#52 Ancestors - Week 7 - Landed

For many families, throughout their histories there are numerous ties to the land.  For those fortunate enough to own land, those ties can be even deeper.  Whether our ancestors owned land or worked it, mined it or travelled it regularly, ties to land plays a major role in how our families evolved, developed and lived.

My father's family had strong ties to Fordham Hall (also called Manor Farm) in Essex, being tennants at the Hall for several generations.  Although they were not the owners, they were major local landholders and were the gentry of their small community.

Fordham Hall, Essex

The Green family of Fordham Hall farmed the land, kept a pack of foxhounds,and took part in many community events.  The article below, from the 'Essex Standard' on Friday 13 October 1837, mentions Isaac Green of Fordham as one of the judges at the annual meeting of the local Agricultural Society.

The wedding of Constance Green, daughter of Walter Proctor Green, in 1909 was a major event at Fordham Hall, with a large party attending and the event extensively reported in the local newspapers.  Below is a photograph of the wedding party, taken on the lawn at the rear of the Hall.

#52 Ancestors - Week 6 - Maps

Maps can be an extremely useful tool for family history.  They show all sorts of helpful things - what sort of land were our ancestor's homes built on?  Were there woodlands, rivers, lakes, canals, or open pastures nearby?  Was the land flat or were there steep hills?  How far were they situated from the county border, from neighboring towns and parishes, and more.

Knowing the lay of the land nearby gives us information on how easy it was to visit neighboring areas. We need to know where our ancestors lived. But we also need to take a look around and see if there are other places where he or she could have interacted with others — places where he or she could have created more records. Our ancestors didn’t necessarily stay within the lines for all of their activities.

One ancestor of mine lived in the village of Fordham in Essex and clearly had contact with nearby Bures, in Suffolk.  It’s in another county, but is less than 4 miles distant. Maybe he sold his grain at Bures, or went to market there or attended meetings – somehow he got to know the people there.  It is where his wife was born.  It is where they married.  Maps make it clear how easy it was for him to travel that distance, showing that even though the two towns are in different counties there is a nice, fairly straight road between them.

 

The Ogilby Muster

Over two million historic documents from First World War regiments are free to search on the new website The Ogilby Muster, which  was launched by the Army Museums Ogilby Trust last November. 

 
The Trust holds over two million records, photographs, letters, diaries and more from 75 participating collections, with more scheduled to join in 2022.

The Hon. Mrs Katherine Swinfen Eady, Trustee of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust, said: “With the opening of the TOM Platform, we are given a wonderful key to unlock history. As historians this is an invaluable gift, as family members researching their beloved lost relatives, it is equally as important. TOM allows us to piece together the truth left behind by the subjects, to build up that wonderful pattern of a jigsaw and find the missing fragments of information. It is especially important as it will help us all further our knowledge and understanding of not just the military side of the First World War, but the social aspect of an event in history that affected and shaped this country and the world.”

The Ogilby Muster allows researchers to search the website’s collections for free, with images of each document available for purchase, usually at a fee of £4 for non-commercial use.  Documents on the website date from 1900 to 1929, but the primary focus is on the ordinary men and women who served in the British Army during the First World War.

 

#52Ancestors - Week 5 - Branching Out

As my family tree has slowly expanded and branched out over the years, I have had to make decisions about how far I let those branches go and how much time and energy I devote to the increasingly remote outer branches.  Should I focus solely on my direct ancestors?  To I also research all their siblings?  Do I research their siblings' children, their grandchildren, and so on?  How far do I want my tree's branches to spread, and what is manageable for me?

There is really no hard answer to these questions.  For my own research, I have concentrated on my direct ancestors and their siblings - my aunts and uncles, great aunts and great uncles, and so on.  Rarely have I bothered branching out further to investigate cousins twice or more removed.  When I tried, I found my tree spread its branches too widely and become unweildy to record, and I would find myself spending hours going down the rabbit hole of researching a second cousin twice removed.

For the same reasons I rarely branch out to research the families of those who marry into my family - the parents and siblings and wider family of those who married a great-great aunt for example.  I generally prefer to keep my branches trimmed and spend my valuable research time on the more direct lines, especially when those branches are spindly and difficult to extend.

Ultimately it is up to each family history researcher to decide just how far they want their tree to branch out, and then to keep the tree trimmed accordingly.  Happy researching to you all.

Really Useful Podcasts - Episode 5

The Family History Federation has now launched Episode 5 of its new series of Really Useful Podcasts.

 
This new episode focuses on One-Place Studies.  The website describes it : 

"Joe is joined by Janet Few, historian, President of the Family History Federation, former chair of the Society for One-Place Studies and author on the subject, Pam Smith, former professional genealogist and passionate local historian who is co-founder of the local history data management app Name & Place and Elizabeth Walne, professional genealogist, writer, tutor, speaker and One-Place researcher.

One-Place Studies are rich local and community histories that involve similar skills and sources as family history. We discuss how to go about choosing and carrying out your own study and the pleasures and pitfalls of doing so."

A One-Place Study is not something I have considered starting yet, but it is always useful to know how to go about it, and I certainly need to investigate if there is already a One-Place Study being conducted in any of the areas I an researching.

#52Ancestors - Week 4 - Curious

Week 4 of #52Ancestors, and the topic is 'Curious'.  This is another topic quite open to interpretation - a curious fact, a curious disappearance, a curious family mystery, a curious record.  The list is quite wide.

As family historians, we are all curious about our ancestors.  It is this curiosity that drives us in our research and motivates us to try to break down those frustrating brick walls we all encounter from time to time.

As a child I first became curious about my family history from hearing my parents' stories about their young lives.  With an age gap of 16 years between them, my parents were very much from different generations - my father, born 1926 was a child of the depression and my mother, born 1942 was a child of World War 2.  Both had many amusing and sometimes stark stories to tell about their early lives, how they met and married, and life on the outback sheep station I could barely remember.

Both my parents were always open to questions about their families, although often the answer was 'I don't know'.  My father in particular knew very little about his family history - when questioned when I was in my teens and getting more interested in formally recording and researching, my father could not even tell me what his mother's maiden name was.  It never came up.

While the other members of my immediate family were never interested in research, they were always curious enough to be interested in any unusual facts or new stories I unearthed.  This helped keep up my own enthusiasm through my late teens and twenties, when my research was fairly spasmodic and certainly not up to the genealogical standards of today.  Today, I am not only curious to learn more about my ancestors, but also always curious about new research methodology and new records becoming available.