Latest News

For anyone who finds their way here, my apologies that the promised development has not materialised yet – but I have not given up – it’s in transition and WILL eventually emerge anew.

If you have arrived on the trail of Alcester ancestors, then you may find these links interesting and useful:

Website of the Alcester & District Local History Society

Alcester Town website – Alcestrians Reunited Forum 

Latest update and new names on GenClub

Just a quick couple of additions to the site this week to maintain growth at some level – all relevant to Alcester researchers:

New Research Interests:  Hutton family of Haselor & Alcester;  Field family of Coughton, Gt Alne, Alcester & Haselor; Nibletts family of Alcester; Mary Skillitt of Alcester (m. Geo. Field, Alcester 20th August 1791)

Alcester/Miscellany:  a few more 18th Century Alcester names found the PPP  website:

AVERILL; CARE; HAINES; HARVEY; HITCHCOX; HOBBINS; JEFFCOTE; PURTON; SARSONS; STANLEY; THOMPSON; TRUSTED; WEBB; WOODWARD;

 

Please visit www.GenClub.co.uk for full details.

 

 

Just in case anyone is still out there ………

Just in case anyone is still visiting here, watching & waiting for the promised updates, I’m afraid it is all still an ongoing project and life just keeps conspiring to hold me back from progressing with the promised GenClub site redesign and build.

It IS going forward though – it’s just not obvious or accessible just yet!  It’s true that I’ve had to prioritise another side of my life in recent months, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.  I am working consistently on building and creating new research content, and if you are hanging in there with me, then I hope you’ll eventually be rewarded with something useful that will help take your own research forward.

With my techno expertise unavoidably focussed elsewhere at the moment, I am working on a series of index projects that aim to bring you obscure biographical details about your ancestors – flesh on the bones stuff – that might be difficult to find ordinarily.  A great deal of this sort of thing exists in various published tomes, but usually they lack the essential ingredient for us:  a name index, or in some cases any index at all.  This is where I come in.  I look out for items of interest in the library, at car boots and charity shops – then I create a simple name and context index, with a view to looking up and providing the detail for anyone who can’t track down a copy.

With the new site taking so much longer than planned I may start by publishing some excerpts here if it is going to be much longer.  Watch this space!

If you are reading this, do leave a comment so that I know whether or not to post more here before the new site launches – this not likely to be before the winter now .

In the mean time – I wish you all Good Hunting!

Joy

Site of the Week 19th January 2008

This will be a short review, but for a very important site.  Medaltracker is a companion website to Token Publishing’s medal collectors magazine ‘Medal News’. 

Many of us, as we search for the real people that were our ancestors, will find information on their exploits and achievements, both military and otherwise, among the records.  Many of these will have been acknowledged by the presentation of a medal, which sadly may have been sold during hard times or simply lost, one way or another. This site offers the opportunity,  if you know a medal was awarded but don’t know its whereabouts, to post details of both medal and recipient in its searchable list.  Most traders and collectors will research the background to medals in their collections, so the idea of medaltracker is that they can see that information is sought and then, whether the medal is for sale or not, report information about its whereabouts etc. so that family researchers can have access to that, even if they are unable to obtain the medal.

I had hoped to find that there were two lists – one of medals sought and one of those on sale or held, but this was not the case.  Although it would be wonderful to have such a central tracking tool, it would be rather difficult to maintain accurately I suppose, given the number of times some items change hands.

However – the Heirlooms Reunited page on GenClub will continue to list medals for sale when found, along with all the other items, and this is still a free service.  If you are a collector or trader – or know of one – do let me have details of anything that I can list for you.  If you are a researcher, then do visit and check the name lists regularly, in case you miss something belonging to your family.

The magazine itself looks to be an interesting read, with the history of medal holder’s and the circumstances behind their awards the main interest.  See a list of this month’s articles and get a free trial issue at  http://www.tokenpublishing.com/issue.asp?iid=225 .  List your heroes at www.medaltracker.com

Good Hunting! 

New names on GenClub – weekly update

Just one new name this week:  MALIN (from the Bidford, Alcester, Wooton Wawen area in Warwickshire)

Visit www.genclub.co.uk and check out the Research Interests page for more information.

New names on GenClub – weekly update

New names on Genclub this week.  Go to www.genclub.co.uk and the Heirlooms Reunited page for details.

AGNEW, ABRAHAMS, ALLEN, ASHMAN, ASPINALL, AVERYBANNISTER, BARHAM, BENTON, BIRCHALL, BOLT, BOOTH, BOYLE, BRELLISFORD, BRODIE, BROOKS, BRIDGE, BROWN, BUCKLE, BUXTON,CAMERON, CAMPBELL, CARRIGAN, CARRINGTON, CARTLIDGE, CASHMORE, CASTLEY, CHRISTIE, CHISHOLM, CLOSE, COBB, COLLINS, CONNOR, COOL, COTTERELL, COX, CROMBIE, CORNELL, DAVIES, DAVIS, DAWES, DENTON, DEWSBURY, DITCHFIELD, DURNO, DUTTON,EASTWICK, ELLISON, EWERSFARMAN, FRANK, FRANKS, FOULKES, GISSING, GOFF, GRANT, GRAVES, GREEN, GREGORY, GUNN,HORN, HUTCHINSON,JAMES,KENNEDY,LANE, LLOYD, LYON,MATHER, MCGAULEY, MIDDLEBROUGH, MCLACHLAN, MOBBSPALMER BROWN, PARR, PARTRIDGE,RICHARDSON, RHUDDLAN, SMITH, SOUTER, STANT,WALDOCK, WHARTON, WILLIAMS, WINGROVE COOKE,

GenClub Site of the Week 4th December 2007

Peter Higginbotham’s site ‘The Workhouse’ is a must for anyone researching a non-landed family, whether or not you have actually found an ancestor resident in or connected to a workhouse. 

The content of Peter’s site is a wonderful example of how a chance discovery can foster the kind of passion that many of us experience in our hobby.  He has spent the past seven years researching and documenting his subject and the result is an amazingly full resource and a chronological and structured account of how poor law developed and was executed down the centuries: a virtual cornucopia of associated details that bring it all to life.  To research effectively you need to understand how social conditions and particularly privation were looked upon and managed in the period you are looking at – and this easy to read site will give you the underpinning knowledge that will help you to do that. 

URL: www.workhouses.org.uk

Developed by: Site is owned and maintained by Peter Higginbotham

Purpose: To provide information on and promote an understanding of British poverty management through the workhouse and other relief systems.

Main Content: Factual and biographical information; first hand accounts, transcriptions and images.

Coverage: Peter claims that the site contains contained over 2000 web pages, 4000 photos and illustrations, and 1000 maps and plans – I believe him!  Data covers the 14th to the 20th century; includes workhouse transcriptions from the 1881 census; the Glossary is encyclopedic and the Guestbook contains postings from many researchers who have found workhouse ancestors (use the site ‘Search’ box to look for others with your name interests).  This is just a tiny sample of what’s on offer!

Access: Navigation seems structured and logical but some text in the navigation panel that you may expect will link out, is actually section heading.  When you experience this just move the mouse pointer down – the indented sub-headings will link to the relevant items.   In addition, the useful and comprehensive Index and Site Map are not evident in the navigation panel and only appear as footer links on some pages.  Use the SEARCH facility (above the navigation frame) to locate these: the links will then be found just above the main results list.

Tech Spec: The site is built using the older design principle of ‘frames’, which can be a problem for some browsers but gave me little difficulty in IE7.

Speed: Most pages loaded reasonably quickly – with the exception of Peter’s Amazon Bookstore page, which took a considrable time to load.

Ease of use: The design may not be regarded as ‘swish’ by today’s standards, but the site loses nothing for that.  It’s main purpose is to showcase and share Peter’s wonderful collection of information and pictures and it does this very well: just select on the left and read on the right  The search facility searches all text, including posts in the Guestbook which contains many surname details. 

There is a huge amount on this site to hold the interest of anyone remotely interested in the lives of their ancestors, and I for one will be returning frequently.

Visit www.genclub.co.uk for more family history nuggets!

New names/updates on GenClub – weekly update

The Heirlooms Reunited indexes and details lists have been revamped this week, and divided into three new categories:  Medals; Documents (letters, certificates, photos etc) and Bibles & Books.

New names in these indexes this week are:  BAGLEY, CURRAN, DALE, DUNCAN, GREEN, MIDDLETON, MILNE, PONTON, RALPHES, RICKERS, ROBINSON, SERCOMBE, SOPER, UNDERHILL, WATSON

Go to www.genclub.co.uk to view

GenClub Site of the Week 23rd November 2007

FREE ONLINE NAME LISTINGS is the official GENUKI* site for hosting name interest lists for most counties in the UK & Ireland.  It consists of a directory of searchable databases, compiled from public submissions.

It’s a great site for anyone who would like to make contact with other researchers of the same person/name from the same location – and that should be all of us.  But isn’t that what Genes Reunited is for, I hear you ask? Well personally I now find the complexity and time required to maintain posts and contacts on sites like that far too much effort for too little return.  This site has been around a lot longer, and if it were utilised by more of us it would make a great alternative, and for free to boot.  It costs nothing to either list your research interests or to search for and contact cousins and fellow researchers.

The only slight confusion is that it now also maintains lists for those counties for which it is not the official GENUKI site, and at the same time offers links to the ‘official’ lists.  What this means to users is that you should list on – and search – both sites for those counties, which are clearly identified.  

URL:  http://www.list.jaunay.com/index.html

Developed by: Site is owned and maintained by Graham Jaunay, renowned research genealogist of South Australia

Purpose: To provide a database for common research

Main Content: Searchable name lists and researcher contacts, as well as Graham’s ‘Jaunay’ one name study and Proformat Research Service pages

Coverage: Counties in the UK & Ireland, as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and USA

Access: Navigation is structured and logical but isn’t quite standard throughout the site.  Page colours are neutral with adequately contrasting text, but some list page headers have badly combined colours (background v text) that may present problems for sight impaired users.

Tech Spec: The site uses ‘java’ coding so those using older browser versions may experience problems

Speed: Pages loaded quickly for me in IE7

Ease of use: There are plenty of instructions searching and listing, as well as  search tips and a clear FAQ page, etc.

*For anyone not yet familiar with it, GENUKI is the UK researchers ‘one stop shop’ in any quest for information available and where to find it

Visit www.genclub.co.uk for more family history nuggets!

New names on GenClub – weekly update

Just one new name on site this week:  FELGATE

Browsing around ebay this week, with remembrance still in the November air, I found it poignant and incredibly sad to stumble across a collection of papers (including a personal  diary) concerning the WW2 service – and death – of Sgt Edward William Frederick FELGATE.  Offered for sale individually, with more bidding interest in some items than others, this time capsule is about to splinter.

Collectively the documents consist of:

1. Birth certificate of Edward William Frederick Felgate, – registered Holborn, St Luke – Feb 12^th 1912

2. WW2 Wireless licence

3. Hand written letter from Sgt Felgate to a member of his family

4. War Office ‘Killed on Active Service’ letter

5. Official notification of death

6. Personal diary of his war years

Surely someone must own and care for his memory?

If you think it could be you, then visit http://www.genclub.co.uk/6.html and scroll down to the Open Heirlooms List link, to find details of the sale.