I’m not a big party person but birthdays are special and always a great reason to celebrate with close friends. My baby book records that I spent my first birthday quietly…which set the theme for others to come I suspect. By my third birthday I had three little friends, Mum and her friend. My birthday is … More 123rd Carnival of Genealogy: Birthday Parties
“What’s it all about, Alfie?” “What’s that, Ann?” “All that blogging nonsense you talk about. I don’t have time for that. You mustn’t have enough to do”. If the essence of this sounds familiar, you’re in good company. Some months ago James Tanner at Genealogy’s Star, Randy Seaver at GeneaMusings and Jill Ball at Geniaus were … More What’s it all about?
This is Week 43 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens. This week we’re off to Ireland’s green fields with the Griffith’s Valuations. I could make my life easier, and this post very brief, by exhorting you to beg, borrow or buy a copy of James Reilly’s book … More Beyond the Internet: Week 43 – Griffith’s Valuations
My theme for the Family History through the Alphabet is the Attributes we need as family historians: the skills, experience and talents we need to bring to our research. We are in sight of the end now with the letter Y which appropriately gives us: Y is for YAWN: We’ve been at this series for 25 weeks now so … More Family History Alphabet: Y is for yearning and yawning
It’s all been about the Germans for the past week as I unravel mysterious old documents or hunt through the newspapers. I still haven’t located the departure of my George Kunkel even though I’ve found quite a lot of his compatriots. I’m sure he’s there somewhere but I may have to trawl through page after … More Finding the Fass in Dorfprozelten
Last week I posted about the excitement of discovering some German newspapers in Google Books. The exploration has taken a fair bit of time, even without getting down to full transcriptions and translations. I thought I’d share some practical tips I’ve developed as I’ve gone along bearing in mind the limitations I mentioned in my … More Searching German Newspapers/Books
This is Week 42 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens. The topic this week is Naturalisation Records. I was reflecting the other day that these are perhaps the most poignant of our ancestral family’s records. It was the point at which they committed to their new … More Beyond the Internet: Week 42 Naturalisation Records
My theme for the Family History through the Alphabet is the Attributes we need as family historians: the skills, experience and talents we need to bring to our research. This week we arrive at the tricky letter X. X is for SCANDALS: All along I had a rating for this letter, but then realised if I used it my … More Family History Alphabet: X is for Scandalous
The research week started off with a plan to translate a document about one of the Dorfprozelten families: simple enough with a very large dictionary to one hand, or so I thought. Throw in some rather archaic terms about 18th century events, and my extremely rusty German, and it all went downhill rather quickly. I did … More Serendipity down the rabbit hole
Some of you will recall that mid-2012 I participated in the Jubilee swap hosted by the Faith, Hope and Charity Shopping blog – I’d been tipped off by Julie from Anglers Rest. I had a ton of fun and was partnered up with Ms Dormouse from View from the Teapot in France who tipped me … More Faith, Hope and Charity Shopping’s Christmas Swap 2012
Family history across the seas 