Tuesday's Tip - Unsuccessfully Organising Myself Part I

I realised recently that although I have been adding new information to my tree, I had completely forgotten to keep the spreadsheet I had spent hours on a couple of years ago updated - arrggh!

The spreadsheet exercise has proved very useful in the past so I'm fairly annoyed with myself at not keeping it up. I'll need to sit down with it at some point soon and go back through it to check everything, but in the meantime it reminded me that I am still missing a handful of BMD certificates for some of my direct ancestors. So I've treated myself to three, the first being the birth certificate for my Great-Grandfather George Wallis. He was born in Appleby in 1879 to James and Sarah (nee Mortimer).

The only new information it gave me was his actual birthdate, I had already found his baptism at St. Michael's church, Appleby, in Leicestershire Archives. It did remind me though, that I haven't got any further back with the Wallis line than James, George's father. The census entries I've found for James in 1861 and 1871 reveal him living with his grandparents, George and Mary, who had six or seven children, so he could be the illegitmate offspring of any of those. James doesn't give a father's name on his marriage certificate - something else to add to the "to-do" list!

So, Tuesday's tip; if you're going to make an effort organising your research - keep it updated! Otherwise you could be making yourself a few hours of extra work. :-(

Thankful Thursday

I'm very thankful for a large parcel that arrived one day last week. 

I've posted before about my Great Aunt Joy who emigrated to Australia - she gave me a Nottingham lace bedspread some years ago, which was designed by her Grandfather William Bucknall.

 
Sadly Auntie Joy passed away in July last year at the grand age of 90. She and her husband, Don, my grandmother's brother, had enjoyed a fantastic life in Australia, making many new friends along the way. 

It was one of these friends that was kind enough to send me today's parcel which contains Joy & Don's photo albums. 

I'm over the moon to receive them, especially as they all seem to be dated and labelled with both names and places.

 
I'm intending to scan the most relevant ones and share them with the rest of the family (whether they like it or not!) via Dropbox.

Motivation Monday - Top Ten for 2016

My genealogy 'to-dos' are numerous & I never seem to make much progess, probably because I'm too easily distracted by those pesky shaking leaves* on Ancestry!

So I've decided to list the top ten things I could really do with getting to the bottom of and hope that a list will keep me focussed!

1. Finish searching the French online records for my Oldham family in Calais. The Census and Birth/Marriage/Death records are all freely available online. I've found the family in 1866, but also need to look further back to see if the previous generation spent time there and also if any of them went to Australia.
2. Transcribe sections of Joseph Woolley's diary and finish reading/copying the remainder at the Nottingham Archives. Continuing with the Oldham family, but this time in Clifton, Nottinghamshire. Joseph Woolley was a framework knitter from Clifton, as well as his own business his diary documents he commented on his neighbours and local events. I need to transcribe the pages I've already photographed and finish reading the remaining sections in the Archives.
3. Finish checking the Methodist records at the Nottinghamshire Archives. I'm mostly looking for Oldhams in these records, but other family names have cropped up too.
4. Make use of the Nottinghamshire Family History Society's research room. To find more Oldham information, specifically Thomas Oldknow Oldham's birth/baptism around 1834. Also check their online databases.
5. Finish reading Percy Richardson's war diary and finish the blog posts.
6. Tidy and reorganise documents, certificate and books. Before ordering any more!
7. Check out parish records on Find My Past. Look for my May family in Frant, Sussex from 1600 working backwards.
8. Visit some local churchyards to look for gravestones. Sawley, Moira, Donisthorpe, Church Wilne, Draycott, Basford, Ashby-de-la-Zouch & others aren't too far away to visit and record any memorial inscriptions.
9. Look for tithe maps and census information for Pilsley. To find out who lived in and/or owned my late father-in-law's farmhouse.
10. Start scanning photos. I received a Doxie Flip as a Christmas present so I'm intending to scan and share many of my photos.

So - lots to do!



*if you have your family tree uploaded to Ancestry, they kindly add a little 'shaking leaf' to any family member they may have records available for, which is usually enough to distract me from doing what I'd orginally logged on to do in the first place!