News & Information

Our Research Forum certainly came up trumps during January, as far as I was concerned, when a member from Australia was able to help me by locating the death of a relation of mine which had eluded me for several years.  It turned out that she had died and been buried in Wraxall – this was reported in the newspapers giving lists of mourners including her male siblings. It only goes to show that asking for help can have its rewards and another person may tackle the problem in a new way which brings results. I hadn’t known her married name (in fact I didn’t know she had married) so this was a marvellous find. Why not give it a try with any problems you may have?

Saturdays at the Library always bring something new and I have been made aware of a disaster during WW2 which had sadly completely passed me by.  The SS Lancastria was bombed in June 1940 while in anchor in St. Nazaire trying to evacuate military and civilian personnel just after Dunkirk.  Reports conflict about the number of casualties but 3,000-4,000 seem likely. You can read more about it on the site of the Lancastria Association .   Can anyone tell me where to find the Crew List for the Lancastria? We were looking for a surviving member of the crew.

Some of you may have been working on the request published by Caroline Morris to identify a Stanley ASHMAN, a victim of WW1.The solution was reported in Weston Mercury.  Thanks to Life Member, Brian Austin, an ASHMAN descendant who still lives in Weston has been contacted.  She came into the Library on Saturday because this interest in her family has stimulated her to do some of her own research.  So even if the DNA tests do not link her to the remains found in northern France we may soon have a new member because of it.

Unfortunately, due to illness, we were unable to take part in the Your North Somerset 2014 event at the Winter Gardens but from all accounts it was a very interesting day demonstrating the wide range of activities and cultures thriving in our community. 

• Can I draw your attention to the list of online Maps which Veronica Bowerman gave us following her talk in January?  You can see them here.
• If you are searching Irish Ancestry – have you tried this free site for Irish Genealogy? -  You can search by name and in many cases you are able to see the original records.  This is a really good site if you have Irish forebears because it takes you to various free sites.
• I’ve recently come across GenDocs which has some basic advice for researching in England and Wales including a list of occupations which may not still be in common use.

A Warning - Although some of the family trees which have been submitted online can provide tremendous clues for further research care must be taken in accepting them at face value.  I have recently been in contact with someone who had accepted a marriage from a tree as factual because it was the only one which fitted the names which he was looking for.  He couldn’t find another suitable marriage within the same time frame (pre 1837) in the free sites online.  We did eventually unearth another marriage between people of the same names which was included in one of our transcriptions.  The problem here is that every baptism, marriage and burial has not been transcribed yet and yours might well be the one which still has to be done.

Paul Tracey has been busy adding Journal articles to our web site – for example you can find all four parts of “Weston-super-Mare through Postcards” and other interesting items.  These may be of particular interest to new members who didn’t see them when they were originally published.

If any of you have a particular interest in the STUCKEY family of Clevedon or Kingston Seymour please let me know – I’m not promising that I’ll be including anything about them in my talk on February 25th but it would great to be able to add anything relevant!

The visit to the National Archives at Kew will take place on March 11th - There are still some places left – Please let Brian Airey know if you would like to join us.  Use the Contact us facility on the web site.

The next edition of Buckets & Spades will be available at the February Monthly meeting and will contain information about the AGM due to take place in March after which there will be a session about the latest resources which are available – if any of you can add to this please let us know.