it because of the thrill of the unknown and the joy of making new discoveries.… Continue reading The Research Question – developing a discipline…
My recent foray into the history of small-pox reminded me once again of the importance of what Elizabeth Shown Mills refers to as context. In reviewing one of her presentations, genealogist Scott Wildes summarized her approach: “‘External context,’ gained through broader study of historical events and community dynamics allows us to understand our ancestors as… Continue reading Putting the history in family history…
My most recent post focussed on the family of my 2nd great-uncle, Edwin Spong and the details I learned after a deep dive into The Hamilton Spectator newspaper during the recent free weekend on Newspapers.com. When last we saw Edwin’s wife, Jessie, she was mourning his death in January 1926, while also recovering from her… Continue reading Newspapers.com Weekend continued – News of a death…
Finding David Sidney’s will a few weeks ago opened up a whole new family for me, that of my third great-grandmother, Elizabeth Morris, who was named in a beneficiary by her uncle, the aforesaid David Sidney. It’s been quite a process, one that has required a lot of thought and detailed notes: 1) research David… Continue reading Midweek Genealogy Happy Dance!
Finally finding Elizabeth Morris’s family raised as many questions as it answered. One of the first I had was why a family from Norwich, Norfolk ended up in Huntingdonshire. London, I understood, as many, many people moved to the capital in order to find work and, hopefully, a better life. But Huntingdonshire? It seemed a… Continue reading From Norfolk to Huntingdonshire…
We’ve had a rough weekend here with a difficult diagnosis for one of our much-loved cats (she’s 20), so Randy Seaver’s weekly challenge is a welcome diversion: Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along – cue the Mission… Continue reading Sunday Evening Genealogy Fun – Collections I’d love to see digitized…
Over the past few days I’ve turned up two more newspaper articles related to my Ferdinando ancestors, one referring to my 2nd great-grandfather, John Isaac Ferdinando, the other featuring John’s son, Frederick, my great-grandfather. That both men frequently appear in the broadsheets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is fascinating enough, however, in… Continue reading An interesting juxtaposition…
writing my past 