29 September 2024 - Progress is going good. I'm back to the 4th generation from me, so my Great Great grandparents and their siblings. Working through the WW1 years has been really interesting, seeing in black and white how it affected families, researching war memorials an service records. I plan to do some little histories of some of the families to put all these details into context.
18 September 2024 - Having spent time looking into the family of Edith Hart, I realised that I have been missing some of the stories of my ancestors and so I have gone back to the beginning and have been adding the lives of the siblings and children of all my ancestors. This is the start of a massive undertaking for me but it really puts life into people and all I'm using is the census, BMD records, and the 1939 register. I wish I'd done this from the start.
9 September 2024 - More work has been done researching the family of Edith Hart who had a traumatic life by anyone's standards. The details are coming together but this has been an interesting and informative learning experience.
3 September 2024 - I have been back into the parish registers for Glemsford. Looking at old documents written 475 years ago is very interesting especially when they are written in latin! I will be replacing all my previous images from the registers and hopefully adding new details and events. Today I did find the earliest burials in my tree, 345 years ago.
31 August 2024 - Moving family history programs and then getting a new website program has made me look at lot closer at my data and some of it is all over the place and has needed tidying up. Some of these problems have been caused by decisions made when I first started about how I would reference and cite information which has impacted on what I can do now. Some of it has just been too much copy and paste without checking the details which I have managed to catch now but I don't think for one minute that I've got it all.
In actual research I am beginning to plan a visit to my local LDS centre as the records there are now digitised so I don't think I need to order the microfilms in advance which will make things a lot easier. I am also in the even earlier stages of looking to go to a Suffolk record office to get some deeper information on certain families.
21 August 2024 - Another family has been reworked and added to. The sad story of Mary Ann Frances Moss has now been written out, adding siblings, a mother and father, a step mother and marriage, baptism and burial information for them all. I have also started a blog to detail some of the more interesting families or just thoughts about researching family history that I may have. The Oakley Genealogy Blog
19 August 2024 - Today has seen me working on the Lydia Charlotte Wells line. It turns out that Lydia Charlotte was actually baptised Charlotte Lydia, she must not have liked that name as she never seemed to use it. Finding her baptism led to her mother, which led to a father, which led to grandparents. In contrast to the last two days this was all fairly straight forward using the Parish Records, but there was some intrigue, Ruth Wells, Lydia's mother, was noted as deaf in all the census, starting from when she was 29 years old, right through until her death. Ruth's parents were separated when her father died, and her mum then in her early 50's remarried to a retired Royal Marine, but she died a few years later. He then lived with Lydia and then her husband right up until 1911, well past when Lydia herself had passed away.
18 August 2024 - Time to take on another awkward family with matching dates and births and names. This time it was David Farrance. There are two David Farrance, both born in Foxearth, Essex in 1839, both with a mother called Mary Ann in the census entries. David himself has his own family in the 1861 census and so there is only the 1841 and 1851 census to go with to try and sort it out.
In 1841 there seems to be only one David Farrance, he is with what is assumed to be his brother Charles as they are 3 and 1 respectively. There is a 22 year old Elizabeth Farrance and a 67 year old George Farrance. There is no sign of a Mary Ann Farrance anywhere.
In 1851 the confusion starts. There is now Mary Ann with David and Charles, and Elizabeth is now noted as the sister to Mary Ann. But there is also a Mary Ann married to Thomas Farrance with a David Farrance the right age and some other siblings. No Charles though. All this does is link this entry to the 1841 one.
Turning to the birth registers for David, there is only one registered birth for David Farrance in the whole of the county and surrounding counties within many years of his birth year and that has his mother's maiden name as Chinery. A marriage search does show a Mary Ann Chinery married to Thomas Farrance. So this is the family in the 1851 census but is it my David? Turning to the birth registrations for Charles, there is again only one within several years and counties. This has a maiden name for the mother as Bird. Neither of these seem right or help with working out who is the right David.
Time for the 1861 census to help. Here is Mary Ann, with Charles and a new sister - Rebecca. But helpfully, Mary Ann is noted as unmarried and that her two children are noted as illegitimate. This now links this 1861 to the 1851 one though Charles, which in turn links to the 1841 census. This means that the other David Farrance is not my one as he can't be on two census entries a few pages apart .
Putting this all together, I think that Mary Ann never had her children baptised, and therefore never registered. She never married until much later, when she married William Byford in 1867. Was she not bothered about registering them? Was she not religious? Was she embarrassed by her 3 illegitimate children? We'll never know but I think that clears up the entries and tidies up the census entries.
17 August 2024 - I have been able to access the 1921 UK census and added that relevant information to my direct ancestors. There were 25 names on the list and all but 4 of them were found! Not only have a I got a lot of new occupations, there are a few new members of some families, and a widower found a new husband. Of the 4 not found, 2 should be there and are on the 1939 UK Register, but 2 I suspect may have passed away after the 1911 census. I will hopefully unrestricted access soon and will be able to put some decent time in finding those missing ones.
16 August 2024 - I have spent 2 whole days now looking into the John Dye family as I have never been sure about it. In the same village, aged the same, there were two John Dye. Both married Elizabeth. Following them through the census using their daughter Rachel, was OK but I always felt that I had mixed the two John Dye's at some point and now I have proved that I had.
I previously had John Dye, married to Elizabeth BEALES but this has turned out to be the wrong John Dye. This is the other John Dye. Using the Ancestry UK records, specifically the Norfolk Church of England records I have managed to resolve the issue, but of course, I have also just created a new one!
My John Dye, married Elizabeth Vince alias Crowles in 1832, she was a widower, 10 years older than him. Her first husband had been buried 2 weeks short of a year when she married John. He was called James Vince also known as James Crowles. Why these two names were on his marriage entry of 1820 I have no idea but as he is out of my tree, it won't be a mystery I will look into soon. Having now found the right Elizabeth, I have managed to work out the right census entries two. This has bought John's death date earlier but the other mystery was where does Elizabeth go after John's death in 1876? There is no entry in the 1881 or 1891 that fits (the other John Dye and Elizabeth are still there together in both of them) and so the trail runs cold. I then turned to the nearby Parish of Kenninghall, where Elizabeth is from, and where she married John, and there was the burial. Neatly wrapping their story up and ending a long running confusion.
12 August 2024 - Almost 7 years since I was last researching and adding to my family tree. A lot has changed since then with the program I was using being discontinued, websites changing, subscriptions changing and so on but I'm getting to my feet slowly. Steady and more regular updates should continue from now on.
