Big fairs....

So last weekend was the Big FH Fair at the Burgess Hall in St Ives and how much fun was that..... Sue collected me from the MisGuided Bus and delivered us both to the hall; and then, with much anticipation, we settled on "coffee in an hour" and split up.  

I started small - and must apologise to the Herts FHS stall for only spending 50p on a parish map, but that was all I needed; I don't know much about the county so just a basic map to find out what belongs where!

And then.... I found a stall selling the FlipPal scanner.  Now I'd heard & read all the hype about them but I wanted to see one in action.  And I did.  And it was pretty dashed clever.  So I .....er, bought one.  As you do.  

Then I met up with Andrew Martin, otherwise known as @FamilyTreeUK on Twitter.  Always good to put a face to a name and, I'll own up, I was a little bit mean to identify myself as "carrying a Hunts FHS bag" - because everyone was.  Sorry, Andrew, I was trying to be funny.

Then I found the Beds FHS stall and parted with even more money, this time for various Biggleswade registers on CD.

Finally, all spent out, it was time to meet Sue again and have a good catch up over the coffee cups.

Excellent morning!!

More soon.

Where is he?

You know how sometimes your ancestors hide from you?  Well I'm still looking for quite a few but the one on my mind at the moment is William Layton.

He's my 3xGt grandfather and all I know for "certain" is that he, or someone with his name, married Hannah Lowton in Dry Drayton, Cambs, on 21 April 1823.  He probably died before 1851 because Hannah is listed as a widow in the census of that year; but he doesn't appear to be living with them 10 years earlier either, so who's to tell?

I know that there were a conclave of Laytons in Cherry Hinton at the time but I can't understand what a Cherry Hinton lad would be doing in Dry Drayton......

Anyway, just thought I'd put this problem out there.  Any clues/thoughts gratefully received!!

More soon.

Tidying up

For the first time for ages I thought I'd have a look at my Freeman ancestors, so I sat down this morning to do some sorting/tidying.  It's shown me that I have changed some of the ways I record my info; I use The Master Genealogist (TMG) because it's a powerful database which produces good reports, but I also keep a copy of Family Tree Maker for the times when only a graphical tree will do.

And I saw that I started out giving GRO Births/Marriages/Deaths their own field in TMG.....and now I simply record them as the source for a birth etc.  So I'm changing them as I see them - which is why you will see loads of entries in the Recent Changes Index on my website.  I've also been chasing a few random Freemans round Suffolk.

But at the back of my mind is the sad news I received last night: Joyce Christie, my second cousin, and I shared Millice Campbell Culpin as an ancestor.  My great-grandmother, Blanche, was his seventh child and May Naomi, Blanche's youngest sister, was Joyce's grandmother.  May married John Harrison in Fen Drayton in 1906 and the couple emigrated to Canada, settling in Manitoba.

I first "met" Joyce via the numerous Culpin research messages online and we discovered our shared ancestor.  Since then, and despite our twenty-year age gap, we became good friends over the email; not only a Culpin expert, Joyce had a fine line in funny emails!  She also kept me up to date with what her family was doing, including the grandsons of whom she was so proud.

Joyce had been ill for some time but her death, on Wednesday, was quite sudden and I feel not only sad, that we never met, but also stunned.

More soon.