Exciting news

In my post On my brief visit to the Forest of Dean, I mentioned that we were there to pick up some exciting post. I can now reveal the exciting news, finally, without jinxing it ... my boyfriend and I have officially bought our first house!

What does this have to do with genealogy, I hear you ask. Well, short answer, it doesn’t really. However, it has prompted a new line of historical investigation for me – house history.

I have done a little bit of this before, when I did some investigatory work into my parents’ new house a few years ago. However this was slightly different because what I was investigating wasn’t the history of the house, but the history of a working mill. This time, I’ll definitely be looking at proper house history.

The starting point for a house history would usually be the title deeds. However, we have a minor problem in that ours only date from 2004 (when it was purchased from the council), when clearly the house is much older than that. I suspect it’s Victorian, but it could be as late as 1930s possibly (I’m not great on architecture – it’s definitely old-ish though!) So, I may be forced to contact the council and see if they can tell me anything more. I don’t exactly relish the prospect, as they’ve been mostly useless during the house-buying.

However, I have done a bit of research around the street already. A document form the Cheltenham Museum informs us:

Sherborne Street is one of a number of small streets of artisan houses that were created on the fields to the north-east of Cheltenham town centre during the early 19th century. The street was named after Lord Sherborne, the Lord of the Manor of Cheltenham, and was laid out by a High Street grocer named William Gyde from 1808 onwards; no. 43, on the east side of the street, was probably built in 1818.

It seems to have been a very working-class street with lots of chimney sweeps living there. The museum document tells the story of a sweep’s sign that it has in its possession and traces the connected family, the Fields. They didn’t live in our house (no. 40), though they must have been close by. They began at no. 15, at the other end of the street (which probably no longer exists, I would guess), before they moved into no. 39, which today is no. 43. I assume this is across the road from us somewhere.

This does give me an interesting clue that there has been some change of numbering on the street, which doesn’t really help me in tracking down our house. However, the document says that number 15 was on the west side of the street, and number 39 was on the east. We are situated on the west side (I think, the street doesn’t exactly run due north to south though). With some comparison of the house numbering today, it may be possible to conjecture about what number our house was originally, but I think I might have to contact the council to find out more specifically about the history of the house. I’ll keep you posted!

L x

From looking at old photographs: 3. Mystery Wedding

Mystery number three is more recent. I came across a lovely photograph of my dad’s parents, John Newby and Fay Rayner, with my grandfather’s parents, the mysterious Walter Newby and Margaret Thompson, pictured outside the front door of what appears to be a church. I then found another photograph clearly taken at the same event: the same church appears, and all four are wearing the exact same outfits, down to the headband/fascinator worn by Fay.

The event in question is a wedding. The second photograph quite possibly pictures all of the wedding guests; it is a very large group photo. Given that two generations of the family are in attendance, and that the photograph was kept for such a long time, it seems likely that it’s the wedding of a family member or a very close family friend. Of course, I’m now determined to come up with a probably identity for the bride and groom, so let’s look at the evidence:

No date is given, but I can fairly easily deduct that it was most likely taken some time in the late 1950s. My grandparents married in the summer of 1956, and separated when my dad (b. 1963) was aged two or three, so it couldn’t have been much later than 1965-ish. To my (admittedly clueless) eye, the fashions look more fifties or early sixties, so I’m leaning towards earlier rather than later in the period 1956–66

On their marriage, my grandmother was only seventeen, though my granddad was older at twenty-four, and I’m under the impression that it all happened fairly quickly. With that in mind, I think it’s unlikely that this photograph was taken before their marriage. My dad’s oldest sister was born around a year later in June 1957. The next child, a daughter, was born in October 1958, her third child, a son, in the summer of 1960, and finally my dad in August 1963.

Given the young age of my grandmother in this photograph, I would assume it was taken within a couple of years of their wedding. As she’s not visibly pregnant in the photograph, I would be inclined to rule out the periods of early 1957, mid- to late 1958, and early 1960. So, we’re looking at either the first half of 1956, the July 1957 to spring 1958, or any time during 1959.

I think it’s doubtful from their ages in the photograph that it was taken much later than that, but as I can’t be sure, I have to consider the possibility that it was taken some time from late 1960 to the end of 1962, or even after the birth of my dad, into the mid-sixties.  However, I’d still guess earlier rather than later.

The next thing is location. Now, ordinarily identifying a church on the basis of an image of its front door, given that it could be taken almost anywhere in the country, might be rather tricky. The church has a sort of triangular shaped ‘porch’, with the church sign (too small to read, even with my trust magnifying glass) affixed to it. However, we’re helped somewhat by the presence of a pub with a clearly legible sign in the background: The New Inn. One of the photographs is taken from a slightly different angle, and we can also see the side of a building, probably a house, alongside the pub.

I’ve started with the likelihood that the church was fairly local to my grandparents, somewhere in the Wakefield area. It can’t be proven of course, but I needed a starting point for investigation and close to home seems sensible, especially as the families in question had all been fairly local for a couple of generations by now as far as I know.

I asked my dad about local pubs by this name, and one suggestion was at Durkar, roughly five miles from my home town of Horbury, where John and Fay were living at Sunroyd Hill in the early years of their marriage. Google informs me that the New Inn at Durkar is located on Denby Dale Road East. A search for churches in the vicinity reveals the Primitive Methodist church a short way down the road. The nearest C of E church is too far away. However, this brick building doesn’t look right – I would have said it was stone (bearing in mind I don’t have access to the photograph and I’m doing this from memory) – and I can’t see the triangular-shaped entrance porch. Also, studying  the relative locations of pub and church on both Google Maps and Geograph convinced me that the church was too far from the pub for its sign to have been visible in the photograph – indeed, I’m not convinced that the pub would be visible at all from the church. Also, looking the pub, it doesn’t quite look right.

So, I tried a generic search for pubs called the New Inn located in West Yorkshire, and then scanned the images and locations for likely candidates. And, by Jove, I think I’ve got it! There is a pub called the New Inn on Shay Lane in Walton, roughly 6½ miles from Horbury. And, whitin the first few Google images, I found this image With the caption: The Methodist Church, view towards the New Inn, Shay Lane. There is the stone building with triangular porch and a sign affixed to the wall. And there is the pub, clearly visible in the background – at least from this angle. The pub does look sort of right, if my memory serves me. I am a little concerned that this pub is still a bit too far away. The foliage beyond the front door, in the middle distance between the two, wasn’t there (the tree might have been), but that could have been planted later.

However, I’m not sure whether there’s enough space between the door and the wall and railings for my photograph to have been taken there, unless they are also later additions. This is possible, though they do look quite old. I haven’t been able to find any older photographs of the church to check this. I suppose an older local person might remember, or I might have to try a local publication. I could even contact the church and ask if they know when they were added.

Overall, I’m about 90% confident I’ve found the right church. My dad knows the entire area very well, as he drives around it for work, so I intend to ask him what he thinks – he might even be able to take the photograph with him on his travels and do the comparison for me.

I’m very intrigued by the fact that this was a Methodist church. Though my home town has quite a strong Methodist tradition, the only evidence I have of any kind of Methodist leanings in my family is that my dad’s older sister got married in the recently demolished Methodist church in Horbury in the late seventies. I wonder if there was a hint of Methodism on my dad’s side after all – after all, I’ve only scratched the surface on his grandfather Walter’s side. And, given the presence of Walter and his wife, it seems likely that this wedding was on his side of the family. However, Margaret and Walter married in an Anglican church.

So, who got married at Walton Methodist church in the 1950s? I'll certainly be checking out Ancestry's Yorkshire non-conformist records, though I'm not sure how up-to-date they come.

It’s definitely not the marriage of Fay’s brother Leslie Gordon Rayner, as his wife was an Italian Catholic. Plus, I would definitely recognise them.

It could possibly be the marriage of John’s brother Trevor Newby, who married Brenda Hartley in the first quarter of 1958. It fits into my schedule of likely dates. However, I think my dad would have recognised them in the image. On the other hand, Walton falls under the Lower Agbrigg registration district in which their marriage was registered, so perhaps I’ll get him to take another look.

Alternatively, it could be a cousin. Walter had, I believe, four brothers: (you can find out more about this on Another Piece of the Puzzle), while Margaret was one of twelve children?. I think I need to devote some time to chasing down the marriages of the various siblings and see if I can figure out who it could be!

L x

On my brief visit to the Forest of Dean

Last weekend I had occasion to travel to the Forest of Dean, which is about 30 miles out of Cheltenham, in the direction of South Wales. It’s an area I’ve never been to before, but it also happens to be where many of my supposedly ‘Welsh’ ancestors actually originated, before their move to Tredegar, South Wales, in the late nineteenth century. It was a somewhat impromptu visit, to meet my boyfriend’s mum, (who happened to be working there) and pick up some exciting post (on which more very soon, hopefully...!)

Anyhow, as it wasn’t organised, I hadn’t had the time to gather together what I needed in order to make it a research expedition, though I am planning to go back there for this purpose at some point – it’s almost inexcusable that I haven’t done so already, given how close it is! However, it did give me a chance to scope out the area, and I came away with some interesting impressions.

The Forest of Dean is a Crown forest of about 42 square miles and today attracts a lot of tourists, for the stunning woodland and outdoor pursuits such as walking and cycling. However, while it may sound like a rural idyll, in fact the area has a long history of mining, both for coal and iron. While there I also discovered that there was a gold mine in the north of the forest.

The forest has an interesting tradition of free miners – men who have have earned the right to mine for coal or iron on personal plots, known as Gales. The practice is regulated through a  unique system of rules, and some free miners continue to operate today. Here is the eligibility rule:

"All male persons born or hereafter to be born and abiding within the said Hundred of St Briavels, of the age of twenty one years and upwards, who shall have worked a year and a day in a coal or iron mine within the said Hundred of St Briavels, shall be deemed and taken to be Free Miners."

We arrived at a place called New Fancy View (a viewing point that was formerly a mine called New Fancy). Here there is a large ‘map’ set into the ground, showing the locations of all the mines in the Forest, numbered with a key giving their names. I found this really interesting, and of course it made me resolve to find out, if I can, where my ancestors worked, or where they may have worked. I don’t have any reason to believe that they were operating as Free Miners, from the censuses, though of course, it may not have been stated.

They did seem to move around the forest a lot, however, so I may be able to map this against the opening and closing of mines to see if I can see any pattern. And of course, they eventually began to drift off into South Wales. Interestingly, they did all seem to move to Wales, but not all at the same time – perhaps it became apparent that their family members were prospering there, and so one by one they began to follow them?

I was also struck by the names of the gales, many of which, like New Fancy view, were obviously locally named. Here are a few of my favourites: All Profit, Brazilly, Breadless, Mystery, Oddfellows Delight, Potlid, Strip And At It, Trafalgar, Tormentor, True Blue, Uncertainty.

While some of them are named optimistically, such as ‘All Profit’, or ‘True Blue’, others give a hint of the Free Miner’s life of hard work ­­– ‘Strip and At It’ –­ and instability– ‘Mystery’, ‘Uncertainty’, ‘Breadless’ or ‘Tormentor’. Others  are affectionate – ‘Oddfellows Delight’; patriotic – ‘Trafalgar’; or just plain incomprehensible – ‘Brazilly’ and ‘Potlid’!

I found this useful site, which allows you to browse known information about these gales. I’ve read a few, and some of this history is quite interesting, with what seems to be some personal testimony about the mines, such as this one, from the page about the gale ‘Uncertainty’:

“Colliery such a serious loss to me and other members of family.  My father involved us in difficulties in spending so much money to get coal out but found hardly any to be seen. “

However, there’s no sign of any of my ancestors at first glance, which probably means I was right that they weren’t working as Free Miners.

The towns and villages of the Forest are not particularly picturesque, having been mostly pit villages, and today they are areas or relative poverty. My boyfriend commented that they reminded him of the towns and villages of the Welsh Valleys, like Tredegar, where my grandfather was born. I agree, they do have the same feel to them, and after all, it was an area with the same mining heritage, and just over the border. In the Dark Ages, parts of the Forest of Dean might have been within the Welsh kingdoms of Gwent and Ergyng, and the boundary remained uncertain until Offa’s Dyke was built in around AD 790. I can imagine that movement between the two areas was frequent and family ties numerous.

This is really just a starting point for further research, but it definitely gave me a feel for the area I’m dealing with.

L x

Detective work 4. Location, location, location

It’s one of the most frustrating things to have to deal with – your ancestor goes a-wandering but you have no idea to where.  It can be tricky but there are a few things worth considering.

Firstly, identify the most likely places your ancestors would move to. The foremost reason they would move is for work, so look at areas where there might have been similar employment – textiles workers might move from the Cotswolds to Yorkshire or Lancashire, coal miners from South Wales to the North-East, and of course just about everyone was pouring from the countryside into the cities. Look for common migration patterns from your area of interest – where were other people from that area going? Some basic historical research might give you some interesting possibilities.

It’s also worth considering other possibilities though. They might have moved to the area that their spouse came from. Bear in mind also that sometimes women would go back to their family in order to have the baby, so keep an eye out for people living in one region but born in another, to find out where their family might originate from. On the other hand, families often tended to move together, so if you find a sibling who has moved away, look nearby for people who seem to be missing from their original location. Also, sometimes you get grandchildren living with grandparents or other family members, which might give some indication of where someone has moved to or from.

Bear in mind that the further away an ancestor moves from the place they were born, the vaguer the census entry for place of birth may be. Census enumerators were unlikely to have been familiar with far-off localities, so often just wrote down larger places they had heard of or even just the county. Sometimes it all gets a bit muddled for no apparent reason. Don’t discount a possible ancestor just because his or her place of birth is a little off!

On the other hand, look out for recurring locations and addresses – if there seems to be a pattern, it’s highly unlikely that it’s random. Families would often move very short distances within their locale, so if there’s someone with the same family name on the same street, there’s a strong chance their connected somehow, even if you can’t figure it out yet. Similarly, I often find children who marry end up living very lose to their parents, so if you can’t track a marriage down, try looking at the neighbours of known family for possibilities.

L x

Y is for Yorkshire

What else could Y be for, really? Yorkshire is my home county, but more importantly, it has also been home to many of my ancestors – on nearly every branch I’ve managed to find at least one Yorkshire resident!  It shouldn’t be that surprising. Yorkshire is the largest county in England (when all its parts or combined), and so I suppose there’s a good chance that everyone has the odd bit of Yorkshire in them!

The great thing about having Yorkshire ancestors is that there are loads of really useful records, and lots of them are online.

The not so great thing is that it can be utterly baffling trying to wade through so many possible records, particularly if you’re not familiar with the country. The strong Yorkshire streak in my mother’s family was what encouraged me to start with them: I was comfortable with the names and the places. I could spot which were the most likely families based on geography without having to resort to a map every five minutes.  One of the most useful resources for those without this knowledge is Genuki’s Where is it in Yorkshire? page. This is absolutely invaluable for identifying the correct parish for your tiny Yorkshire place, and I also find it a very helpful list if you’re struggling with handwriting or transcription errors, as it’s pretty definitive.

Another possible complication for non-Yorkshire folk to get their heads around is the sub-division of the county, which has changed over time. Once upon a time Yorkshire was divided into three ‘ridings’. The term is essentially derived from ‘thirding’, meaning ‘a third part (of a county)’.  The three ridings were the North, West and East. 

However, modern Yorkshire was formed in 1974 from North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, with the eastern part becoming Humberside.

South Yorkshire was formed mainly out of the southern part of the West Riding, as well as parts of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Humberside took in parts of the former East and West Ridings as well as places previously in Lincolnshire. However, after the abolishment of Humberside in 1996 a new local government district called the East Riding of Yorkshire was created. This includes most but not all of the old East Riding.

Other parts of the former West Riding became part of North Yorkshire, Lancashire and even Cumbria, leaving West Yorkshire now a much smaller area than the old West Riding, while the North Riding lost some of its territory to County Durham and Cleveland in the north.

Effectively, it is only the last six years that one can accurately refer to North, South East (riding of) and West Yorkshire! There is a useful map roughly showing how the old and new boundaries compare here.

What is so wonderful about Yorkshire as a country is the variety you can get in such a (relatively) small area. You have vast hills and moorland, particularly to the north and west, while in the south and east the landscape is generally gentler, stunning coastline which is made up of both rugged cliffs and sandy beaches, and you have vibrant metropolitan cities like Leeds contrasting with beautiful historic towns like York and the spa town of Harrogate.

Yorkshire was also historically home to a vast variety of industry and commerce. Agriculture dominated the rural north, while to the west there were coalfields but also centres for trade in textiles of all kinds. Fishing, unsurprisingly, dominated the coastal region, and Sheffield in the south was renowned for the steel industry. Much of the confectionery industry also developed here, and one West Yorkshire area was known as the Rhubarb Triangle! Of course, it is this variety that led to its attracting people from all over the country – my ancestors moved from South Wales to Yorkshire for the mines and from Lincolnshire to the steel trade in Sheffield, as well as to work on the railway, which of course was tied in with this explosion of industrial activity.

I could write on and on about the history, dialect and culture of Yorkshire, and I have already touched on it in a few other posts (ive given them all a Yorkshire label, so click on Yorkshire at the bottom to find out more).  If you do want to read a bit of general background, I would recommend the Wikipedia page, which gives a good overview. As you can probably tell, I’m really quite passionate about my home county! I think it’s impossible to come from Yorkshire and not be though – it’s testament to the character of both people and place that Yorkshire as a whole continues to be recognised despite all the divisions and name changes that have taken place in its history, and despite the vast differences in the landscapes and economies.

L x

I is for Irish

As I don’t currently have any names beginning with I in my tree, I had to come up with another topic begging with I for today’s blog.

I chose ‘Irish’ simply because it is a part of my heritage that I don’t know a lot about. There are two Irish lines in my tree so far: the Geoghegan line, which I discussed in G is for Geoghegan, and the Thompson line via my dad’s paternal grandmother, Margaret Thompson. However, Irish genealogy isn’t something I have done much of, so it will be a new challenge for me.  Here I’m going to investigate what I already know about my Irish ancestors, and where I think I can find out more. As I am very new to this, I’d love to get some feedback or suggestions from those of you with a bit more experience in this particular area.

Geoghegan, obviously, is an Irish name. However, my first ‘Irish’ Geoghegan – by which I mean born in Ireland – is James Geoghegan. Even this is somewhat uncertain. The 1841 census states that he was born in Ireland. The 1851 census states that he was born in Dublin, Ireland. However, the 1861 census simply says ‘CY Lancashi’, which I interpret to mean county of Lancashire. I suspect that the earlier censuses are more accurate, but whether Dublin is correct or just an approximation is uncertain.

In any case, James was born in about 1791. His wife Mary is English (I haven’t yet identified her maiden name, but the 1851 census gives her birth place as Manchester, also around 1791). All of James’ known children seem to have been born in England also, suggesting that James moved to England before his marriage, which probably took place around 1810–1815.

This, of course, means that James didn’t move to England following the Irish famine of the 1840s like many other immigrants. Research seems to suggest that immigration from Ireland, caused by poverty and unemployment, was quite common in the early part of the twentieth century, albeit on a smaller scale. There were known crop failures in 1800 and 1807, which could, of course, have been contributing factors in my Geoghegans' departure from Ireland.

Finding out more about James Geoghegan’s early life with so little to go on is likely to prove quite tricky. Ideally I need to find the parish marriage record for James and Mary Ann to see what else I can glean from this. Hopefully it will give me his father’s name and possibly occupation, which will then equip me to tackle the Irish records. I haven’t had any luck finding this online yet, and with Mary Ann’s birthplace simply given as Manchester, narrowing down where to look (marriages usually taking place in the bride’s home parish) might be tricky. This is going to be a test of patience!

Another possible strategy might be to see if there are other Geoghegan families living close to James on the censuses. If he did emigrate with other family members, chances are they would have settled quite close to one another, so it might give me some clues. If I can identify potential siblings and further records for them, for example, it might give me a bit more info to go on...

My Thompsons are a completely different kettle of fish.  Margaret Thompson’s father Albert Thomas Thompson was born in Lisburn, Antrim, on 11 September 1870, according to a record in the collection Ireland Births and Baptisms 1620–1911 on Ancestry.

However, this isn’t a case of straightforward birth and later emigration either. Albert’s mother, Sarah Ann Semley, was born in Sandal near Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, and was living in the Yorkshire area until 1861. In 1867 she married James Thompson in Manchester. Later census records reveal that James was born in Antrim in about 1843 – immediately prior to the start of the Great Famine. However, I haven’t been able to find any trace of James in England prior to his marriage to Sarah Ann, so I don’t think he left Ireland with his family. It seems most likely to me that he came to England as a young man for work. Sarah Ann’s family remain in Yorkshire consistently on the censuses, so my guess is that Sarah Ann went away from home to work, possibly in domestic service, and met and married James, who was perhaps also working in the area?

The couple’s eldest son, John Robert Thompson was born in Salford ‘abt 1869’ according to most censuses. But presumably he was in fact born in 1868, as Walter Thompson was born in Antrim on 20 March 1869. So, the couple married and were living in Lancashire, but went to Ireland sometime in late 1868 or early 1869. Of the children born after Albert, Wilfred Thompson (b. 1876) and Edmund Thompson (b. abt 1879) were both also born in Antrim. Only James H. Thomspon (b. 1885) was born in England, thus it seems likely that the family remained in Ireland until shortly before the 1881 census, when they are once again living in England, in Worsborough, close to Sarah Ann’s family.

The Thompson men seem to have been almost exclusively employed as ‘stonemasons’ or sometimes ‘monumental masons’ – that is to say stonemasons working mainly on headstones and other monuments.

I have been unable to find a parish birth record for James – sadly the Irish civil birth records don’t start until the 1860s. My best bet to get more info on James Thompson’s Irish background then is probably the 1867 marriage certificate initially. Hopefully this will give me his father’s name and occupation to work from.  

L x

p.s. There is a particularly informative post on researching Irish ancestors on Niall McMahon’s blog.

On Yorkshire dialect

Every so often I’ll say something and everyone will either laugh or look baffled. Having grown up deep in Yorkshire my language is smattered with dialect words. At school it was never a problem because we all spoke the same, but as soon as I moved away for university it became apparent that I was speaking an alien tongue!

One of the first words that caused a problem was ‘mash’, meaning ‘to brew’. It can either be used as ‘the tea’s mashing’ i.e. it’s brewing, or ‘mash some tea’ – make some tea, literally ‘pour the water onto the teabag so it can brew’. The first time I said that at university, no one got it.

When I moved into my second year university house, I was giving my boyfriend directions and said ‘down the ginnel’ – he had no idea what I meant. A ginnel is an alleyway or passage, sometimes with a roof. The word comes from the French ‘venelle’, which itself must be a derivative of ‘venir’, the verb ‘to come’. Interestingly Durham, my university city, is full of vennels’, but it wasn’t until much later that I connected the two words.

Both of these were words that I’d never realised weren’t ‘real’ English. I thought everyone said them. Even now I’ll read somewhere that something is a dialect word, and I had no idea, to me it was just the name for something!

I know that once again I have gone slightly off topic, but I think my visit home at the weekend has given me the urge to celebrate my Yorkshire roots. I like the fact that I have this dialect (which is becoming increasingly rare), and that it connects me to my family history.

Language is connected to place of course , but it is also passed down through the family generations. After all, our first words are learnt from our parents, and their first words were learnt from their parents too. My very local dialect is a fitting reminder that I have 200+ years of family history in the same small area.  If you want to truly understand where your ancestors came from, most genealogists would probably agree that a visit is a good idea. Even though places change over time, they all retain some vestiges of their history and culture.  

This is why one of my next daytrips will be taking in the Forest of Dean, where many of my ‘Welsh’ grandfather’s family came from. It’s right on my doorstep here in Cheltenham, and it will give me a fantastic opportunity to get a feel for the history, culture and language of a branch of thr family that I know relatively little about.

So, for those of you with West Yorkshire ancestors, here’s a little taster of some local dialect. These are a few of my favourites, and ones that I would use without even stopping to think. I’ve essentially cobbled together the spelling based on my instincts, which probably gives you some idea of how I hear them:

‘Buffet’ (the t is pronounced) meaning a stool

‘Clap cold’ meaning gone completely cold, usually of food or drink

‘Frame yourself’ meaning ‘hurry up’ or ‘get on with it’

‘Gip’ meaning to retch

‘Lathered’ meaning hot, usually used as 'I'm lathered'

‘Morngy’ meaning sulky or whingeing, usually of a child

‘Parky’ meaning cold (of the weather)

‘Stalled’ meaning to be fed up or running out of patience – ‘I’m getting stalled’

L x

On Mappy Monday: Aardvarkmaps

Now, I’ve never been a big fan of geography, but it’s very important as a genealogist that you know where people are. And how better to plot locations than by making a map?

I thought this might be a useful exercise in reminding me where to look – it gets quite hard to keep track of when you’ve got 600+ people in your family tree! A fair few of my ancestors travelled quite a bit so it’s definitely worth having a comprehensive map of locations and proximities.

I also expect it to be interesting to plot where people were at different dates, to track migration patterns. Hopefully this might help me work out more about their lives and occupations, and maybe even fill in some gaps.

So, I’m using Aardvarkmap.net which basically allows you to ‘pin’ places on a map and add in whatever info you like.

The advantages are that it uses Google maps, which we all already recognize and know how to use. It’s also quite simple to use in itself, with plenty of space to record whatever you want. You can zoom in and out so you can be as precise or approximate as you want in your markings. You can either link to your map or, build it into your webpage as I’ve done here. Plus you can log back in and update whenever you want (although then you do get a whole new version of the map, so you have to update links etc.)

I’m starting with family surnames and dates only. I might build on this later by adding specific individuals, known addresses and parish records. You can check out my map using the page links to the top-left of the page, or by clicking here.

If you hover over the little white icons you can see the place names, and if you click on them you will get pop-up balloons with surnames for that area. This will give you some idea of my family history name and location interests – please do give me a shout if any of these coincide with your own!

Beware though, you need to be using / viewing your maps on a regular basis – if not, they disappear! The help forums say ‘after a lengthy period of non-use’ – but I wouldn’t say a week was particularly lengthy!

Anyone else using this or something similar? How useful do you find it?

L x