A Week in my Life: of free events and family history

It has been a bit of a whirlwind week. Monday began with some work on a new Migration course that I am writing for Pharos Tutoring and Teaching. This is going to be presented in May, so I need to get the Is dotted and Ts crossed. Then there was finishing off the Brick Walls presentation for Devon Family History Society. This is where we dig out our magic wands and try to solve members’ genealogical conundrums. The day was rounded off with a committee meeting. Tuesday was spent sorting some Forgotten Women biographies ready for uploading and reading through my Pharos Writing your Family History course to check for any necessary changes. This starts online in a couple of weeks and last time I looked there was room for a few more to join the fun. Next, a Cornish lesson and then chatting about Illegitimacy and Insanity etc. to the lovely Huddersfield and District FHS.

More migration course work on Wednesday and a typed chat with the students on my Discovering more about your Agricultural Labourers course. Then there was trying to master an online computer game that I have been playing with some of my descendants on an almost daily basis. Thursday was definitely Forgotten Women day, with two chats preparing for future events and the sudden realisation that International Women’s Day was almost upon us and we really needed to do something that we could prepare for quickly. Bear in mind that my fellow Few Good Women, who oversee this project, have lives that resemble mine for activity. Thursday evening found me, aided by Mistress Agnes, talking about seventeenth century gardens to a Zoom audience of 175. It was a Norfolk Family History Society meeting with Devon folk in attendance as well. Friday, I had my local history hat on and went to see the deeds of a local property. Then there was a small group meeting to run for Devon Family History Society in the evening. At these meetings we get together a couple of dozen people with an interest in a small group of Devon parishes. As usual, several attendees found common interests.

Oh good the weekend, a rest maybe? No, dear reader, you would sadly be wrong. More plans for the Forgotten Women event. This will be on 8 March and consist of three free Zoom sessions, when members of the team will share the stories of some of the women we have researched. Bookings are open and you can find details here. Then there was presenting the Brick walls session for Devon Family History Society, followed by another chat with those hunting down their agricultural labouring ancestors. Sunday, the day of not much rest. Thanks to one of our team’s efforts, our 8 March event was safely loaded on to Eventbrite. More stories were prepared for the Forgotten Women website, which also needed rearranging, as we’ve already, after just ten weeks, got more stories than we could present in the previous format.

So will this week be any calmer? Well, hardly. To begin with, there is Rootstech. I decided not to offer to speak this time but I will be attending virtually, for free and so can you. There are presentations by speakers across the globe on every subject related to family history that you could possibly imagine. My playlist of sessions I want to listen to is already ridiculously long, There is a facility called Relatives at Rootstech, which means you can see if any distant relations are amongst the attendees. Just this morning, I was excited to find that a previously unknown third cousin will be there. Third cousins are practically my closest relatives, so that was exciting. This is on the Smith side, which reminds me, I have a presentation to write about the Smiths. I need to organise my contributions for 8 March, I have more chats about agricultural labourers, I have talks to give about young people and genealogy, about twentieth century sources and about plague and so it goes on. Please don’t mention things like cleaning.

Irish Adventures

No, this is not me trying to learn another language. The Cornish continues (note I didn’t say progresses) and I will report on that another time.

I had a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime holiday touring the whole of the island of Ireland planned and booked. What could possibly go wrong? What went wrong was that the holiday was planned for May 2020. It is always difficult to arrange to spend long periods away from home but finally, later this year was to be the time for the rearranged Irish holiday. I do like everything planned in advance. Some call me organised and in a sense I am but this is not a virtue, it is a coping mechanism. I revisited the 2020 itinerary, tweaked a few things, made sure the tourist attractions we planned to visit hadn’t permanently closed and prepared to re-book everything.

When you are touring, three days here, four days there, everything hinges on the start date. This means I needed to begin by confirming the ferry. I didn’t do a year long course with an Irish University without learning how beautifully laid back the atmosphere is in Ireland (and no, still no certificate, one month after it was posted), so, in early January, it was not a surprise to learn that bookings had not yet opened for the ferry crossings later in the year. ‘Try next week’. After several ‘next weeks’, finally, a confirmed ferry booking.

Next step, caravan sites. Some of those we’d hoped to stay in were no longer running, others didn’t open until May and weren’t taking bookings yet. I know, I know, ‘’Twill be grand’ and all that but I really do like to know that we will have somewhere to pitch the van. Sites don’t seem to be anything like as plentiful as on mainland Britain, so arriving somewhere and hoping for the best is definitely not a great idea, at least not if you are me. Wild camping is illegal on the island of Ireland, or perhaps it isn’t, Mr Google is unclear on the matter. Having read ‘it isn’t strictly legal but you’ll probably get away with it’, I know this isn’t an option. The one person who won’t get away with it will be me. So back to trying to book sites. It was a real mixture, some online booking forms wanted to know the equivalent of the inside leg measurements of all guests, other sites took days to answer emails. We still can’t book a site for the end of the holiday. It was difficult enough finding one anywhere near the right place. Some only took motor homes not caravans, some closed for the season before we wanted to stay. In the end, we’ve had to settle for ‘just turn up no need to book’, which really doesn’t sit well with me. There are fifty odd pitches on this site, what happens if fifty one someones ‘just turn up’ and we are number fifty one? We had a site issue in Canada, two sites that we had booked had decided to close early for the season, leaving us in the lurch. Really hope this doesn’t happen again.

Tours then, booking tours is particularly important as we are only in a place for two or three days, so if we can’t get a ticket on a particular day, we can’t just go the following week. Surely we can book tours to things that say ‘early booking essential’? It seems not. ‘Early’ seems to equate to a couple of days in advance, which means we will already be away and I will have to struggle to do this when we have wifi or by phone, deep joy.

After a hectic week of googling ‘touring caravan site near x’ we are as prepared as Ireland will let us be. Apart from regular checking to see if ‘early’ is now, all that is left is to anticipate the trip and keep everything crossed that fire, famine, plague or earthquake don’t mean we have to rearrange again.

Forgotten Women, Lost Ancestors and a few Other Things

I am still recovering from our Few Forgotten Women Friday back in January. In the end, fifty three of us each took one or more of the girls from the Leeds Industrial School and attempted to find out more about them. Given that we had a zero budget (though a few of us did succumb to buying a certificate or two) and were restricted to what we could find online, we were remarkably successful. Of course there were those for whom very little could be found and others where we found someone of the right name but couldn’t be sure we had the right person. The nature of the lives that these girls and their families led meant that they were likely to avoid appearing in the official records, or did so under an alias. Nonetheless, some fascinating stories are emerging. Sadly, many of them did not end happily but some of the girls did seem to turn their lives around. The stories are gradually appearing on the website, so do take a look. There’s a now a new Forgotten Women Friday on the horizon in March. So do get in touch if you fancy honing your research skills on an inebriate woman.

Every now and then I revisit one of my family lines to see what more can be found. It is currently the turn of the Smiths of London (I know – someone has to take one for the team). I have (possibly rashly) agreed to make them the subject of a talk, focussing on the possibilities when researching the country’s most common surname in the most highly populated city. It is surprising what a range of sources can be used, both for the genealogy and the contextual history. I am getting lost down more rabbit holes than you can imagine.

Whilst on the subject of elusive ancestors, I have been working on a new course for Pharos Teaching and Tutoring about Migration and those ancestors that just disappear. A positive warren of rabbit holes here. If any of you have managed, thus far, to escape being drawn in to the obsession that is family history, despite reading my blog, now is the time to start. Pharos have just launched a two-part Foundations of Family History course that can be taken at any time; ideal for those who are just stepping their toes in the water but be warned – there is no going back. While I am on the topic of courses. There’s another chance to take my online ‘Are you Sitting Comfortably? Writing and Telling your Family History’. This usually runs twice a year but this will be the only chance in 2023 and there is an option to submit a piece for me to feed back on if you wish. The course starts with Pharos Teaching and Tutoring on 13 March.

Writing has mostly been about finishing the draft of the non-fiction book I’ve been working on for the past year. I’m afraid the title is embargoed and it may be a year before copies hit the bookshelves but it has been great fun to write. I am now dealing with the dreaded task of sourcing copyright free illustrations. There are plenty of documents I’d love to include but the responses are usually along the lines of ‘that will be £200 please’, which means it will cost me a fortune to produce the book. I accept that, if it sells well, I will be making a few pence an hour for writing it but that really is, literally, a few pence, so shelling out to use illustrations is not an option. Despite what trawling the internet might suggest, you really can’t just use images as and where you please.

I’ve been keeping in touch with my lovely colleagues from the Experimental Archaeology Course and there was great excitement three weeks ago as certificates marking our success began to be delivered. I eagerly searched my doormat – nothing. Days passed – still nothing. I know I live in the back of beyond, where postmen rarely dare to tread but certificates have reached Australia and I still don’t have mine. I have asked the powers that be and am now anxiously awaiting a reply as well as a certificate.

I’ve been giving talks here and there, in person and on line and had a chat about family history to Radio Devon last week, as you do. Everything you know about family history in ten minutes was a tad of a challenge but always a pleasure to speak to the lovely Pippa Quelch.

Signs of spring are wonderful. I just wish the sun could shine without showing quite so much dust.