Where there's a Will

Those of us with a subscription to Ancestry (other websites are available) will doubtless have discovered the recent addition of the "England & Wales National Probate Calendar, Index of Wills & Administrations, 1861-194" . . . . to give it the full title.  And much fun it is too!

I've got one in front of me now for a chap who worked as a plumber & grocer in what is now Greater London, between 1871 and 1929.  Somehow he managed to leave effects to the value of £4310.  Now that's not bad.  I'm guessing, though, that it's before tax . . . ?

I do have a few in the family who left effects worth wondering about but mostly I come from a long line of ag labs so I'm not holding my breath!  I've joked before about following a silver teapot through one branch because it must have been worth a bob or two - why else would it be mentioned on its own?  

The most remarkable thing, though, about this Index is the language.  I've seen any number of individual Wills before where there is a serious lack of punctuation.  Well, these entries are the same.  Nary a comma or full stop to be seen.  Quite a challenge to read if, like me, you're daft enough to obey the rules and not breathe until the end of a sentence!

Still, don't suppose that'll stop me looking at it again - for the more unusual names, you understand; I'm not sure I'm up to looking for the more . . . . shall we say, prevalent surnames!

Back to sorting out a corrupted file.

More soon.

Learn from me . . .

So here I am, trying to work out why my laptop is playing games with me, and I start looking through the files that are shared with the desktop.  Well, it passes the time while I think of what to do next . . . .

And there's one I should have looked at a long time ago.  Plainly I thought I was being clever when I transcribed a number of entries from the IGI and then put them "somewhere safe".  It was simply a list of christenings and one marriage but it has taken me about 30 minutes to work out who links to whom.

I can now report that Mary Sandby, my great-great-great (pauses to check) grandmother was the daughter of Richard & Mary (nee Thompson), and she had two sisters.  She married John Quince in 1808 in Doddington, Cambs, and they begat seven children in the nearby village of Benwick.  John died in 1827.  And that's all I know about her.

But I can go back even further, thanks to my newly-discovered habit of filing things away without remembering: Mary's mother Mary was the daughter of Isaac & Anne (nee Nicholls), born in Farcet in Huntingdonshire, along with five sisters and three brothers.

And now I *must* go back to contemplating this wilful computer.

More soon.

Not Forgotten

Hello dear reader. Please don't think I've forgotten about you - it's just that I've been having problems with the computer & it's lucky not to have been thrown through the window! It's this interweb-thingy causing the grief, but I shall give it all a serious talking-to.

More soon.

Completely distracted

Hello, I'm here; it's just that I've been all over the place. Not literally, alas. In genealogical terms I've spent some time in the beautiful county of Durham and then went, with the family I was looking at, across the pond to Salt Lake City (as you do).

I was looking into the "Sherry Glass Puzzle" . . . trying to discover the owner of the said glass and his/her relationship to the friend who set the problem. Fortunately it was a reasonably unusual name and it wasn't too difficult (if you have the right subscriptions).

What made it even more interesting was finding that the Sherry Glass owner's father had enrolled the entire family (himself, wife & seven children) with the Mormons in 1847 and then, in 1867 set off, with wife and two youngest, to Utah.

Alas, he caught something unpleasant on the ship and only survived for six months in his promised land but the rest of the family appeared to thrive. Thanks to some immaculate record-keeping (no surprise there) there are some accounts of their life online - including one intriguing tale of the polygamy for which their chosen religion was/is famous!

Must finish now as I need to de-fragment this computer.

More soon.

Well it could be . .

A few years ago I first set eyes on a naturalisation agreement which named father & son (being naturalised) and father's parents. But not the son's mother or, to put it another way, not the father's wife.

Intriguing, no? Wife/mother might well have been dead; or separated from her husband; or British already.

The document is dated 1898 and the 1901 census shows that the father is married. Now, why put that on the form if you don't mean it? So, wife/mother isn't dead then.

A chance find last week *may* have cleared up the matter: found on ancestry.com (in the library, you may recall, as it's free) a marriage between Herman and Adeline. Adding to the "possibility-quotient" was that Herman's parents had the same names as those cited in the naturalisation document.

And the marriage took place just before (well, a year before) the birth of the aforementioned son.

So, the PQ has just zoomed up higher. And there it will remain, hovering, until I can think of a way to confirm it. Good find, I thought!

More soon.

Males of the line . . .

I'm back from a quick trip up to the land of Tartan and ready to get stuck in again.  So let's meet Reginald Storey Beasley, the younger son of Henry & Mary (nee Storey) and my second cousin twice removed plus my third cousin three times removed.  Yes, he's from that side of the family!

Ronald was born on 11 July 1900 in Cambridge and was christened at St Barnabas, on Mill Road, today 110 years ago.  The family lived in Tenison Road at the time and, by 1911, had moved a little way down Mill Road to Gwydir Street.  He married Nellie Louisa Edwards at the church of St Mary & St Michael in Trumpington in 1923 . . . . and that's all I know about him.

So we'll move on or, rather, back, to my first cousin three times removed William Murfitt, who was born in 1833 in Stretham.  The oldest of the eleven children of Isaac & Alice (nee Langford) he was christened today at St James' church in the village and, unsurprisingly, grew up to become an ag lab.  And then he disappears.  

Well, maybe not exactly but I can't find him again.  I guess he's got to be there somewhere - I'll keep looking.

And finally, for today, meet my great-great-great-uncle Richard Fordham, the fourth of five sons of John & Mary (nee Taylor) who was christened today in 1821 in Hemingford Grey.  Sadly, he died on August 16th and was buried two days later in the same church.

Still waiting for the certificate which should help with the details of the previous blog entry.

More soon.

Press the button

He's only gone and done it again!

It started out with a conversation about the Old Boys Newsletter with the uncle (who's the editor, lest you wonder) then, business complete, we moved on to the music festival and then, as you do, onto family history.

Any regular readers of this blog will know by now that it is aptly titled and that its author (that'll be me, then) can Ramble up to degree-level standard. So, I started to describe to the uncle the steps I had so far taken to discover some info about a particular person (hopefully still alive, hence the cloak & dagger).

I reminded him of previous conversations, then picked apart the semantics of the phrase 'vicar's daughter'. And then I said the trigger word . . . . in this case a scrawled name that I'd read at the bottom of a page of the births index.

'That's it - that was the name!' 

 And, believe me, it's not the type of name you'd randomly make up, but plainly it's memorable . . . . if you hit the right buttons.

And that's all you need for a Eureka moment. Oh, and an uncle who has secreted these details at the back of his mind!

Further searching today has uncovered even more detail so . . . watch this space.

More soon.