News & Information

Hello everyone!  It’s time for another monthly Newsletter – February is often dull and miserable weather wise but I hope that during the winter months you are able to catch up with some checking of your research.  We all can make mistakes which might just be typos, but others may be more serious. How do you check your findings? You need to look again at the censuses, birth, marriage and death information, baptism and burial records, articles in newspapers, inquests, school records, maps, photographs, criminal records, and military records, etc.  As far as possible have you looked at the original documents? Do they tell the whole story?  How do you want to pass on this account of your family history. Writing it up as a narrative and questioning your findings seems to throw up additional queries.  

You may find some unanswered questions and need help to discover more information.  Someone else may well be able to offer an alternative route for your research.

Getting Help or Comparing Research

Library Free Help Session Sat Feb 4th

• Our Society offers help in the form of a monthly free help session at Weston Library which is in the Weston-super-Mare Town Hall
• The next one is this coming Saturday on February 4^th from 2.00 p.m. until 3.30 p.m.  
• You do not have to book – just bring along the question you want to solve and even if your family is not local the use of the Internet may well be able to break down your brick wall. 

Research Forum

• We also have the Research Forum on the Web Site and the use of the Facebook Group to post your queries. 
• We have many knowledgeable members who may be able to help you. 
• Perhaps you could help others? I have found that taking a look at someone else’s problems can sometimes prompt my own research.
• Take a look at the query posted on our web site about the preservation of original documents. Our Chair, Jenny Towey has replied given some excellent advice.

Facebook Groups

If you are thinking of joining our Facebook Group, please make sure that you answer the Membership Questions or you will not be admitted.  We are a private Group and want to make sure that the Group contains people with a real interest in researching their family. 

Apart from asking for assistance from our own Facebook Group, I also look for Facebook Groups connected to the Local History of the area in which my family lived which can also be helpful. 

Just recently I posted this newspaper item to the Gloucester Local History Facebook Group with a query about the school at which my great aunt, Sarah JONES, was caretaker and received some very useful answers.

Rootschat

When a particular problem is outside our own area I often use the free forum on Rootschat where you can chose the county in which your family were living and ask a particular question. Go to this site  which lists all the areas in which you can post a query.   Replies are usually very rapid and useful.

Writing up your Research

• During January I decided to write up the story of my paternal grandmother’s family in a narrative form.
• With a surname of JONES, I had put off delving into her history because I thought it might be difficult. 
• However, I have found the exercise fascinating and by carefully cross matching all the various information from available resources I find I have a richer and fuller appreciation not only of her but of her family and ancestors as well.  
• Names, Dates and Places on a tree are not the only information you need. 
• I collected information about the JONES family in chronological order from various sources.

I was surprised to find these two notices in the Gloucester Citizen in October 1886 which indicated that all was not well with my great grandparents’ marriage and that David JONES, my great grandfather, had left his wife, Sarah, in 1885.  With several children still at home and their youngest daughter, my grandmother only about 5 and baby Herbert just a year-old, life cannot have been easy for Sarah, my great grandmother.

And the following day this entry.

By the 1891 census, Sarah was taking in lodgers, described as “Living on her own means” . At the same time, Sarah’s husband, David JONES, still a lath render, can be found lodging nearby at 9 Clifton Road, Gloucester. It is tempting to assume reasons for this, but without first hand knowledge this can be very misleading.  Sarah died from TB, from which she had been suffering for a year, in 1892 at 5 Berkeley Villas.  

Checking information on death certificates

I’ve often neglected to send to death certificates if I already have the date of death, but it does seem that in some cases it might be advisable to get a certificate to see the whole picture.

During my JONES investigation I found this newspaper announcement which suggested that David had been living at 23 Swan Road, which was the home of his daughter, Sarah Maria JONES (the school caretaker)

Although his daughter, Sarah, who did live at 23 Swan Road, gave information about him it appears that he was living at 121 Seymour Road when he collapsed and although taken to the Infirmary, he never regained consciousness.  The cause of death – Syncope, 2 days and Senility – Syncope is not really a cause of death, it is a form of fainting caused by something else, (possibly heart failure) and is not used today.

Using the address search facility of Findmypast I discovered that on the 1911 census, living at 121 Seymour Road, was another Lath Render, a Philip T. SKELTON, from Devon, so it looks as if David may have been lodging with a work mate when he died.

Between 1864 and 1884, David and Sarah JONES  had 10 children, not all surviving to adulthood, but it is important to trace the lives of all blood relations, especially if you have taken a DNA test because this is where matches may occur.

DNA – Next Society Meeting

The next face-to-face Society Meeting will be on Wednesday, February 8^th at 2.30 p.m. at Our Lady of Lourdes Church Hall.  Non members are welcome and the speaker will be Mandy Webb, a member of our Society, who recently appeared in an article in the “Who do you think you are?” magazine about her connections with the land in which Richard III was buried.

The title of her talk is  " Robert Herrick, Richard III and My DNA".

Zoom Workshops

Workshop on WILLS & PROBATE Feb 23^rd

• The next Zoom Workshop on Wednesday, February 23^rd starting at 7.30 p.m. will be an Introduction to Wills and Probate offered by Peter Towey. 
• Wills and where to find them vary over the years but some can be very informative.  You do need to understand the system in order to access them.
• I was delighted to find the Will of my  3 x great grandfather, Samuel LONG who died in 1833 (before the National Probate Calendar came into existence in 1858) and a transcription can be seen here showing how it helped sort out his children and their spouses. 
• I’m looking forward to any tips Peter can give for finding and understanding other wills.

Education Workshop - 

During the recent Zoom Workshop on Educational Records, in January, which is now available for full members to watch from our web site, I omitted to mention that a section of the Admission Register for St John’s School in Weston is available on Ancestry.  St John’s Girls’ School for 1878-1892 contains two with the surname HASE.  Here is Ada HASE born 29 Oct 1882, living in Meadow Street, where her father was a greengrocer.

This record is included in a range of Admission Books for Somerset Schools said to cover 1860-1914.  It includes St John’s Boys’ School as well for 1905-1914. 

Here are the VENN twins whose photograph I used in the Workshop. Their birthdate is given on the next page as 26^th Feb 1901

It is possible that on the school photograph containing Stanley and Cecil VENN the other children might be those who entered the school at the same time and can be seen above.

Birth Places

Addresses on documents can help identify where a family was living.  By using maps such as Know Your Place and even Google Maps it may be possible to discover exactly where they lived and who their neighbours were.  The first of the JONES family to be born in Gloucester was christened at St Luke's Church with a home address of Elming Row. 

Elming Row, seen here on a map from Know Your Place, just south of the railway line had an interesting history.  According to the National Archives it was a row of cottages, formerly known as Anti Dry Rot Lane!  This area was previously owned by the Anti Dry Rot Company.  The Anti Dry Rot Co set up a works to manufacture corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride) used in a treatment for preserving timber -  probably not the most salubrious place to live!  

Elming Row is now very near the Gloucester Quays Designer Outlet which covers the site of St Luke's Church.   

Future Society Events

• Plans are well in hand for our Open Day to Celebrate our 40th Anniversary on May 20th when we have invited other local societies to join us at Our Lady of Lourdes Church Hall from 10.00 a.m. until 4.00 p.m.  
• There will be a Dinner later in the year for members.
• If you know of any village or school fetes during this year where we might have a stand to publicise our Society, please let us know.
• We hope to be at Hutton again this year where we met many interesting and interested people last summer
• We understand that Kewstoke may be having an event which includes a local history exhibition during the Coronation weekend.  Their exhibitions are always very well organised and interesting.

I hope that you will find something of interest in this newsletter in spite of the constant reference to Gloucester this month!  I have been trying to show that it is important to question your own research and look just that little bit further that the name, date and place.  Be curious about why your family was where they were, what they did and how they got there.  Ask for help to break down any brickwalls.

Comments ..