Foreign Parts

OK, so I'm not terribly keen on the new layout of FamilySearch most of the time but today I simply love it!  I've found India ....

Well, I knew India exists, obviously, and I also know that some of my rellies soldiered out there.  But today I discovered someone marrying out there, having a child out there and, by inference, dying out there (his young bride marries again, three years after marrying him, and is listed as a widow).

Jaazaniah Culpin, for t'was he, was born in Ketton cum Tixover, Rutland, in 1824, the youngest of the eight children of John and Ann and was christened in the parish church.  And that's all I knew about him, until today.  I'd thought that his unusual name would help me keep track of him ...... yeah, right, I was quite naive back then!  I have to think about how to spell it so I don't imagine it appears the same way twice.

Anyway, I'm very pleased to have found him and his son, named after him poor boy, but then he dies so soon .  Not unusual, I appreciate, but my experience has always been that the wife dies first!  Still, being a soldier was undoubtedly an occupation which was hazardous to health so I shouldn't have been surprised.

Let's hear it for FamilySearch .... and I'll try harder to like the layout.

More soon.

All over the place

Yep, that's me - all over the place again.  

I've finally entered into the database some newspaper articles which I transcribed over a year ago ..... can't rush a good thing, I think!  These were about Vic Martin, late of the parish of Girton, who was a West Ham legend and played in the White Horse Cup Final, as well as for England.  Seems it had occurred to the villagers of Girton that some manner of remembrance was required and they duly erected a plaque, appropriately enough at the football club.

And I've also been following a friend's distant relative who I discovered, in the words of Mark Knopfler & James Taylor, "sailing to Philadelphia" (great song, by the way).  Once I'd switched my remaining brain cell on and realised that Philadelphia is a town, not a state (I have some fairly dumb moments), I went off to the central library and settled down in front of Ancestry.com for an hour "in the USA".

Only one problem ensued ..... how can someone be christened, in a different country, before they claim to have been born?  The index of West Yorkshire Births & Baptisms, on ancestry, gives a christening which is a good six months before he admits, on the US Federal Census on 1920, that he was born.  Good trick if you can do it!

On the positive side, and almost nullifying the above problem as far as I'm concerned, is that three of the family applied for US passports ..... and therefore there are photographs!!!!  Excellent!

So now I'm going to go and enter all this data before the golf comes on.

If the golf comes on ..... it didn't half rain up in Inverness yesterday.

More soon.