Instant Cousins

Instant Cousins : archiving my ancestry

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Francis (nee Wilcox)

    This week I describe some of the details of the records that I know of and have found regarding the three Wilcox siblings who left London for Wales. Two of them left under circumstances that cannot be proved and there is only one anecdotal story relating to it. The third joined them after her parents…

  • Aberdeenshire to Ayrshire

    After writing my short account of the book Akenfield last week it got me thinking about the occupations of many of my and my wife’s ancestors. Agricultural Labourer was a common occupation listed against many of our family members in the early Census returns. Whether it was in Sussex, Surrey, Wigtownshire and Aberdeenshire, working on…


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