Researching our Twentieth Century Ancestors

Until recently, I was a columnist for the In-depth Genealogist Magazine and also wrote for their blog. Now the magazine is sadly no more, contributors have been invited to re-post their blog material elsewhere, so that it is preserved. This is another post that I wrote for the magazine, which I have edited to bring it up to date.

As genealogists, we often shy away from researching our twentieth century ancestors, treating them differently from earlier generations. When we begin our quest to uncover our family’s story, the inclination is to rush backwards as far as possible, as fast as possible. Often, our knowledge reaches back to the early years of the twentieth century without us having to do any documentary research. Here are people we have known and whose personal reminiscences, memorabilia and vital records may well be in our possession, or held by close family. For some of us, there is the tendency to view the twentieth century as ‘not really history’; after all we may well have lived through half of it. Our starting point may well be a granny or great granddad who was born in 1895. Family historians will often, justifiably, comment that it is easier to research in the nineteenth century than it is the twentieth. Records that are closed to public view, families that are increasingly mobile and just sheer numbers of people, all add to the difficulties of more recent research. This means we sometimes gloss over the recent members of our family tree, relying on what the family can tell us and instead we immerse ourselves in the stories of our earlier ancestors.

If you have never really focused on your more recent relatives, I would like to encourage you to do so. This is not just about a family tree, it is about recreating your family’s lives. There is so much context that can be incorporated in to stories of ancestors who were alive between 1900 and 1950: two World Wars, the changing role of women, the Great Depression, to name but a few. If you have an English family you might add the General Strike, in Ireland the fight for Home Rule. I had great fun researching this era for my novel Barefoot on the Cobbles. This period may see your family owning a car, a camera or a radio for the first time. Can you find out what they might have seen at the cinema, listened to on the phonograph or played with as children? Fashions, communications, travel and social welfare all changed immeasurably between 1900 and 1950; how would this have affected your family?

More recent research has become more important now that our quest for DNA matches encourages us to take our trees downwards, in an attempt to identify potential 3rd and 4th cousins.

Taking time out from your quest for earlier generations, to concentrate on those from this period, can bring great benefits. Just selecting a few decades really focuses the mind and you will probably be surprised how much you can find out about these relatives, their homes and localities and the lives they may have led. There is much to help you tell that story. You may well have photographs of this period. Even if you do not have photographs of your own ancestors, there are others available to evoke the era. There will be newspaper reports that again might not name your own relatives but will tell you what was going on in their communities. Would granny have attended the church bazaar? Did granddad win the ploughing match? Would your family have been affected by the closure of a major local business? It is much more likely that you will have precise addresses for twentieth century ancestors and it is also more likely that those homes are still standing. This opens up opportunities to include photographs of those homes in your stories.

This is also a fascinating period for those with One Place Studies to focus on – get ready for the release of the 1921 census by focusing on the other documentation now!

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For those of you with British ancestors in this period, if you feel that this is a project that you might like to try and you would welcome further guidance, the next presentation of my five week online course Discovering your British Family and Community in the Early Twentieth Century, run by Pharos Tutoring and Teaching starts in January.

Barefoot on the Cobbles – true story based in Devon 1890-1919. Available on Kindle. Unless you are outside the UK, please buy paperbacks from me (trying to make room for Christmas tree) – postage free to UK addresses. Gift giving season approaching etc.. Also available Remember Then: women’s memories of 1946-1969 and how to write your own. Ditto that think about buying from me. What else can I say, oh talks available on both books on request. Phew, that’s today’s marketing done.

And just because I can, photos of a few of my ancestors who made it into the C20th. P.S I don’t seem to have inherited the ears!

Four Favourite Sources for Researching English Ancestors in the early Twentieth Century

Until recently, I was a columnist for the In-depth Genealogist Magazine and also wrote for their blog. Now the magazine is sadly no more, contributors have been invited to re-post their blog material elsewhere, so that it is preserved. This is another post that I wrote for the magazine, which I have edited to bring it up  to date.

Regular readers will know that my historical novel Barefoot on the Cobbles is set in the early twentieth century. It is based on a true story and the sources that I used, in order to research the lives of the characters, are those that I also use for family history research. With the gift-giving season in mind, I am busy promoting it and my other books as potential present options. Sadly, many family historians do not focus on their more recent ancestors. This is a shame, especially in the era of DNA testing, when researching forwards can help us to understand our DNA matches and enable us to progress backwards.

I thought I would share my four favourite twentieth century sources. Regrettably, only one of these is universally available online. I realise that this may be frustrating for those of you who are unable to visit the relevant English archives. I am spreading the word about these fascinating record sets in the hope that raising awareness will encourage you to persuade the data-providing websites to make them part of their digitising programme, so that they can be accessible to all.

Firstly, the 1910 Valuation Office records. They are largely un-indexed and often ignored; yet their value is equal to that of a census return. The returns are arranged geographically and every property was valued, resulting in four pages of information being recorded in ‘Field Books’. Owners and occupiers’ names are given, together with details such as: when the tenancy commenced, how much rent was paid and who was responsible for repairs. Entries also include a description of the property’s construction, condition and number of rooms. The records for England and Wales are held at The National Archives (TNA), at Kew, in class IR58. The equivalent records for Scotland and Ireland are held at National Records for Scotland and The National Archives, Ireland. A research guide, Valuation Office Survey is available and reading this is highly recommended. Fortunately, the data provider The Genealogist is gradually releasing these records on their subscription website, I am eagerly awaiting the counties that are relevant to me.

Another under-used source is the National Farm Survey of 1941, which again is held at TNA. Class MAF32 includes a series of four forms relating to each land holding. These are:

• The Farm Survey itself, completed by the surveyor, giving the names of the owner, occupier.
• The 1941 Agricultural Census, which lists the acreage, crops and livestock on the holding.
• The Labour and Motive Power Survey. This lists tractors and machinery but also gives information relating to tenanted land, such as the rent paid and when the tenancy began.
• The Soft Fruit and Vegetables for Human Consumption Survey, which is particularly useful in market gardening areas.

There is a National Archives’ Research Guide, which gives further information about the Farm Survey.

The Absent Voters’ Lists are a specific kind of electoral roll. They were compiled in 1918 and 1919 to allow those who were still on active service to vote. For each individual listed, there is also information on their military service, ship, regiment, number and rank as appropriate. Surviving records are likely to be in local archives. There are further details and links to a few online lists.

Finally, a site that you can all consult and will be of interest if your family were in England during the First World War. This is the Red Cross website, which gives details of the service of all the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses. The site allows access to the personnel records of over 90,000 volunteers, with details of the hospitals in which they served, as well as giving interesting background information.

The next presentation of my five week online course ‘Discovering your British Family and Community in the Early Twentieth Century’, run by Pharos Tutoring and Teaching, starts in January. There is still time to book if you would like to start the new genealogical research year in style. Incidentally, comments on twenty four different sources that I used when researching Barefoot on the Cobbles appeared on my blog in December 2018, so do check back in the archives for these.

Image: screen shot from https://vad.redcross.org.uk

Family History and our Pets

Until recently, I was a columnist for the In-depth Genealogist Magazine and also wrote for their blog. Now the magazine is sadly no more, contributors have been invited to re-post their blog material elsewhere, so that it is preserved. This is another post that I wrote for the magazine.

It started with a Tweet. Academics from Royal Holloway and the University of Manchester were investigating how we interacted with our pets between 1837 and 1939. As part of the project they were asking for pre-second world war photographs of family pets. I am fortunate to have a large number of photographs from my mother’s family and yes there were pets. Some of these animals I remember, although these were too recent for the purposes of the project but others lived on in family stories. Apart from the labels on the photographs, had I actually recorded the pet stories in any way? In some respects, pets are a little like those on our family tree who left no descendants, the maiden great-aunts whose stories will not be preserved unless we, the family historians, ensure that they are.

It occurred to me that we have a very special relationship with our animals but rarely do they feature in our family histories. We may have no idea about the animals that featured in the lives of our more distant family members but perhaps we should be acknowledging the existence of our own pets and those that belonged to our immediate ancestors.

My great uncle was a serial pet owner. I have photographs of his dog Mephistopheles, so called because my uncle was performing in a choral piece of the same name at the time the dog was acquired. Like family stories that relate to people, things had become garbled in my memory. I was convinced that ‘Mef’ (imagine shouting ‘Mephistopheles’ across a park) was an Irish Setter but pictures show that he was anything but. Sadly Mef died of a heart attack when the coalman’s horse reared up suddenly and broke the front windows of the house with his hooves. Mef was replaced by a Red Setter, Dep, so called because he deputised for Mef. As a late teenager my mother had Judy the Cairn and Squibs the West Highland White Terrier. Throughout my own childhood my constant companion was Sparky the mongrel. So many memories but here is just one, we would hide under the bed together when Christmas balloons were being blown up.

There were occasions when we had to transport budgerigars from granny’s to home. We may only have actually done this once but it seems as if it was several times. Nor can I be sure why we were doing this, as we holidayed together. Initially granny had two budgies, Comfy and Cosy, one blue and one green, although I cannot remember which was which. To these was added the plain yellow Romeo, so called I think, because he had been found ‘roaming’. We seemed to make a habit of catching lost budgies, sneaking up behind them and rescuing them from the dangers of the wild with judicious use of a net curtain. The bird cage was put on my, by then outgrown, pushchair and covered with a blanket. I stood on the push chair step and leant forward holding the handle to stop the cage sliding off in the event of any emergency stops.

I could go on with stories of how Nora the hamster escaped and lived in the back of the sofa for three days before recapture, or how we had to take the side panel off the bath when my daughter’s hamster made a similar bid for freedom some thirty years later. By now you have the idea, add your pet stories to other family reminiscences; man’s best friends deserve to be remembered. If you do have any pre 1939 pet photographs then get in touch with Pet Histories.