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.