Website Wednesday - Trade Union Ancestors

The scale of the British trade union movement is astounding. Tens of millions of people have been members, and 5,000 trade unions are known to have existed at one time or another.  The website Trade Union Ancestors can help you locate a specific trade union in time and place with the A to Z index of trade unions and trade union family trees. In addition, you can read about some of the events and people that shaped the trade union movement through 200 years of history in their trade union histories, trade union lives and striking stories.

The historic union records that  survive illuminate the working lives, daily concerns and political attitudes of our ancestors.  Trade Union Ancestors aims to help  family historians to identify the correct union, to discover the role their ancestor played in it, and to find out more about trade union history.

Website editor Mark Crail stresses that the site is far from comprehensive and he cannot guarantee it is mistake-free.  Also, while millions of people have been trade union members over the past couple of centuries, millions more working people were not. At the beginning of the 20th century, just one in ten working people were members. And though masses of union records have survived, much more has been discarded or destroyed down the years.

The site draws material from a range of sources. Among the most fruitful are:

• The first four published volumes of the Historical Directory of Trade Unions. These are a wonderful but incomplete guide to the development of the trade union movement published between 1980 and 1994 by Gower. The first three were compiled by Arthur Marsh and Victoria Ryan, and the fourth by Marsh and Ryan with the help of John Smethurst. Wonderful though they are, the series is incomplete and there are some rather obvious omissions as a result – not least the Transport and General Workers Union. Time has also moved on since they were published, with mergers and amalgamations taking place annually. There is now a fifth and a sixth and final volume available.

• The archive listings published online by Warwick University’s modern records centre. The centre has an unrivalled collection of original trade union papers, including the archives of many long since defunct trade unions deposited by their modern successors.

• A variety of published sources including the potted histories that some unions include on their websites, the books that unions have produced down the years about their origins and developments, and the many general union histories published since Sydney and Beatrice Webb originated the genre with their History of Trade Unionism, first published in 1894 and revised in 1920.

• Government papers and public records – some of them published (such as Labour Market Trends, from which data on this website is extracted) and some stored away in the National Archives waiting for someone with the time and interest in the subject to come along and find them.

Week 23 (June 4-10) Wedding Bells

Wedding Bells frequently lead to some fascinating records and photographs for family historians.  I have been lucky enough to amass quite a collection of family photographs, combining original photos, copied photos, digital photos and slides (any relatives out there please note - I am always happy to swap and share), and these include a number of wedding photos.  I would have to say that my favourite is the wedding photo of my great grandparents James Nicholas Clark and Priscilla Veronica Mulholland.  James and Priscilla married 3 August 1898, almost a year after James's divorce from his first wife Eliza (nee Hawley). 

James Nicholas Clark and Priscilla Veronica Mulholland, 1898

Also acquired from relatives , these from England, were wedding photos of my great aunt Constance Green, daughter of Walter Proctor Green, in 1909.  This was a major event at the family home of 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.

Wedding of Constance Boggis Green, 1909

A few years ago I acquired a neat little device that could attach to my computer and scan old negatives and slides, creating nice digital photos and I spent several weekends busily scanning away, hugely expanding my photo cache.  Many I have waved in front of relatives, seeking details of when, where, what and who, and have made notes on each of as much information as I have.  

My parent's wedding day, scanned from a slide.

 

 
Amongst the old slides and negatives I found when clearing our the family home was a box of over 60 slides from my parents wedding in 1968.  Wedding bells indeed. 

Traces Magazine

Edition 31 of Australian history and genealogy magazine Traces is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue: 

• Beneath the prison floorboards
• Like melons on a vine
• Danger in the bay
• The one that got away
• What’s that thingamajjig?
• From raw data to human stories
• Hazel and Edna Pritchard Sisters of sport
• Inspiration from 1938
• Tavern tasties
• The hidden history of the Brisbane tram network
• The Australiana Fund’s working collection 
• The objects we cherish

 

Website Wednesday - Irish Registry of Deeds Project

The volunteers of the Irish Registry of Deeds Index Project have been hard at work on the project over the past few months, greatly expanding the work already done.

The purpose of this project is to provide finding aids for the records held at the Registry of Deeds in Dublin. There are three sets of indexes produced by the project:

• The main index is building a name index for the memorial transcription books held at the Registry of Deeds
• The grantors index consists of transcriptions of the Registry of Deeds' grantors indexes
• The townland index consists of transcriptions of the Registry of Deeds' townland indexes

Each of these index databases can be searched on a number of fields. None, of course, is complete. Each has those index entries contributed by the project volunteers.

Since the last update, the free online index has expanded to 629,064 entries and the Townland index has grown to 703,835 entries.

The Grantor Index now had 52,757 records indexed and is continuing to expand.

All the Indexes are free to search.

Week 22 (May 28-June 3) Reunion

The theme for Week 22 is 'Reunion', and a family reunion, large or small, can be a wonderful source of information, family stories and photographs for the family historian.  

For whatever the reason - birthdays, weddings, funerals or other special occasions, a major family reunion can be a huge undertaking, especially when the family is large and widespread.  Smaller family reunions, especially with family members visiting from distant locations, can be more intimate and just as special as a huge gathering.

I have been fortunate to have attended a few family gatherings over the years.  Given my early interest in family history, I usually arrived armed with notebook and pen, ready to jot down any interesting stories or unknown facts that came to light during the event.

I also have a number of photographs in my collection from various family gatherings, some of which took place before I was born.  I have commented before that my father was one of 10 children, and that I have only one (somewhat blurry) photograph of all 10 siblings together.

The above photo was taken c1965 and show my father and his brothers and sisters gathered around their father.  And yes, second eldest Ernest (Squib) is standing with a beer bottle balanced on his head, something which always impressed me as a child.

On my mother's side of the family, among my treasured photos are a pair dating from 1947.

Divided into the male and female sides, my mother is 5 years old and standing at the front of the group, with my grandmother Gladys on one side and grandmother Priscilla on the other.

The male group, again featuring matriarch Priscilla, has my grandfather William standing directly behind her.  For many of my aunts and uncles, these are the only images I have of them, so they are precious to me indeed. 

A wonderful legacy of a family reunion.

Website Wednesday - Mapping Women's Suffrage

Do you know if any of your ancestors in Britain were Suffragettes?  The new website Mapping Women's Suffrage may hold the answer for you.

 
The Votes for Women campaign was a long and difficult struggle fought by women and men in cities, towns, and villages right across the country. Mapping Women's Suffrage identifies, plots and records the everyday locations and lives of as many Votes for Women campaigners as possible across England at the height of the suffrage movement in 1911. You can search or click on the suffrage map to find where the campaigners lived, accessing a cache of biographical information, photographs and archive documents about them. 

The suffrage map has been custom built to create user friendly layers of knowledge and learning capturing the whereabouts and the lives of suffrage campaigners and their roles in the votes for women campaign. The map currently enables a range of digitised materials such as photographs, letters and official documents - often scattered across and between different physical and online locations - to be gathered together for each campaigner, centralised and viewed at the place they were living at the time of the government census survey,of 1911. The map also provides tools you can use to filter campaigners on the map by key data about them. This currently includes which suffrage society they supported in 1911, and whether they took part in an organised suffrage boycott of the government census that year. You can also choose whether to view campaigner locations on a current street map, or a historical 1888-1913 Ordinance Survey Map.
 
Each Votes for Women campaigner recorded on the map is denoted by a circular coloured icon or ‘dot’ at the address where they were living in 1911. The suffrage map recognises the contribution of multiple suffrage organisations – both law-abiding suffragists and law-breaking suffragettes - in winning Votes for Women. Therefore, the map colour codes each campaigner icon on the map by which suffrage society they were most active with at that time - purple for WSPU, red for NUWSS, and so on. You can use the side menu tools on screen, to turn on and off campaigner icons on the map, either by suffrage society, and/or by their stance on the census boycott.

The website is still a work in progress as new data is added and the online database grows, but take a look to learn more about the struggle for women's right to vote, and see if your ancestors were involved in the movement.

Growing a strong Family Tree

Genealogy is an exciting journey of discovery, but it’s easy to get caught up in the thrill of the chase. With so many online tools and databases, anyone can start creating their family history instantly – but how many of us pause to ask: does my tree have solid roots?

Jumping to conclusions is one of the quickest ways to build a shaky tree. Many genealogy websites show helpful hints or suggestions, based on similar names, dates, or locations. These can be incredibly helpful, but they also come with the risk of connecting you to the wrong ancestor. It is so, so tempting to accept hints that fit your current data, but doing so without further investigation is extremely risky.

Genealogy websites use advanced algorithms that sift through massive databases to generate their “hints”—suggested records for ancestors that might be connected to your family tree. So, on the surface, these hints seem like a quick way to expand your family tree with minimal effort.  However, there’s always a catch………

The truth is, these “hints” are often far from perfect. The algorithms are incredibly powerful, but they’re still just algorithms. They use complex logic to match names, dates, locations, and other variables, but there’s no guarantee that the hints they generate are actually accurate. We’ve all seen those really helpful online trees with ancestors who died before they were even born! It’s important to remember that these notifications are “hints” not “facts!” You still need to check and verify everything for yourself.

It’s tempting to rely on these hints and shortcut your research, but there’s no such thing as a true shortcut when it comes to family history research. While these hints might suggest a promising lead, they should never replace your own research. Simply attaching a hint without verifying the information can lead you down the wrong path and result in shaky foundations for your tree. Before you add any new information to your tree, double-check the information. Cross-reference census records, birth certificates, wills, or any other historical documents that provide hard evidence. Genealogical research is all about verifying facts, not making assumptions. If you’re unsure about a connection, mark it with a question mark and continue searching for more proof before making it permanent.

The same caution is necessary when viewing existing online trees - it’s important to remember that not all family trees are created with the same care and diligence that yours hopefully will have. Just because someone else has a connection listed doesn’t mean it’s correct, and if you do find some information that conflicts with what you have already discovered, don’t assume they are right and you are wrong. You can politely ask the owner of the tree if they can prove the connection that they have and you can check and verify this against your own known research. I have discovered multiple trees online that connect the same incorrect set of records to an ancestor - all it takes is one person to make an assumption and it seems dozens of others will copy them.

When you research your family’s history, always aim for primary sources—original records that document an event directly. Primary sources provide direct evidence of events and relationships, and they will be the strongest foundation for your research. No record is perfect, and discrepancies are common. The key to building a solid family tree is finding consistency across multiple sources. For example, you might find different spellings of a name in various records, or a few years off on a birth date. This doesn’t automatically mean that the document that you have just discovered is wrong, but if you notice a significant gap in dates or facts that don’t align, it’s a red flag that you need to investigate further. Try keeping a log of discrepancies and focus on resolving them. Sometimes, the answer lies in cross-referencing a wider variety of sources to create a fuller, more accurate picture.  And always remember to record your sources - where you found each fact, so you can retrace your footsteps if necessary and evaluate the authority of your data.

Building a family tree is like constructing a house, it requires a solid foundation. By being diligent, checking your facts, and focusing on verified sources, you can avoid the pitfalls of shaky family trees. Remember, genealogy isn’t a race to fill in the blanks; it’s a process of careful research, critical thinking, and, above all, patience.