A Chance to Win a Ticket to RootsTech 2023

This draw is now closed thank you for participating.

To wish you all a Happy New Year, I am announcing my free give-away of a ticket to RootsTech 2023. As a RootsTech Influencer, I have an in-person three-day pass to give to one of my readers. This pass, worth $98, includes access to all on-site classes, entrance to all keynote and general sessions, as well as the Expo Hall.

RootsTech is the biggest event in the international genealogical calendar and this year, takes place in Salt Lake City from 2-4 March. There is an exciting line-up of speakers from across the global, many of whom I am proud to call friends. Already purchased a ticket? Not to worry, the winner’s ticket price will be refunded if that is the case. Can’t get to Salt Lake? Then there is a virtual option, which will cost nothing at all.

I thought I’d make you do a little work in order to take part. This will involve you visiting some other websites that are part of my family history life.

To enter, just send me a message using the contact box on the home page with the answers to the following questions.

Using this website, tell me the title of one of my historical novels.

Visit the Forgotten Women website and name one of the ladies whose stories feature.

On the Swords and Spindles website, visit the links and resources page, scroll down and follow the link to name one book in the ‘Books for Children and Young People’ section.

Go to the website of The Braund Society and tell me when the Society was founded.

Finally, look and the website of Buckland Brewer History Group and tell me the name of the speaker we will be listening to in May 2023.

The winner will be chosen at random from all the correct responses received by midnight (London time) on Sunday 29 January.

Good luck!

Telling Ivy’s (family history) Story

A couple of years ago my lovely family history support group and I started working on the stories of our grandmothers. Some of us are still going. I am 3500 words in and have got as far as Granny leaving school; I may be some time. This week I have been looking at what the students on my Pharos Writing and Telling your Family’s History course have produced in just three months. I don’t grade their assignments, just provide constructive feedback. Incidentally, the course starts again in March if you are interested. Looking at Granny’s story, I tried to imagine what my feedback might be. I’d never say this to a student but ‘could do better’ came to mind.

So yesterday I took what I’d written so far and tried to make it ‘look pretty’. Granny’s name was Ivy, cue some pretty Ivy fronds. Not sure what I will do if I get to my other grandparents, Frederick doesn’t conjour up anything similarly artistic. Anyway, after a day’s work I am quite pleased with the first twenty pages. Now to take the story further.

My mum jotted down some notes, one of which was ‘had a boyfriend in the 1914-18 war, used to sing opera to her on the train on the way home from work’. She added a not very uncommon surname. Could I track down possible candidates?. I tried unmarried men with the right surname and right sort of age, living in a five mile radius of Granny in the 1921 census. There were fourteen. Some seemed unlikely on the grounds of occupation. Of course I had no idea if I needed to cast my net wider in terms of age or location. Equally, said boyfriend could have been married, have moved away or have died in the war.

I turned to the 1911 census and found a possibility living just round the corner. This young man became one of the first RAF pilots, stayed on after the war and was killed when flying in 1919. Have I found the right person? In 1911, aged nineteen, he was working in his father’s saw mill, presumably locally. Does this preclude a train journey home from work? He may of course have changed his job after 1911. I am basing this on a Chinese whispers kind ‘evidence’ here. Perhaps there was just one single shared train journey. It also doesn’t quite square with mum’s other note that my grandparents’ first date was in 1911. They married in 1922. Did they drift apart during the war? My grandfather joined up but remained on English soil due to his poor eyesight and clerical skills (he was an accountant), so it doesn’t fit with a ‘don’t wait for me while I am gone’ scenario. Was he actually a boyfriend, or just someone who took a shine to Granny?

Someone has the potential boyfriend on a small private ancestry tree, suggesting they are a reasonably close relative. Said someone hasn’t logged on to their account for over a year. Nothing daunted I’ve sent a message. It seems a pretty fair bet that they won’t reply. If they do will they have any anecdotal evidence about a penchant for opera singing? I know I’ve had more than my share of family history luck this year. I can only dream about the possible survival of a diary mentioning Granny, a photograph of them together and a handy opera score tucked away somewhere.

It is that time of year for resolutions. How about joining me and resolving to tell a family story of your own next year.

Cornish Adventure Aventur Kernewek (possibly) part 4 (nothing to do with travel)

The first term of Cornish lessons is now over and my vocabulary is expanding. I can make sense of Cornish, within the topics we’ve covered but constructing any kind of sentence of my own, let alone a grammatically correct one, is a different matter. This week was seasonal words, which was fun, even though I am not sure that I will need ‘reindeer’ or ‘shepherd’ much in everyday conversation, except perhaps at this time of year. Apart from populating a nativity play, in theory, I can now colour things, talk about the weather, go to the pub and describe my daily routine. I’ve learned a few Cornish place names, some animals and the words for some geographical features. If you’d asked me before I started how long it would take me to get to this stage, my estimate would have been somewhere between a year and never, so I guess that’s progress.

So what next? I have signed up for next term. In the break I am going to keep up the daily practice and try to consolidate the vocabulary that I am not so confident with. I am trying to learn the genders and plurals for all the nouns and there appears to be no logic to this. Often you add ‘ow’ to make a plural, except when you add ‘yow’, or ‘es’, or something else entirely. I am going to write more down, to check I am getting the idiosyncratic spelling correct. I may even try to sneak a few more words under my belt.

Anyway Nadelik Lowen – more Kernewek in the bledhen nowydh.

A Few Forgotten Women

This post may explain why I have been a bit distracted of late and why posts have been more irregular than usual. This is an exciting day for the lovely group of ladies I’ve been working with for the past two years. We came together during lock-down to support each other and work on family history projects. A bit like organisations that encourage you to lose weight, if you know you will be reporting back every couple of weeks, you actually get on and do something. It has worked well and we’ve all become friends, some of us have even met in real life! We worked on our own biographies and the stories of our grandmothers, we looked at heirlooms and much more.

Several of us had an existing interest in marginalised ancestors. We realised that it was often women whose stories get overlooked, so we set out to preserve the memories of some forgotten women. After several months of work, we have today gone live with our website, introducing our first batch of forgotten women. This is just a start, we have more women’s stories in the pipeline and other ideas for further development. It is definitely a case of watch this space. I could make this a really long post and explaining the project but you might just as well head over to the A Few Forgotten Women website and discover what it is all about for yourself. It also means I can now go and eat breakfast instead of keep typing.