Who Do You Think You Are Magazine

The latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue : 

• Historic newspapers The best websites for discovering if your family made headlines
• Transcription Tuesday Join us for our virtual volunteer event
• Theatrical ancestors Tracing ancestors with a connection to the stage
• Methodist records The best websites
• Reader story Katherine Langford's ancestor fought at D-Day
• Around Britain East Sussex family history
• And more.....
  

Week 41 (Oct. 7-13): Most

The prompt for Week 41 is 'Most', and Like last week's theme of 'Least' it is a prompt that is open to interpretation.  The most children in one family?  The most spouses to one individual?  Most likely to succeed (or fail)?  Most confusing family relationship?

In the end I have chosen a combination of most spouses and most confusing relationship, both titles would have to belong to Thomas May, my 3xGreat Grandfather.  Thomas married a total of 5 times, losing several wives in childbirth.

Thomas May was born 20 September 1762 in West Mersea, Essex and was baptised 16 October 1762 at the church of St Peter and St Paul.  He died on 27 February 1843 in West Mersea and was buried on 7 March 1843.  He outlived all 5 wives.

Wife 1 – Elizabeth Godwin
Born 1763 Thorrington, Essex
Married 27 March 1787 Thorrington, Essex
Died 25 August 1790 West Mersea, Essex
Children – Thomas, Edward

Wife 2 – Sarah Sadler
Born 1775 West Mersea, Essex
Married 1792 West Mersea, Essex
Died 7 January 1799 West Mersea, Essex
Children – Betsey (Elizabeth), Sarah, Hannah, John Tickell

Wife 3 – Henrietta Stevens
Born Unknown
Married 12 May 1801 St Mary, Lambeth, Surrey
Died 2 May 1812 West Mersea
Children – Henry John, Mary

Wife 4 – Susannah Balls Green
Born 7 June 1770 West Bergholt, Essex
Married 10 November 1818 Fordham, Essex
Died 11 February 1828 West Mersea, Essex
Children - Nil

Wife 5 – Mary Ann Pullen
Born 13 October 1791 West Mersea, Essex
Married 9 August 1829 West Mersea, Essex
Died 1838 West Mersea, Essex
Children – Edward, Sophia Mary Ann

It is his 4th wife, Susannah Green (nee Balls), where the relationships become truly convoluted.  Susannah's son Isaac (from her first husband John Green) was married to Thomas's eldest daughter Betsy (Elizabeth).  So Thomas became not only father-in-law but also step-father to Isaac, and his new wife Susannah became mother-in-law and step-mother to Betsy.

Trove Tuesday

It is always a fantastic feeling to find proof of a family story, and this week Trove has given me just that.

My father was fond of telling the story of how, during the 1956 flood, the sheep station 'Para' on which he worked was completely surrounded by water for several months.  Despite the flood, life had to continue, looking after the stock, feeding and shearing, and so on.  With all roads in and out cut, however, there was no way to deliver the wool clip to Wentworth or Mildura for sale.  So, according to my father, the station went 'old school' and hired the paddle steamer Success to ship the wool in.

The attempt almost met with disaster.  At one stage a tow rope broke and the barge almost collided with the Mildura-Wentworth bridge.  It was only at the last moment before impact that a rope was successfully thrown across from the Success to the barge to reestablish control.  My father was involved in loading the wool onto the barge and was one of the hands on board during the trip.  An interesting side note - Dad couldn't swim a stroke.

The article above was printed in the Western Herald on 18 July 1969, and tells of the trip in September 1956 which was likely the last such trip on the Darling, carrying wool from Para Station for sale.

A family story proven!

Churchwardens Accounts of England and Wales

The listings in the Churchwardens' Accounts database feature every known church together with any chapels of ease and private chapels found mentioned in printed books and documents, along with the dedication, diocese, archdeaconry, and deanery of each wherever possible. There is also an indication of the population, taken from the Hearth Tax Returns and an early nineteenth century census. Further information will be added as it is gathered – including bibliographic information for each parish.

The search for surviving churchwardens’ accounts has been carried out by visiting all County Record Offices, Local History Libraries, and a few museums. This includes the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight but not the Channel Islands although information provided by the Guernsey and Jersey Record Offices is listed in the database. The accounts that have been located, have been examined and each year of survival is listed with, wherever possible, the total expenditure of each year.

Although the main purpose of this website is to give details of original sources, a search has been made for both modern and antiquarian publications with transcripts and extracts from the churchwardens’ accounts. This information is shown on the appropriate parish pages.

A wonderful resource to help locate a significant part of our ancestors' lives.

Week 40 (Sept. 30 - Oct. 6): Least

This week's prompt of 'Least' has required a bit of thought.  What area of my family history do I know the least about?  And why?

The answer would probably have to be immigration records.  It is an area in which I have always had difficulty finding information, and several branches of my family seem to have swum their way to Australia.

Why can shipping records be so problematic?  Over the years, I have found a number of issues with shipping and immigration records.

Firstly, I need to consider alternate spelling of the passenger’s name.  These were times when literacy levels were low, and often our ancestors were not the ones who actually recorded their name.  It was the officials – the secretary, clerk, shipping or immigration official, etc who filled in the records, and they frequently wouldn’t stop to ask about spelling, or even check they had heard a name correctly.  Some people also used as alias for a variety of reasons, making their records difficult – or impossible – to find.

If the person travelled in steerage/was an unassisted immigrant/was a crew member who jumped ship, the details recorded about them may be scant or non-existent.  Females, children, servants and steerage passengers were frequently left off the passenger lists altogether.  It is also worth noting that prior to 1852, ship's masters were not required to record the names of unassisted passengers travelling from Britain to the Australian colonies.

Did our ancestors migrate in stages?  Not everyone went straight from A to B – some visited other points along the way, sometimes taking years to arrive at their final destination.  My Clark family, for example, migrated from Bristol, England and settled in St Kilda, Victoria.  I searched for their immigration records in Victoria for years – until, almost by accident, I discovered that they originally arrived in Australia at Launceston, Tasmania.  They lived in the nearby Tasmanian settlement of Port Sorrell for at least 6 years before making the journey across Bass Strait to the mainland and settling in St Kilda.  I had been searching in the wrong state.

Finally, not all records have survived the passage of time and remained legible.  It could be that the records we are seeking simply haven’t survived, or a damaged or faded beyond legibility.

So, for a variety of reasons, immigration records are my least successful are of research.

Trove Tuesday

Death notices, funeral notices and obituaries are among the many useful offerings in the newspaper archive, and whenever I am lucky enough to find such notices they prove a wonderful addition to my records.  Of course not everyone who died had such notices in the papers.  Families had to pay for them, and for many it was beyond their means.  It is always worth checking, however, to see what might be available.

When my great grandfather James Nicholas Clark passed away in 1924 there were two death notices inserted in the newspaper - one from his family and one from the Masonic Lodge of which he was a member. 

Had it not been for this Masonic notice, I would never have known that James was a Mason.  It is also worth noting the spelling error - the heading of the Masonic notice has CLARG, not CLARK.  The family notice also gives me his occupation - Overseer at Brighton City Council, and both notices give his address and the cemetery in which his grave is located.

Populations Past

Populations Past allows users to create and view maps of different demographic measures and related socio-economic indicators every 10 years between 1851 and 1911. These include fertility, childhood mortality, marriage, migration status, household compositions, age-structure, occupational status and population density. Brief explanations of each measure are included, indicating how they are calculated and explaining how they relate to other measures. 

Users can zoom in to a particular area on the map to compare side by side maps of different times or measures. When large areas are viewed the data for England and Wales are displayed in Registration Districts (RDs), but the display changes to Registration Sub-Districts (RSDs) when the users zoom in. Scottish data are only available at RD level, although the team have created smaller subdivisions for the larger cities. The data for the smallest geographical units underlying the maps can be downloaded using an 'export' button.

The website covers England, Wales and Scotland.