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Were your ancestors straw plaiters or hat makers?

Could you help English Heritage with their current project? We’ve just received the following message from an English Heritage researcher who’d like to speak to anyone with ancestors who worked in the straw plaiting or hatting industry:

‘Are you, were you, or do you know, a master hat–maker? If yes, we tip our caps to you, and hope that you might have something to share… We’re currently researching the hatting and straw plaiting industry in southern England – the commercial hub was in Luton, but the trade was also vitally important to people throughout Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Essex. If you, or anyone in your family, worked in the trade and would like to share your memories or any photographs, we would love to hear from you – you can contact the author directly at katie.carmichael@english-heritage.org.uk’

Please do get in touch if you’d like to share any of your knowledge with Katie!

Has delving into your family history changed your life?

We’ve just received the following message from a writer who’s interested in speaking to anyone with an interesting family history story:

‘I’m a freelance writer keen to find family historians willing to share the discoveries that have made a real lasting impact on their lives. Have you unearthed a family secret, been reunited with long lost family, laid claim to a fortune, converted to your ancestor’s religion, or put your own hardships in historical perspective….
Whatever your story please email Rachel Oliver at r.oliver53@tiscali.co.uk.’

Please do get in touch if you’d like to share any of your experiences with Rachel!

Volunteers needed for Lost Ancestors project

The Federation of Family History Societies is carrying out a new and exciting transcription project to help trace missing ancestors, in partnership with findmypast.co.uk: the Lost Ancestors project.

The FFHS would like to invite family history societies and any family historians to help with this project. It involves indexing information from a collection of UK strays, kindly donated to the FFHS by Dennis Pearce and many other collectors.

A stray is someone who is described in a record as being from, or connected with, a place outside the area in which they normally lived or were born. Examples of strays include a girl who went into service then married many miles away from her parish, a soldier serving in the West Indies or in India, or one killed in action, a family awaiting removal from one parish back to their original birth place and many, many more interesting records that cover all dates to the present century.

This project could help to solve the problems of disappearing ancestors for so many family historians. This is a fantastic opportunity to produce a good financial boost for your family history society and provide high quality work for any family historians searching for that elusive family or ancestor.

To transcribe and index, the information will be placed online as excellent, clear images of each original card from the UK Strays collection. Using findmypast.co.uk’s specially adapted transcription tool, volunteers can type up the entries online no matter where they live. Full instructions and help are on hand to give assistance whenever needed – no experience is necessary.

If you would like to get involved in this valuable project and can volunteer a few hours, days or even weeks to help, please contact projects@ffhs.org.uk by 28 February 2011, giving a society name, your personal name, email address and telephone number (optional).

There’s more information on the FFHS website.

Would you like to be on TV?

We’re on the lookout for anyone who wants to tell their family history story on TV.

Have you researched your family tree using findmypast.co.uk? Did you make any interesting discoveries along the way? If so, and you’d be happy to tell your story on TV, we want to hear from you. Your story would feature on a community TV family history programme and you’d need to be available to come to London for filming on one day between 7 and 18 February. Travel expenses within the UK will be reimbursed.

If you’re interested, please tell us about your family history stories in 500 words or fewer. Email your story to casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘Family history research’ in the subject line and we’ll get in touch with anyone whose story is suitable. Please remember to include a daytime telephone number in your email.

The closing date for entries is Monday 31 January 2011.  We look forward to reading your experiences of researching your family tree with findmypast.co.uk

Your experiences – chance meeting

Thanks to all of you who sent us your experiences of researching your family tree. Read on for Anne Young from Canberra, Australia’s experience:

‘I have been researching my tree for quite some time and I have enjoyed very much the connections I have made with distant cousins who share the interest in family history. I have also found that understanding my own family history makes larger events much more comprehensible and immediate.

Perhaps the strangest coincidence I discovered was the brother of my great great great great grandmother (my 4x great uncle) having afternoon tea one day with the husband of my husband’s great great great great aunt (4x great aunt’s husband).

Both men were living in the Australian colony of Victoria before the gold rushes and both men were interested in Aborigines. Francis Tuckfield, related to my husband by marriage, was a notable Methodist missionary. My 4x great uncle, Henry Dana, formed a police force staffed by Aboriginal men. Perhaps it is not surprising they met, but it still gave me a thrill to find such a stretch of the tree meeting on 17 February 1840.’

If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!

Your experiences – stage career

Thanks to all of you who sent us your experiences of researching your family tree. Read on for Glenda Lightowler‘s experience:

‘I have been desperately trying to find out anything about my grandmother’s (Margaret McDermott) reputed stage career, prior to her marriage. I did not expect to have it handed to me so easily. It took me some while to find her in the 1911 census, as I expected to find her in S Shields Reg district.

Suddenly, I saw this name in a Merthyr Tydfil district and thought: I wonder..? There she was with four other lasses, all called actresses. I suspect they were chorus, but that I cannot find out.

I was given this stage information briefly when I was 10 – I am now 75, so it is a bit of a success story for me, all her family contemporaries being deceased.

Sadly, I cannot find grandfather Alfred Lightowler in 1911. They were married in Yorkshire in 1912. He was not recorded with his family (Head Sam Lightowler) in Hulme, Manchester.’

If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!

Your experiences – passenger list puzzle

Thanks to all of you who sent us your experiences of researching your family tree. We’ve received lots of fascinating stories – read on for Irene Conway in Walmer, Kent’s story:

‘My maternal grandfather George Wilce travelled to Canada in 1903 and was supposed to have died on board the ship he was on but I could find no record of his death. I had looked for several years but drawn a blank each time until a helpful man at the Records Centre, when it was in Islington, found him for me via the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. I had been looking for an Englishman, who was in fact born in Aberdeen, and found that he had enlisted in Toronto in 1917 in the 48th Highlanders as a Canadian. That’s the background.

I had found a ‘G Wilce’ on findmypast.co.uk’s passenger lists shown as a plumber, single and aged 33 and ignored it as it didn’t fit with what I knew – as did another family history researcher. The man who found the CWGC death record told me to look up Canada collections and this I did. I also checked their passenger lists and it seems that when grandfather left Liverpool (a month after his marriage to my grandmother!) on the ‘Lake Champlain’ he was shown on the passenger list as detailed above; however, on arriving in Canada he was shown as a labourer, single and aged 21.

I sent to Canada for his military record and this was most definitely my grandfather, his record showing his mother as next-of-kin at her address in Woolwich, South-East London which tallied with the copy I have of my grandparents’ marriage certificate.

He didn’t see active service, however, as he died within a few months of landing in England and is buried at Bramshott cemetery in Hampshire – one of apparently 99 Canadian servicemen who died here in England.

When I was a member of a local family history group I was told that passenger lists should show the same information when leaving this country and when arriving at the final destination but obviously there are exceptions to the rule!’

If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!

Your experiences – the beauty of the variants search

Thanks to all of you who sent us your experiences of researching your family tree. We’ve received lots of fascinating stories – read on for Michael Lonsdale from Tarleton, Lancashire’s story:

‘My great grandparents, Thomas Barlow Lonsdale and his wife Helen Elizabeth nee Wilson, have always been something of a mystery.

I tracked Thomas and his family from 1900 to the late 1500s in Burnley, Lancashire and found they had connections to the Pendle Witches.

Thomas married Helen Elizabeth Wilson on 19 February 1899 in Kilburn and I knew that a son (my grandfather) Thomas Alfred Lonsdale had been born 29 May 1900 at 6 Claremont Road, Willesden, Middlesex, but search as I may they were nowhere to be found in the 1901 census.

I found the records on findmypast within seconds. The original enumerators sheet showed Thomas Lonsdale with wife Helen and son Thomas living in Linden Avenue, Kensal Rise, Middlesex. The name was quite clearly Lonsdale – how it had been transcribed as Southall I will never know.

From the information from the findmypast 1901 census I was now able to start to look for my great grandmother’s birth. This hasn’t proved easy and even now I know nothing about her before the day she married my great grandfather. The 1901 census says she was born in Yarmouth, Suffolk in 1872. Her marriage certificate tells me she is the daughter of a fisherman named John who was deceased and that her aged tied in with a birth in 1872. I have been unable to locate her in either the 1881 or 1891 census and can find no registration of her birth.

I hoped that the 1911 census would shed a little more light but it was the complete opposite. In 1911 my great grandmother was living in 3 rooms in Clifford Gardens, Willesden, Middlesex but there was no sign of my great grandfather or his 2 children.

They had had a daughter, Edith, who was born in 1902 and I eventually found her living with an aunt in South London. I’d expected to find my great grandfather close by but eventually found him in a convalescent home in Bognor Regis, but there was still no sign of Thomas Alfred now aged 11.

Over the years of research I had found many spelling variations for my surname and I had tried all these. I had even searched for variations on both his first and last name, but nothing. I put that research down and started on another part of the family.

Some months later I went back to look for my grandfather but with wild cards and variations in use – still nothing.

I don’t know what made me do it but instead of putting in Lonsdale/Lansdale/Landesdaile/Sonsdale and all the rest of the variations, I put in Lousdale and up came my grandfather and a few other Lonsdales.

My grandfather was living with the Cripps family in Maidenhead in Berkshire. My first thought was to wonder who the Cripps were. When I checked the 1901 census I found they were living at the same address as my family. I wondered why, when the father had 2 sisters, a brother 2 half-sisters and a half-brother, his son was living with strangers.

After some months of research I have found many coincidences between the 2 families and I am hoping that I will find a link between them and my great grandmother Helen.’

If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!

Your experiences – separated siblings

In previous findmypast newsletters we asked you to email us your experiences of tracing your ancestors. Thanks to all of you who got in touch – your stories make for fascinating reading. Read on for Vivienne Whiddett-Hare’s story:

‘I was evacuated from Battersea, London to South Derbyshire in 1944 aged 6 weeks. My mother, who I found to be unmarried with a lot of children, (I have found 10 but my sister, who I met before she died, told me there were 14) asked the couple who I was placed with in south Derbyshire to adopt me, which they did.

I was 60 years old when I started my family tree which now has around 2,000 names. I also met my eldest sister and a brother and have spoken on the phone and exchanged e-mails with quite a lot of my family in Italy and Australia, as well as the UK.’

If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!

Your experiences – Living Relatives search success

In previous findmypast newsletters we asked you to email us your experiences of tracing your ancestors. Thanks to all of you who got in touch – your stories make for really interesting reading. Read on for Trevor Bailey from South Australia’s fascinating story:

‘My 84 year old mother had long suspected that her father (who was accidentally killed in 1934 when she was still a child) had a previous marriage with children, but it was never talked about by her own mother. As an only child, my mother longed to know if she had any half brothers or sisters. As my grandfather had a rather common name, and lived in London, however, checking for any previous marriages on the General Register Office registers produced too many possibilities to easily investigate.

Seeing as I did at least know my grandfather’s exact date of death, a British friend suggested he could check for a will or probate when he was next in London as I live in Australia. In a week or two, a copy was on its way to me and it named my grandfather’s first wife as a beneficiary. Armed with this information, it was not long before I had obtained a copy of their marriage certificate and then names of two daughters. While they would have been my mother’s half-sisters, both had died just a few years ago.

Tracking down descendants of the two daughters meant finding their marriages to obtain their married names. I eventually found a son for the first married daughter but I thought it unlikely I could ever make contact, assuming he was still living. He might have emigrated, too. I tried findmypast’s Living Relatives search facility and obtained a list of well over 100 possible names and addresses in Britain, as the son’s name is a fairly common one.

On an impulse, I decided to order a birth certificate for the son and found that his parents had the unwitting foresight to give him a middle name with an unusual initial (which had not been recorded on the GRO birth lists). I then repeated the search on the Living Relatives page and narrowed my list down to 11 names and addresses. I wrote a letter to each person, giving some details about my grandfather and my email address. Within a week, I had a reply from the right person and found he had an extended family of children, siblings and cousins, some in Canada. My elderly mother was thrilled to bits with the news.

A rapid exchange of scanned family photos and other documents ensued, then phone calls. We are all now planning a Skype link up and making new holiday plans. Persistence does sometimes pay!’

If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!