in Cheshire

Latest news from the FHSC

Handy Latin Words

Find My Past recently added a tranche of Catholic Church Records to their Collection

 

Quite a lot of the older records are written in Latin - which is nowadays considered, by many people, an extinct language, but it's useful to know some basics when searching the Catholic records. So below are listed some words that crop up on a regualr basis and a 'rough' translation as a guide. There are varations according to nominative, accusative and genitive use of a noun, as well as plural and singular.  If you wish to view a more detailed and nuanced list of the translation of Latin then pop along to the FamilySearch guide [link at the bottom of this post]


Nomen ~ Name [Christain name]

Cognomen ~ Surname

Filius ~ Son

Filia ~ Daughter

Die ~ Day

Mensis ~ Month

Anno ~ Year

Biptizatus/baptizata  - Baptised [Male/Female]

Matrimonium ~ Marriage 

Sepultum est ~ Was Buried

Pater ~ Father

Mater ~ Mother

Patrinus Fuit ~ Godfather [he was godfather]

Matrina Fuit ~ Godmother [she was godmother]

 

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Latin_Genealogical_Word_List

 

 

National Archives - online events [July - September 2020]
The National Archives have announced a whole new season of online events:
Including their first ever virtual wine tasting, the return of the extremely popular Top Level Tips webinars and exciting guest speakers. Talks are always free, I have listed the talks and Top Tip webinars below ~ BUT for details of these and much more from the National Archives, sign up for the newsletter or pop along to - 
 
Speakers/talks/times include -
 
We need to buck ourselves up a bit!’: British propaganda of the Second World War:
10 July | 14:00 to 15:00
Katherine Howells examines the development of visual propaganda during the Second World War and tells the stories behind the most famous campaigns and images.
 
Dunkirk: From the archives to Hollywood:
17 July | 14:00 to 15:00
Joshua Levine discusses the many years of historical research and true narrative accounts which he contributed to the story that formed the basis of the 2017 Hollywood screenplay, Dunkirk.
 
Restoring Charles II, 1660:
31 July | 14:00 to 15:00
Neil Johnston charts how Charles II secured his kingdoms and re-established himself and his government across the Stuart territories in 1660, using unique examples from our collection.
 
Bordeaux and the Brits: Online wine tasting:
4 August | 20:00 to 21:00
In our first ever online wine tasting, tutor Pippa Hayward dips into England’s historical involvement with Bordeaux, while showcasing the exciting range of wines that modern Bordeaux produces.
 
The Gin Craze:
8 August | 14:00 to 15:00
Emma Major delivers this highly illuminating talk on 18th Century gin crazes. Meet gin-dispensing cats and Old Toms, as you learn who drank gin and how, and why there was a gin craze.
 
You cannot put stinking fish into beer’: the controversies of brewing science around 1800:
14 August | 14:00 to 15:00
James Sumner (Manchester University) discusses the challenges that brewers faced in promoting new innovations to an often justifiably suspicious public.
 
Audacious raids: Operations Grouse, Freshman, Swallow and Gunnerside:
4 September | 14:00 to 15:00
Juliette Desplat examines the four operations carried out by SOE and the Norwegian Resistance in Norway in 1942-1943, that wrecked Nazi plans for an atom bomb.
 
Out in the City: Queer Club culture in London, 1918–1967:
18 September | 14:00 to 15:00
Victoria Iglikowski-Broad reveals some of the clandestine LGBTQ+ spaces that were raided and closed by police, and the covert methods of communication that had to be relied upon in 1918-1967.
 
Top Level Tips webinars -
 
Top Level Tips: Using Discovery:
14 July | 14:00-14:30
Learn our top tips for using our catalogue, Discovery. Within half an hour you will come away with all of the tools needed to make the most of the catalogue for your research.
 
Top Level Tips: Discovering your local history:
21 July | 14:00-14:30
Join our expert-led webinar that will give you guide you through all the basics to get started with discovering your local history within half an hour.
 
Top Level Tips: Discovering your family history:
11 August | 14:00 to 14:30
Join our expert-led webinar that will give you guide you through all the basics to get started with discovering your family history within half an hour.
 
Top Level Tips: Using Discovery:
18 August | 14:00 to 14:30
Learn our top tips for using our catalogue, Discovery. Within half an hour you will come away with all of the tools needed to make the most of the catalogue for your research.
 
Top Level Tips: First World War army records:
8 September | 14:00 to 14:30
Find out how to start researching First World War army records, or a specific person listed on your local war memorial, in this this short expert-led webinar.
 
Top Level Tips: Using Discovery:
15 September | 14:00 to 14:30
Learn our top tips for using our catalogue, Discovery. Within half an hour you will come away with all of the tools needed to make the most of the catalogue for your research.
 
 
 
1921 Census Release

Find My Past announce details of the release of the 1921 Census

 

In the most anticipated family history development since the online publication of the 1939 Register, Findmypast has been selected as The National Archives’ commercial partner to make the 1921 Census of England & Wales available online.

The census, which was the first to be conducted following the introduction of the Census Act of 1920, will be published online by Findmypast in January 2022.

The project will see Findmypast capture digital images and transcribe the records in a way that will enable family historians across the globe to conduct meaningful searches of these important records when they are opened for the very first time.

Taken on 19th June 1921, the census consists of more than 28,000 bound volumes of original household returns containing detailed information on close to 38 million individuals.

It provides greater detail than any previous census as, in addition to the questions asked in 1911, the 1921 returns also asked householders to reveal their place of employment, the industry they worked in and the materials they worked with as well as their employer’s name.

The 1921 Census also included detailed questions on education, and was the first in which individual householders could submit separate confidential returns.

Those aged 15 and older were required to provide information about their marital status, including if divorced, while for those under 15 the census recorded whether both parents were alive or if either or both had died.

 

For more details and a comprehensive list of FAQs - see the following link - 

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/1921-census

A House Through Time ~ Series 3 ~ Review and Resources List

A House Through Time ~ Series 3 ~ 10 Guinea Street

 

Review and Resources List 

 

David Olusoga’s A House Through Time, chose Bristol, a city with historic links to the slave trade, which as it has turned out recently, was a theme that resonated more that he could possibly have imagined when he first knocked on the door of No 10 Guinea Street, built in 1718 by Captain Edmund Saunders, a prolific buyer and seller of people at that time.  

The researches linked Saunders to over 40 voyages conveying 12,000 souls from their homes in Africa to slavery in the Americas. Saunders himself never lived in the house but rented it to another slave trader, Captain Joseph Smith.

Moving on with the story of No 10 Guinea Street and a foundling baby which was left on the doorstep, Smith and his wife having refused to take her in, she died at the age of three in the doubtless negligible care of the parish. This section took us down the highways and byways of poor laws and the options available to the vulnerable in a time long before the welfare state.

  • If you are interested in Foundlings, then the Foundling Museum is always a good place to start. Mothers would often leave a ‘token’ with the child and a blog by the historian John Styles on an exhibition in the museum can be read here. Of course, searching through the relevant local parish registers can sometimes turn up gold when a curate might make a comment in the margin with regards to a child being found on a doorstep or in the churchyard and then go on to mention it’s fate. Many local archives have workhouse records as well as Poor Law and Board of Guardian records, which are parish based. Many such London records are online at Ancestry.

The next owner, Tory political satirist John Shebbeare, whose main hobbyhorses were the ‘national ruin’ brought about by the Hanoverian kings and the general uselessness of women, famously saying ‘The best I ever knew is not worth the worst man’ and about his own wife in particular, ‘I think I have been yoked for about one and 40 years and have wished my wife underground anytime since’. Charming!!  But could you imagine if he ever had his own Twitter account!!

Next came another link to slavery with the Holbrooks, whose fortune lay in slave-run sugar plantations and they had the latest ‘must have fashion accessory’, namely a black servant, the Jamaican born Thomas. He ran away, but eventually returned after a newspaper advertisement asking for information on his whereabouts, however, what happened to him after that, we will never know. Olusoga also ventured into the dark world of domestic violence, the joy of his presenting style I find, is that he gives the story time to draw breath and talks about the small people, such as the lives of servants and women, lives that normally go undocumented, hidden from history and thus pays tribute to the silent anguish of those who life events never made it into official records.

  • Many cases run away servants can be found in the advertisement sections of the local papers and court cases concerning domestic violence were also reported, not always without some bias but reported all the same. Newspapers can be found at the British Newspaper Archive.or if you have a subscription to Find My Past then the newspaper archive is also available on that site, as well as hard copies or microfiche copies at local records offices/libraries/archives

By the time Olusoga reached the final episode we were dropped into the 1930s when N0 10 was owned by the Wallington family and when the clouds of the Second World War were about to burst open. Bristol, being a major port, inevitably became a target for the Luftwaffe, and in November 1940 a 50kg bomb hit Guinea Street. Among the injured was Isaac Long, who with his wife Mary, later became a lodger with the Wallingtons at Number 10.

  • The 1939 National Register, available on both Ancestry and Find My Past is excellent source, discovering who was where just before WW2 as well as giving an accurate [we hope] date of birth. You can also find out about the previous owners of your house.

After talking through the deaths of the Longs within a few months of each in the early 1950s, Mary apparently killed herself after her husband’s death, Olusoga then devoted a good deal of the episode digging into the chequered past of a tenant, Cyril Tabrett, a man of some mystery, with several different birth-dates and a variety of professions, even claiming at one point to be Belgian. However, it was eventually discovered that basically he was just a petty thief and forger.  I am not convinced that the attempt by the programme makers to make his story into an ominous model of poverty and despair quite came off. In similar fashion the death of Norris, moved from a possible suicide into the rather anticlimactic fatal gas leak. The series closed with the current owners, who rather serendipitously had given a home to an Ethiopian refugee.

A couple of things here:

  • Cyril Tabrett was shown to have a number of documents with contradicting information on them. Beware of what I like to call, official fiction masquerading as historical fact. Information given for birth, marriage and death corticates, even in the not so distant past was never double checked against any official sources. Such documents often need a lot of careful interpretation, and in many cases a healthy dose of scepticism, all a certificate really proves is that an event took place and was recorded by a registrar, what if doesn’t prove is that any of the particulars noted were actually true in the first place. Even today mistakes are still made and still recorded, as truth for posterity
  • Kim, the lady who lived in the house at the time of Norris’s death is a prime example of making sure that you take any oral history with a slight pinch of salt. People’s memories are fallible, especially childhood memories, which can be clouded by parental judgements or scruples and even the occasional skeleton hiding in a cupboard  – Kim said it was Cyril who died in the cellar and possibly committed suicide but she wasn’t sure, in the end it turned out to be Norris, who actually died in his room from an accidental gas leak -  perhaps Kim’s parents told her he had died in the cellar to scare the children and stop them going down there? Who knows!  Memory and folklore are not always that reliable, as was shown, and so whenever you can triangulate your story by checking any facts against other sources and official accounts, more often than not there is a good deal of truth there, you just have to sift it out from the prejudices and ‘rose coloured spectacle’ approach.

Other records to use to trace your ancestors or those living in your house include but not limited too:

  • Trade Directories and Occupation Records of individual trades such as teaching for instance, which are searchable on Find My Past and The Genealogist
  • Electoral Registers – although beware these are only those who could vote at any particular point in time, various electoral/rates records can be found at Ancestry and Find My Past
  • Local Newspapers – at local archives, libraries, records offices, try the actual paper themselves if they still are in operation. Also at the British Newspaper Archives and Find My Past online
  • BT Telephone Books – to be found at Ancestry
  • School Registers – many which can be found on Ancestry and The Genealogist
  • Wills – at the moment there is free access and download to many wills at the National Archives. The Genealogist also has some earlier downloadable wills and the National Probate Calendar is accessible at Ancestry
  • FamilySearch has many records that you perhaps would not think of looking at, have a search through their data bases, especially for records from Europe
  • Military Records can also give a lot of information and are available in various guises at Ancestry, Find My Past, The Genealogist as well as on local archive/record office databases
  • Passenger Manifests can help to pinpoint ancestors to certain places at certain times, again held my Ancestry and Find My Past

Your local records office may also hold coroners’ reports, National building records. Civil defence records, hospital records as well as access to the main genealogical web sites. A good search of the catalogues at your local archives, records office, library can easily turn up some interesting records that you perhaps would never thing of searching. 

If you are interested in researching the history of your house then a couple of good blogs/sites to read are -

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/help/house-design-history

http://www.tracemyhouse.com/

National Refugee Week [15-21 June 2020]

June 15-21 this year marks National Refugee Week

 

The National Archives are sharing, free online, some of the refugee stories from their huge collection

 

In a special episode they will be going beyond the documents, as two of their records specialists interview their own parents about their refugee experiences.
 

 

Life in Lockdown: your stories shared
Life in Lockdown: your stories shared
 
 
Cheshire Archives & Local Studies are launching a project to collect images of life in Cheshire during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Life in Lockdown: your stories shared will create a lasting memory of this unique period – a visual time capsule of everyday life.
 
Find My Past Facebook Live Events for Week beginning June 8th 2020

Find My Past host a series of events live on their Facebook page every week

 

The week beginning 8th June 2020 have the following events:- 

 

Tues 9th  - Census Records with Myko Clelland

Wed 10th - Ontario Sources with Jen Baldwin & Steve Fulton 

Thur 11th - Regimnetal Numbers with Paul Nixon

Fri 12th   -  Fridays Live with Alex Cox

 

Follow Find My Past on Facebook - at 

where the events will be broadcast, also scroll down the page to catch up on previous live events  

My Heritage - FREE ACCESS
FREE ACCESS KLAXON -
 
Family historians can access a different collection on My Heritage for free every day throughout June.
 
The website announced it's unlocking 2,043,456,361 records from 16 countries, so there's something there for everyone - including free access to collections from Sweden, Norway, Finland, the USA, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Greece and Germany.
 
From 7 to 11 June, it is offering access to millions of American records including city directories, Social Security applications and claims, historic newspapers, Ellis Island passenger lists and the 1940 census.
Other notable collections include an exclusive collection of over six million Canadian newspapers on 15 June; over 16 million Australian electoral rolls on 25 June; and over 200,000 Mandatory Palestine naturalisation applications on 26 June.
 
New Series of Long Lost Family:Born Without Trace
Series 2 of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace - now on ITV 9pm from Monday 1st June 
 

SPOILER ALERT be ready to be in floods of tears as Long Lost Family returns for a series of special episodes 

Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace aims to find answers for people still searching for answers about their lives after being abandoned at birth.

The team behind Long Lost Family combine the latest DNA technology with painstaking detective work, to enable four adults, who were abandoned babies, to finally uncover their identities.

The ITV mini-series features the incredible true story of a man who was left in a car on the outskirts of Belfast, and a woman left the other side of the Irish border in a telephone box in Dundalk.

Also, a woman found at just two hours old in a ladies public toilet in Warminster and a man found in a corned beef box outside a railway tavern in Greenhithe. All four are searching for answers to the most fundamental questions: when’s my birthday; where do I come from; who are my parents and who am I?

There will be TWO episodes of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace in total, with episode 1 airing at 9pm on Monday, June 1 and the second following on Tuesday, June 2, also at 9 pm.

Catch up on the series here -