Despite cancelling the Find My Past subscription I have been continuing to procrastinate from my important historical task. My list of connected ancestors on my family tree has risen to 387 people as I discovered a new-to-me Young relation, based in Sheerness. This took me on a wonderful trip down the rabbit hole and I added several interesting characters to my family tree.
So I have not had time to download any of my existing records. Better luck next week.
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Posted in research tips
How is it Week 4 already? The weeks are flying by and I’m completely sidetracked as usual thanks to Find My Past. As well as the discovery of my grandfather’s First World Service I discovered that the site has some great parish records. I discovered the Catholic baptisms of my grandfather and his older brother at St John’s Cathedral in Portsmouth. The entries were in Latin!
I was hoping to find an entry for their parents’ marriage so trawled the marriage register for St John’s Cathedral from 1890-1896 but didn’t find any entries. So that remains a mystery for now. I’m pretty sure they must have married between the 1891 census and their first child was born in May 1896 so they must have married before September 1895.
I tried to cancel my Find My Past subscription before they charged me £183 and they extended my access for 3 days. So far I have found some new to me burial entries in Portsmouth cemeteries, hopefully I will find a few more facts before my access runs out.
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Posted in Find My Past
Last night I was very excited to email my mum to tell her about my latest family history discovery. Although I am supposed to be concentrating on downloading all my certificates and documents from Ancestry for some reason I have gone completely off track this week.
I signed up to a 7-day free trial of Find My Past in the hope I could find the marriage of my paternal great-grandparents, Mansel Young and Catherine Carroll. The site has changed a lot since I last logged in, and it feels more like Ancestry.
Anyway, I filled in a basic tree and it gave me a hint for my grandfather Henry Young during the First World War. I had always assumed that he was too young to serve in the War and I assumed that the ‘On War Service’ badge which came to me on the death of my grandmother may have belonged to him.
Henry Young was a common name at the time but I thought I would click through the suggested First World War service records. Imagine my surprise when I saw a record for Henry Young living in Woodland Street, Portsmouth, the very same street the family were living in at the time of the 1901 census! The records were from the Burnt Records series, so very few survived – they give a great deal of information which I would dearly love to know about his brother, Alfred Young.
I carried on reading through the documents but found the age was a year out (age 19 in 1915). However, the occupation was given as outfitter at Read & Co, Osborne Road, Portsmouth which seemed familiar to me.
I did a little more digging and fact checking:
Then I dug out the few photos I have of my grandfather as a young man and noticed he was wearing uniform. There are only 2 photos of him, and one of his brother, I assumed they were of the same person. Although the uniform is standard now I can see that the cap badges look different.
Anyway I wrote and told my mum this and she pinged me straight back as she already knew this, and thought I knew it too!
We don’t have anything about his war service, his medals are no longer around and my mum thinks my grandmother may have given these away at some point.
So, I guess my point is never to assume anything because you are probably wrong, and also use as many documents as you have to cross check facts.
Posted in First World War, Young family
Actually nothing to report this week as there has been no progress at all. I need to make some time for this as I really want to cancel my Ancestry subscription and spend the money on something else. The list of people is still at 321. I have done 28% so far.
I have been enjoying listening to the recordings from the Stage 1 Family History course run by the Society of Genealogists.
I need to complete my little project as soon as I can!
Posted in research tips
A major new collection of Home Children records has launched today on family tree website, Findmypast, which will allow millions of descendants of British Home Children to trace their ancestors for free – many for the first time.
Created in collaboration with organisations across the UK and Canada, including The National Archives, The British Library, Library and Archives Canada, and Home Children Canada, the new collection features a vast and varied range of records which tell the stories of those who were part of the forced child migrant scheme in place from the 1860s up to the 1970s.
The collection, launched at Rootstech, will be a growing repository with records added on an ongoing basis. It currently includes workhouse records, Juvenile Inspection Reports, Home Children Board of Guardian Records and emigration reports, while future updates are likely to see historical newspapers, migration records, workhouse and institutional records, periodicals and military records added.
Over 130,000 children, now known as ‘British Home Children’, were sent across the Commonwealth, in particular to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Only 12% of these children were ‘true orphans’ – many came from charitable homes, workhouses, or destitute and struggling families. They were usually fostered into families when they reached their destinations to be used as unpaid domestic or farming labour.
However, abuse was widespread in a system which offered little protection to the children and few investigations into the care they received from their foster families. Many were relocated several times during their childhood, and often separated from their siblings.
Historically, descendants of Home Children have struggled to trace their roots, with most records held in private archives and inaccessible to the public. This collection will provide an open-access, centralised set of resources for descendants to trace their forced migrant ancestors back to the UK and their birth families and add them directly to their family tree on Findmypast.
Discover the collection for free on Findmypast: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/page/british-home-children
Posted in research tips
So last week I wrote a little update about my progress with saving and organising my historical documents. It’s time for my Week 2 update!
We were away over half term which meant less time for family history. However I still managed to keep working my way through my list of ancestors. I finished the C ancestors: Carew, Caswell, Choules, Clutterbuck, Cole, Croker and Cuthbertson.
I got a little side tracked and my current total of people of this family tree is 321 people so it has gone up a little.
You may be interested in other updates:
Week 1
Posted in research tips
