Author: Dominic

I like to write. I like to create worlds and mould people. I possibly like the creating and the backstory more than the story-telling .... I also enjoy photography, and am still learning. I prefer 'raw' photographs - I don't feel drawn to any kind of manipulation, but that may changes. My other main passion in life is genealogy.

Holborow in Australia 1: From Wales with Love

One of my long-standing genealogical projects is to create a one-name study of the surname Holborow (variously Holbrow, Holborrow, Holb(o)rough and many transcription errors such as Holbron …). My first step in this has been to document every Holborow event documented in Australia. Why Australia? I couldn’t tell you. Because it’s less than the UK and more than the US? Possibly.

I soon found, thanks to Ancestry and the various state archives (special shout out to Libraries Tasmania, but we’ll get there), National Archives of Australia and the brilliant Trove website with its digitisation of newspapers, that there were only a handful of primary progenitors of historic Holborows in Australia. There are a few outliers, a few arrivals who didn’t leave much of a trace, but plenty of stories to tell: we’ve got mayors, we’ve got murder, we’ve got mystery (and, yes, we’ve got a convict…).

But first, we’ve got Wales …

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52 Ancestors: Favorite Discovery

This marks my inaugural post in this year’s 52 Ancestors prompt series, as devised by Amy Johnson Crow. I’m a bit late in starting, but that’s not going to stop me!

This prompt – Favorite Discovery – struck a chord with me as I have had a few solid discoveries that have had me sitting back in my chair. After all, I’ve been doing this for over 25 years – it’d worry me if I hadn’t!

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Eddie Taplin, His First Wife & Her First Husband …

It’s funny what becomes the root cause of a post of mine. Sometimes it’s a new piece of research that solves an old mystery, maybe a new record set becomes available shedding new light on a family – or sometimes it can be something a bit more unexpected.

For example, this one. A few days into the New Year my mum messaged me saying that my father (who has never really been hugely interested in the family history) had asked about Grampy Eddie’s first wife and did I know anything about her. Of course I did, I swiftly replied, and sent her what I knew. Only, it turned out that what I knew wasn’t exactly the truth …

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Rounding Out Hicks

Taking a look back at my recent posts, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I have a sudden yen for two-part posts. This isn’t entirely the truth, but as I’ve made corrections to my family tree, I’ve discovered other family that warrant a call out. Hence I am back again with more information on the new, extended Hicks family thanks to Charlotte Hicks.

Its longer coming than I originally hoped for – I’ve been busy working on (read: avoiding completely) the first year of my Masters in Creative Writing – but I thought that I should close off the Hicks family for now …

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Of Hicks and Half-Truths

Lately I’ve been going over my old research and either adding to it, solving the odd mystery or just plain correcting mistakes. Some of those mistakes were mine to make, but some were inherited – although the onus is still on me (and all of us) to check the veracity of this borrowed information. One such mistake has been my focus this week, up in the Wiltshire / Gloucestershire borders.

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Frank Cartlidge and the Women He Loved

I have previously introduced you all to the wonder that was my husband’s great-grandfather, Ernest Arthur Cartlidge, and his foray into acting. He and his wife, Edith, had two children – one being my husband’s grandmother, Winifred Elizabeth Alice Cartlidge. This post is about her brother, Frank Alfred Cartlidge, and the ladies in his life ….

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Cottle + Halliday = Mystery … Solved?

There are many people and subjects that I could blog about within my own family or that of my husband. Long-standing mysteries, interesting stories that reflect the changing faces of our society, family members that are not connected in any way, shape or form with the Halliday family. So you’ll be pleased to note that this post is absolutely about the Halliday family and some new-found members – an entire branch of them!

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The Death of Ann Robins

This is somewhat of an addendum to my last post about Ann Robins, and it’s primarily down to some sterling work by an Archivist at Gloucestershire Archives.

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Of Robins, Potter & Pagington – Oh my!

My mother has very fond memories of her great-grandmother, Harriet Hurcombe (nee Robins), and they were very close. It was Harriet and her husband, Alfred William Hurcombe (grandson of the infamous Ann Halliday), who moved the family from Leighterton in Gloucestershire to the area around Devizes in Wiltshire in the late 1920s/early 1930s.

Early in my research I came across a puzzle in Harriet’s tree – and it remains only half solved!

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Charlotte Kew – Part Two

So continuing on from my initial introduction of Charlotte Kew and the location of her baptism, what else did the records have in store for me? And what of the mentions of her in the various local court records? What could that tell me of Charlotte?

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