Thanks to Esther, from Australia, there is more light on the St Helena connection. We seem to be third cousins, and it was a pleasure to connect up with her by skype over christmas. She had found, and I had missed, that although my 3xgreat grandmother went by Houndsworth in the records on st Helena, her father went… Read More »
Many years ago, my mother repeated something she had heard from her mum – that somewhere in the family history is a slave ancestor. I dismissed this as improbable, many years ago. However, a year or two back, the connection showed up. My great great grandmother was born on the tiny Atlantic island colony of St Helena. Born… Read More »
If you are just embarking on researching your family tree and find it irksome or expensive to use subscription services to search the birth, marriage and death indexes, it helps to remember two things: The first is that those of us that researched in the old index books had to shift 1800 volumes for a single surname over… Read More »
Until the GRO computerised the capture of registration data, the quarterly indexes were compiled by hand. In the earliest indexes, entries are handwritten, later ones are typeset. These indexes used to be in huge books that you could consult at Somerset House, then St Catherine’s house, and finally Myddleton Street, before they were eventually withdrawn, and for pre… Read More »
The London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes, are published by the UK Government and contain a wealth of information useful to genealogists, particularly those researching modern records, as a great number of gazettes from the 20th century are searchable online. Who puts information in the Gazette? Often it is solicitors, and this is where a wealth of family history… Read More »