Instant Cousins

Instant Cousins : archiving my ancestry

  • John and Jennie

    I never knew them. My mother never talked about them. My grandmother never mentioned them. There are only two photographs that I have in hand that can give me an image of one of them. They had no children as far as I know. I knew where one of them was born for certain and…

  • A Great Man Has Fallen in Israel

    This is a story that is unique to my sister in law’s partner. He shared some documents and newspaper accounts of his great uncle Richard with me and we thought it was worthy of posting his story on this blog. The title of this post is a biblical reference to Samuel 2 when David asks…

  • The Stevenston Seaman

    The Nicol family were so well established in their community that each of Peter and Elizabeth’s children made roots in Stevenston and surrounding towns. Stevenston, Ardeer, Saltcoats, Irvine and Ardrossan are the lifeblood towns of my wife’s family. Many second generation children of the Nicol family may have settled in the area but it was…

  • The Welsh Tabernacle in Kings Cross

    This week I am returning to my research on Great Uncle John Wilcox, and particularly his wife Jennie. I have described my earlier research in a post last month. Jennie, which was her familiar name, is a significant person in this story, mainly because I am struggling to find any records that relate to her…

  • An Oxted Memoir

    I am really pleased to welcome a guest writer for this week’s post. My cousin Sue has prepared a memoir of her early years and memories of her life in Oxted, the home village of the Spilletts and the Carver’s, in Surrey. Sue and I share the same Great Grandfather whose daughter, Ada, was my…

  • A Short Thread to a Longer Tale

    Just twelve months ago I wrote a long post about my great uncle Herbert Wilcox. He was the eldest of the Wilcox siblings, born in 1874 in Notting Hill. His career was with the railways, and he lived in flats like the Peabody Trust style and type of accommodation in London, designed and developed as…

  • The Dairy Woman from Dyfed

    This is a continuation of my last post from two weeks ago entitled the Welsh Dairy in Clerkenwell. It was further research into the life of John Richard Howard Wilcox. My research that week came to a stop because I couldn’t find the sort of records that I rely on to confirm and triangulate certain…

  • The Welsh Dairy in Clerkenwell

    John Richard Howard Wilcox was baptised on 25 October 1893. There is a note in the Baptism register that shows John was born on 31 August 1893. That is disputed in John’s death registration and also in his 1939 Register entry. In those latter registers, John’s date of birth was 29 August 1893. There are…

  • The 1921 Census Returns

    Today marks the arrival of the 1921 Census returns, for England and Wales, on Ancestry.co.uk. Of course, the 1921 returns have been available since January 2022 when the National Archives gave the initial three-year contract to publish them, to Find My Past, who were the highest bidders for the contract. Now that the contract has…

  • Sussex Roots

    This week I am returning to the Carver’s who originated in Lodsworth, Sussex. It is December with short days. I wonder what life was like in agriculture in those mid-19th Century days. Tending cattle and looking after the farm land would have been a brutal lifestyle in the rain and wind. While writing this I…


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