Instant Cousins : archiving my ancestry
- Cheesemongers and Dairies
- House History
- Other Stories
- Reviews, Reports and Research
- Stone, Steam and Dynamite
- The Welsh Connection
- Wheelwrights, Publicans and a Country Lad
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The Nicol Dynasty
A number of things have happened since writing about Peter Nicol and his arrival in Ayrshire. I realised how little my research was on Peter and his family and started exploring in more detail. As a result I have been discovering a number of events and facts that make his life and times a really…
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An Oxted Recap
This week I have been trying out making my own family tree template to create better graphics of the family detail in my postings. It is a work in progress but this is a better way than using tables all the time. In previous posts about the Spilletts I have explained that Henry, my Great…
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Plotting the Site of my House
Where did it all begin? To find out I have arrive at the Glasgow City Archives based in the Mitchell Library. In the pre Covid Lockdown days it was possible to be able to walk in, have a discussion with an Archivist and have documents and other material fetched from the basement and delivered to…
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Peter Nicol 1851-1928
There is something about a name that just seems to draw you to it. Peter Nicol is one of them. It is simple to say, read and look at. It has no middle name, which is slightly unusual for someone born in Scotland in the middle of the 19th Century. It would have been quite…
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The Tredegar Tapes
In 2022 I travelled to Wales to meet a cousin who I had only recently discovered. Being my Great Uncle’s Granddaughter, my cousin Kay is my second cousin. I had never realised that I had an extended branch of my family, growing up and living in South Wales during the 20th Century, until about 2019…
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Uncle Sydney serves his country
The following picture shows my Great Uncle Sydney in the garden of my Aunt Dorothy’s house in Palmers Green. He is standing behind my cousins. I have been trying to work out the year this was taken. I am the same age as one of my cousins and judging by looks I am suggesting that…
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Grace, in her own write
My Mother, Grace Carver (William Wilcox’s eldest daughter), often talked of the number of places and houses that she lived. I think she once told me that she lived in 26 different addresses. That would be with her parents and in married life. I can certainly make a claim to six of those addresses. This…
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Great Aunt Ethel
Ethel Maude Mary Wilcox was born in July 1873 – 150 years ago. She was the first born of John and Lena Wilcox, my Great Grandparents. Aunt Ethel was my Great Aunt. I never met her but my cousin Sue remembers that she occasionally visited and stayed in her parents house in Palmers Green. One…
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The Oxted Bike Shop
It’s back to the Spilletts this week. I remember a talking heads video that my sister Janet made of my Father, Bill Carver. He was talking about his childhood. I remember him talking about his two uncles who ran a bicycle shop in the High Street, Oxted, the village where my father was born. Old…
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What’s in a name ?
In August I related the story of my Wife’s Great Uncle Alexander who was a Gardener by trade all of his life. I have also described the background history to her Great Aunt Louisa who became a Domestic Servant in Bournemouth before marrying the licensee of a pub in Irvine, Ayrshire. I have also described…