Collaborative genealogy - the way forward (or should that be back?)

One of the most interesting talks we went to at WDYTYAL was Laurence Harris' talk on collaborative genealogy.

The subject matter really appealed to me as I believe collaborative research brings great results that benefit all, and I wanted to find out more about platforms such as My Heritage (where Laurence is Head of Genealogy, UK) and Geni who embrace the idea of social genealogy and collaboration.

I use Ancestry mainly and I find that fairly collaborative - that is, I can search other people with ancestors in common, see their trees and add information and photos from their tree whilst they can do the same with mine.

I know that some people don't like the idea of collaborative research for lots of reasons but the most common one is that other people will "steal" your work. Whilst I think it is bad netiquette to copy large chunks of research without making contact with the person or acknowledging their work, I don't think that makes open trees a bad thing.

For me the best thing about genealogy is when you find some information that relates to your ancestors and you feel that rush of excitement of seeing their handwriting or reading a document about them. And with more people than ever before interested in family history, it makes sense that a lot more people sharing their knowledge on a particular family branch makes for some brilliant breakthroughs which would not be possible if everyone decided to not collaborate or share information!

There is also the fact that as well as gaining information, you can also gain some new friends - long lost distant cousins who have ancestors in common with you who share your hobby. Result!

I have exchanged emails with several people who have made contact with me after seeing we share a branch of our tree online. Similarly, I have contacted several people after seeing that they are related to one of my ancestors (and are therefore related to me). Through this contact I have been able to find out much more about my ancestors than names and dates on a tree can ever tell you. I have discovered interesting anecdotes, family rumours and sad stories of everyday life that doesn't show up on any census return. I have been able to get a picture (either literally or figuratively) of people I know little more about than a date and place of birth and I have been able to exchange information freely knowing that we all share a common goal - to find out where we have come from.

Collaborative research doesn't have to just be restricted to people to whom you are distantly related of course - relatives you know well have lots of information to share and are happy to do so, and as genealogists we are used to informing our family of what we have recently uncovered. This is all collaborative research at its most basic level.

Thanks to the internet there is also the opportunity to post questions online for others to answer. You may not know an awful lot about Tithe maps but you can bet someone on Twitter or RootsChat is an expert - meaning that you can move further forward in your research. 

Since returning from WDYTYAL I have uploaded my gedcom file to My Heritage to see how the platform performs, and I have registered with Geni whose aim is to make one giant world family tree which shows how we are all connected. It's early days yet and I don't know enough about them to comment on how effective they are for collaborative research, but I definitely think that working together is the way forward.

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Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2014

Well it was last year's Who do You Think You Are Live (WDYTYAL) which encouraged me to start a family history blog and have a dedicated Twitter account for my genealogy (I was previously just using my personal Twitter account), so it is apt that the last few days not only saw me return to WDYTYAL but also tweet a lot about the event and make my 500th tweet on my familytreenat account!

We went to WDYTYAL for two of the three days and despite intending to book a hotel I forgot resulting in us travelling into London for two days which was just as expensive as a trip abroad thanks to extortionate early morning train fares and meant we were a little sleepy at times! Oh well, you live and learn - next year it's definitely a staying nearby event.

Day 1 seemed much busier than Day 2 but both days had a fair crowd. There seemed to be slightly less exhibitors this year but with those who were there having much bigger and better stands.

More space was used upstairs too this year, with a special World War 1 area commemorating the WW1 centenary with exhibitors such as the Imperial War Museum who previewed their Lives of WW1 project.

We attended several talks over the two days including two celebrity theatre talks - one with Natasha Kaplinsky (who looked just as pretty and glossy as she does on TV) who is still coming to terms with her WDYTYA episode revelations eight years after it was filmed and one with Larry Lamb which was very interesting as he shared the stage with the executive producer of the show and the producer and director of his episode who were able to explain the WDYTYA process in more depth.

The other talks we went to covered subjects such as Ancestors Homes, Collaborative family tree research and Scottish Asylums amongst others.

There was lots of opportunities to try out different platforms with all the big players (Ancestry, FindMyPast, the Genealogist, Genes Reunited, My Heritage & Deceased Online) represented and row upon row of stalls - family history societies, book stalls, map sellers and anything else you could ever need for your research.

There was also deals to be had and leaflets to be collected - alongside freebies such as pens, pencils, notebooks and post-it notes.

There seemed to be more seating upstairs for research too which was good - not only for researching, but also for a sit down. Two days of walking around Olympia is very tiring on your feet!

Once again we were amongst the younger clientèle (more about that in another post) but there was a mix of people attending.

I have come home with my family tree interest suitably stimulated and am looking forward to trying out some of the new resources I have discovered through the show. Now - what hotels are good for next year...?

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The war-time photo that led to a well-known war correspondent!

Since starting my family tree journey, I have made contact with several members of my extended, distant family - long lost cousins and new found ones too.

Some have been found online via forums with a shared research interest or tree, some offline via family address books or more random objects.

Whilst at a great aunts house earlier this year looking at photos, a photo of two young boys in the 1940s jumped out at me. The photo was encased in plastic which made me laugh as it looked like the very modern "photogifts" you can now buy from online photo specialists such as Photobox - an item that was clearly way ahead of it's time, as a novel gift.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that there was a postcard on the back of the photo which contained a hand-written message - "With love to Uncle Bert & Auntie Daisy. From Chris and Peter". Bert & Daisy were my great grandparents, and if you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that they feature quite a lot as I knew them as a child, and they are the oldest link to the past that I have.

My great aunt confirmed that the two boys were her cousins, and that she was still in touch with the older of the two (Chris) and they exchanged Christmas cards. "I've got his address if you want it?" she said, and of course I did.

I wrote to Chris, my Nan's elder cousin and enclosed a copy of the photo. He wrote back and said that he could remember it being taken and he had a copy of the same photo at home. It had been taken, he said, by his kind billetters during the war, who looked after him and his brother after they were evacuated. They had had some copies of the photos encased in plastic as one of them worked in a plastics factory and sent them to family members.

Chris also told me that he was just about to publish his memoirs based on his life as a journalist, and mentioned that I would probably enjoy the opening chapter of the book about his early life.

Now, many years before, my Nan had mentioned her cousin who was a journalist. I was just about to start studying journalism and radio at college, and she said "One of my cousins was a journalist. Very good he was". That was it. What she didn't mention was that he was a very successful war correspondent called Christopher Dobson!

So, I got the book on Amazon and Chris was right - I loved the info in the first chapter about his mum's family (including a bit about "Uncle Bert" - my great granddad!). It was amazing to read about people who I only know as names on a tree or faces in a group photo, and find out more about their character, and as Chris is a little older than my great aunts he can obviously remember a lot more about their grandparents. 

As I told Chris in a subsequent email, I also loved the rest of the book as even without the family connection, it was a great read! A story of old school journalism about a grammar school boy from the Miles buildings in Marylebone in some of the world's most dangerous war zones - an amazing life where danger always lurked. The book can be found here on Amazon.

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Reuniting and reconnecting with family through genealogy

I wrote a post a few months ago about finding some of my mum's relatives on Facebook and how after getting in touch with one of them, she had put me in touch with another cousin who had sent me a wealth of family history information collected over time.

We have shared emails, letters and photos over the last six months so there was one thing left to do - meet up. This wasn't easy to arrange as I felt it important my mum came along too as the link between me (her daughter) and the relatives (her cousins), but I work Monday to Friday and my mum works weekends so we had to find a date we could all be available. We then had to check my mum's cousins were free on the same date, which luckily they were.

So, last weekend we (me, my husband, my mum and my sister) all went to Northampton where my mum's cousins now live to meet them. I was nervous about the trip as I only knew these people through email, letter and telephone and my mum hadn't seen them in close to forty years. But after we had been there a short while, it was like we had known them forever!

It was particularly nice to see my mum reconnecting with people she had last seen as a teenager - people who shared the same grandparents as her and had memories of her and her siblings growing up. The weirdest thing of all was how much my mum looked like one of her cousins, and her cousins daughter. There was definitely a strong family resemblance between them, and not just in looks but in mannerisms too. That fascinated me as it was another example of why family history interests me so much - the fact that some things are inexplicably genetic.

My mum (centre) reunited with two cousins after nearly forty years!

The day went really quickly and we all plan to meet up again soon as there wasn't much time for family history chat. But it was a really nice day, and another reminder of why reconnecting with your past can often bring benefits to the here and now.

Coincidentally, the cousin who we visited lives just a few miles from where a branch of my Dad's family originated on the Northants canals. So next time we visit Northampton there is a whole other branch of the family tree to investigate!

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Happy anniversary to Bert & Daisy (AKA "Nanny & Grandad Payne")

Today would have been my great grandparent's 83rd wedding anniversary and I think that's worthy of a blog post!

Daisy Howard married Albert Norrie Payne on 29 September 1930. Daisy was 19 and Albert (known as "Bert) was only slightly older at 20.

They married at Willesden Register office before setting up home together a stones throw away from the place they were wed and going on to have four daughters, the second eldest of whom was my Nan.

Daisy did a series of factory jobs throughout her life as well as brining up the couples' daughters whilst Bert spent most of his working life "on the railway".

By the time I was born they were in their seventies and were still living in Willesden in a house they had lived in since just after the second world war. They were cosy and warm and spent most of their time at home at this point, although Nanny Payne did like to sometimes venture round to the bingo hall and Grandad Payne would visit the betting shop on a daily basis. In fact, whenever we visited, Nanny Payne's first words to us would inevitably be "He's 'round the corner", meaning he was in William Hill's.

Nanny Payne made a mean victoria sponge, sprinkled with sugar on the top. Grandad Payne cooked too (unusual for a man of his age I guess, but presumably a skill he had learnt during the war years), and his mashed potato was legendary and the nicest I have ever tasted - largely due to the half a block of butter he would use!

As they approached their eighties their health deteriorated meaning Nanny Payne could no longer go to the Granada bingo hall, but Grandad Payne somehow still managed to get to the betting office, even after a big operation that people thought would end his daily betting office trip.

In September 1990 they celebrated their Diamond wedding anniversary with an afternoon party at their house in Roundwood Road and a telegram from the Queen (that was proudly displayed for all to see). Then the cancer he thought had gone returned to Grandad Payne and he spent a lot of time in and out of hospital before finally dying in October 1992 at Park Royal Hospital, following another operation. Nanny Payne died just nine months later in the same hospital and whilst a long explanation was given on her death certificate, we all knew what she had really died of - a broken heart.

So, sixty two and a half years after their marriage they were reunited and back together like they belonged. And twenty years later, having found out more about their lives than I could have imagined during their lifetime and having realised how few people know their great-grandparents, I'm more pleased than ever that I knew them.

September 1990 - Brent Chronicle

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The wartime will of Private John Howard

As soon as I heard that the wills of 230,000 WW1 soldiers have been made available online for the first time by Her Majesty's Court & Tribunal Service (HMCTS), there was one I knew I needed to search for - Private John Howard of the 23rd Batallion of The Royal Fusiliers (City of London regiment).

John Howard was the older brother of my great nan, Daisy Payne (nee Howard) and like many thousands of others, he went to fight on the front line during WW1 and never returned.

I remember my great nan telling me when I was little that one of her brothers had died in the great war when she was a little girl and when I started to research my family tree a few years ago, it was one of the first stories I set about investigating. 

I discovered that John was killed in France & Flanders in 1918 as the brutal war came to an end, and he is commemorated on the Arras war memorial in France, which I hope to one day visit.  He was 22, and his family were devastated to receive news of his death. My great Nan was just seven when her brother died, and a few years later her mum died too (another story for another day).

So, as soon as the wills became available, I searched his name and hoped that he was there. As the site had only just gone live, there were some teething problems and for the first few days I was unable to order John's will from the HMCTS website, but eventually it worked!

For £6.00, you can order a digital copy to be sent to you. The website emails you when the will is available to view and warns you that this can take up to ten days. Luckily for impatient old me, I only had to wait two days - but it still felt like a long wait! Once available you can download the document s much as you like for 31 days.

Many of the wills released have had letters attached - a last message for family that was never passed on due to security concerns. I really wanted John's paperwork to have a letter enclosed but unfortunately there was just a will when I downloaded it.

As he was so young with no real belongings, the will is short and just says that he leaves all of his property and belongings to his mother ("Mrs Howard of Priory Park Road, Kilburn"). But there is still something very poignant about seeing that written on an official document and imagining it being read to his mother.

As we approach the 100th anniversary next year of the outbreak of WW1, it is as important as ever to remember the sacrifices made my so many like John Howard and the wills make them that little more "real" as ancestors. The digitisation is a fab project and I would recommend anyone with WW1 soldiers in their tree search the available wills here.

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For Northern social history, The Beamish is the museum to beat!

I’m a big fan of museums – I have been since I was a child. They are a great place to learn about a subject and wander around on a Sunday afternoon. 

But since I have become interested in family history, I have realised that they are as important as documents, archives and record offices in telling a story and often “fill in the gaps” around a certain subject. They also provide context and a wider description of an area or historical timeframe.

No visit to the North of England would be complete without a trip to the Beamish Museum, described as “the living museum of the North”, so we pencilled in a trip whilst we were in the North East.

Situated between Newcastle and Durham, the museum is much more than you would expect from the word museum. It is set over several acres of open countryside and is actually a series of small villages and buildings that recreate a time gone by in fantastic detail so that you can walk around and totally immerse yourself in the rich history of the North.

Particularly of interest to my family history research was a recreation of a colliery and pit village – you could smell the coal by the colliery and sense the danger that lay underground and then go into the immaculate terraced houses of the pit workers and their families. The houses were very cosy!

Colliery at The Beamish Museum

There was also an opportunity to visit the Edwardian town and browse the shops such as the Co-Op and sweet shop whilst admiring Suffragette posters that called for women to have the vote.

Some vintage transport can take you between the sights at the museum, or you can walk around the paths leisurely and enjoy the magnificent views of the Durham countryside. We walked around mainly, before boarding an old fashioned Blackpool tram to take us back to the museum entrance.

Vintage transport at The Beamish Museum

At £17.50 for an adult ticket (10.00 for children, with a family ticket also available), entrance to the museum isn’t cheap but you can return free throughout the next 12 months (if you live near enough to do so!) and there is enough to do and see to warrant a full day out.

Like all good museums there is a well stocked gift shop for both souvenirs of your visit and historical books and DVDs, as well as a restaurant and tea room for refreshments. We got the “Waggonway” bus from Newcastle city centre which took around 40 minutes but did give us a 25% discount on our entrance to the museum. Also luckily for me, it took us through Lanchester (another place on my ancestral trail!). There is also ample car parking available at the museum.

The Beamish Museum was a favourite stop on our trip and I would recommend it to anyone who has Northern ancestors or is looking to learn more about Northern social history. Both young and old would enjoy the museum and as long as the weather is OK, you would have a great time.

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