I wasn’t sure that I had a family history story that met this week’s theme … until I started to review my Holborow ONS entries for the 1851 census and realised I’d missed an entire spelling variant in my search! And – as usual – the Holborows (or Holbrows in this instance) managed to come up trumps – and drive me right round the buggering twist!
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin …
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Fun topic for a mid-week evening quick blog, right?!
I know that I’m not the only one who trawls through newspaper archives searching for mentions of ancestors and other family members. So it was quite the surprise when I first came upon an article – somewhat calmly – stating that a James Holbrow had been killed by an employee of his in Willesden (north west London).
Quite an eye opening find.
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As I’ve said a few times, I’ve taken the opportunity that this year has given me to go over old research and re-evaluate old assumptions that have perhaps niggled the back of my brain over the years but have been ignored due to being low risk. (And so speaks the Project Management Professional in me.)
All I’m saying to that is … oh boy. I might have made a bit of an error. I’ll set it out below and perhaps anyone could let me know their thoughts. I’d be grateful!
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At the end of May I was having a a chat with my friend, fellow researcher, ex-colleague (and self-confessed ‘bad blogger’) Carole from over at Davies of Mold and Ancestry Examiner and we got to discussing the status of certificate ordering from the GRO in the current … environment.
Whilst the website says that certificates shouldn’t be ordered unless for official reasons, I wondered if this was true for PDF versions of birth and death certificates or if ordering them would be a bit of a … dick move. We both decided that as the scans are on a central server, the archivists working from home could access them without too much hassle or – more importantly – risk to themselves or others. And if it was small order then there shouldn’t be a big problem. So I did.
Remember Little Ethelbert? His certs were the ones I ordered, so this post is a little addendum to his story!
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Because I don’t know a) what’s good for me, and b) when to quit, I decided to research all of those pesky Ethelbert Neals to see how – or if – they all connected when added into my tree. As it happened, all of them tied back into ‘my’ Neal lines and did so quite nicely … for the most part.
Until, that is, a transatlantic voyage cropped up.
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I’m slightly surprised that I haven’t written a post dedicated to my mother’s maternal grandparents here yet. Why am I surprised? Partly because my great-grandmother, Edith, was the oldest person I ever knew as a child. Or at least that I remember knowing.
She also had the most amazing puff of white hair that I’d ever seen.
But who was she, and what about her husband, Joe, who died two years before I was born?
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So here we are at the third and final Ethelbert post (part 1 here, part 2 here). I mentioned previously that a lot of my Ethelberts were related to the Neal family who were, for a long time, resident in and around the Wiltshire village of Sherston. Thankfully, Sherston is one of those parishes that hasn’t suffered a great loss of it’s parish registers, and that Wiltshire is one of the top counties (obviously I have to say that!) for scanning and transcribing records: the registers are available at FindMyPast, Ancestry and FamilySearch. Top notch. Especially as these often include both the original parish registers AND the Bishops Transcripts, which sometimes include additional information and/or spellings of names. All to the good!
Another bonus is the availability online of a lot of Wiltshire Wills. In fact, back in the day, there used to be a site called the Wiltshire Wills Project (a longer blog post of theirs makes for a very interesting read – many thanks to Jane Silcocks and team for all of their hard work!). This has now all been incorporated into the work done at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, which has also meant that the images are available at Ancestry – and have been pretty key in unpicking some of the Neal(e) lines and their love of repeating the same set of names (Roger, Daniel, Francis amongst them).
But onward to the Ethelberts …!
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Recently I’ve been delving into the Ethelberts in my tree – a master post about them will be coming in the next couple of weeks (so that’s something to look forward to) – and I found something rather unexpected, hence this post first rather than the main post!
One thing I do love about genealogy is the never-ending possibility for surprises. And sometimes those surprises are a lot closer than you think …
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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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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.
(more…)A story a day keeps the boredom away: SF and Fantasy story reviews
family history research and stories
Site of the Holborow One Name Study!
Unlocking the Door to Your Past
Family History and Genealogy
The Family Mess 