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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An Epic Adventure
On Friday last week I travelled down to Stevenston, Ayrshire with a like-minded social history friend to introduce him to the Ardeer Peninsula. It is a spit of land about one and half miles long and a mile wide in its widest part. It is bordered by the sea on one side, the Irvine Bay,…
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A Canterbury Tale
My Father, Bill Carver, spoke fondly of his childhood and early life but did not give away much detail. There is a video recording of him in a ‘talking heads’ interview that my sister made in the 1990’s. He spoke, with some prompts, of his upbringing and life in Oxted, Surrey, where he was born.…
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Going underground
Three years ago I was contacted by an heir hunter from south Wales who was searching for the descendants of the Wilcox family. A distant relative who was unknown to me had left a small legacy and he had no descendants of his own. This led to a discovery about two brothers and one sister…
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Lodsworth, gateway to the Carver family
The history of the Carver family has its roots in the agricultural 19th Century county of West Sussex. The small village of Lodsworth lies between Petworth and Midhurst, just above the South Downs. The views from Google street view suggest that the village was an idyllic place to have lived in, although I suspect that…
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Looking for William Wilcox
If there is one thing that we, living in the twenty first century, will leave behind us it is a shed load of photographs, either in print, or digitally on a computer, or in cyberspace. Many of these pictures of us, posing and pouting will remain there until somebody deletes them. And that might not…
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Rolls, Registers and a Title Deed
A few years ago I studied on a short course at Glasgow University researching the history of my house. I was inspired by the TV series “History of a House in Time” presented by David Olusoga. I learned how to research using electoral rolls, valuation rolls, Sasine registers and Feu registers. The last two are…
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A Galloway field trip
Field trips are essential for family history research. Where did our ancestors live and how did they arrive there? The Census, birth, marriage and death records can help us with the first part. Occupation and the search for work and accommodation are the probable reasons for the second part. My wife’s family ancestors came from…