Blood. Murder. Torture. Vampirism. Serial killer. Lady Gaga.
A few words that spring to mind when one thinks of Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous Hungarian noblewoman from deepest Transylvania, the home of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What a surprise, then, to find a link within my own family to this infamous murderess …
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Overlooking ancestors or entire lines can easily be done when researching. I find that I am more likely to look at one of my American lines, or my mother’s Holborow family than my father’s English side. That is just personal preference (and the number of people also seriously researching the Holborows is fairly small).
However, there are family lines that rapidly run out of steam due to a lack of records. In this case I wouldn’t so much say they are overlooked as under-represented: if the records were there, I’d be all over them like ants at a picnic. Case in point, my 3 x great-grandmother Mary McMillan/McMillian Payne. She appears from nowhere, married and gives birth and then disappears! Where did she go? Where is her family?
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This shouldn’t be a long post, but I think that I may have blasted through the research quagmire of my Hallidays in Sherston that I mentioned last time. (Soon it’ll be back to business, i.e. more Holborows, more Murrays, some asylum records …)
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I should be preparing for a dinner party (do people still have dinner parties?!) tonight – for which I did a heck load of preparation for yesterday – but instead I am sat here with a messed up foot (we call it a Dom Special – I fell out of my trainer, and also off the edge of my stone path in the garden). It happens on … well, not a regular basis but more often than you’d think a grown adult would fall over (I once fell off the edge of a flip-flop and messed my ankle up, and once I fell over in a flat field and managed to break both my elbow and my wrist).
But I have been re-examining some inherited research again lately. I mentioned it a while ago as it forms part of my Halliday family work which I considered a bit of a done deal. Only … there were a lot of gaps in the data. Dates and no locations. Parents but no baptisms. Spouses and no marriages. You know the drill by now about double-checking everything, and not relying on other people’s research. Well. Egg all over my face.
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This entire post started as an addendum to the end of my previous post (Miss Holborow) as I wanted to add some additional information. However, I thought that it needed its own full post. And so I started to write a bit of a potted history of Nether Street Farm to track ownership and residency over the years. Only it grew legs and … expanded somewhat.
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Do you ever have “Duh! How could I have not seen that?!” moments? No, me neither. Ahem. And of those moments – which I definitely don’t have – this is very much not one of those moments … if you see what I mean!
But it’s a bit of a reminder for me in terms of checking other sources when confronted with brick walls and blind alleys. And nobody needs to be ashamed to have such kicks up the metaphorical behind. It’s a good thing to flex those research muscles.
Even if the result does make you smack your forehead …
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It’s interesting how undertaking new projects forces you to look at your tree and your research in new ways, and show up those pesky holes.
You know – those people who seem to evaporate like mist or (possibly even worse) apparate fully formed in front of you with kids and all but no sense of before.
I have two ladies on my father’s side who are very much of the disappear into nothingness variety. And, I’m not going to lie, it’s frustrating me!
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I am a (relatively) late convert to the wonder that is old newspapers, but I have to say that the British Newspaper Archive is a veritable gold mine when it comes to researching (right up there with Australia’s Trove, and the USA’s Newspapers.com and Library of Congress Newspaper Archive).
On a whim (because I don’t have enough of my own actual family stories to write up and share …), I recently searched for articles featuring the village in which I currently live. In amongst the articles about high pavements*, sewage problems** and upturned tractors***, I found a remarkable one that made my eyebrows reach for my hairline …
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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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I won’t be mad if you quietly sing the Captain Scarlet theme under your breath (but only if you robotically say “and the Mysterons” out loud). Or even Captain Planet, if you’re gonna take pollution down to zero. But I digress. Sometimes you come across people who appear fully-formed in a set of records, whisked into existence as if by magic, because somehow they are where they are, but seem to have been nowhere before this. I suppose you could call this a brick-wall. However, today’s shining example of this isn’t an ancestor of mine – nor I suspect related to me at all – but his story was too extraordinary not to share – in fact, it made the annals of Australian maritime history!
(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 