Report on July activities -and some quickie reports

The original plan was that I took the month quietly but there were 29 posts and over 5900 visitor views on this newsletter, and over 22,000 to the main web site. The real problem was that I spent too much time on the site, and with holiday breaks, etc., other matters got neglected. In the next few days I will posting provisional plans for the future of the site.

Quickie Reports of  Recent Correspondence and Updates.

Thomas MARRYAT, Barnet, 1760 & "A Happy Child"

Last year I was asked about the origins of an 18th century song which turned up in America and which had a specific reference to Barnet. Paul has written to say that when Thomas Marryat was in America between 1760 and 1766 he could not have met the Geyer family in Boston. I have contacted the original enquirer, Caroline, and reviewed what we know and where further evidence might turn up.

Hatfield Local History Society Publications

I have updated the contact information for people wanting to buy any of these publications.

Apsley Football Club

Anthony Taylor has provided some additioina information

AUSTIN, Berkhamsted, mid 19th century

Audrey asked about the shop occupied by Joseph Austin (a butcher) in the 1851 census - and also about records of the location of contemporary graves in Berkhamsted. I am only able to give limited advice - can anyone else help her?

Old Hertfordshire Recipies: Dunstable Larks

Anthony Carter pointed out that my original illustration was the wrong species - and I have replaced it with a more relevant picture.

An Unusual Uniform - So what did this man do for a living?

Jon suggests that the badge could represent the letters SGC and wondered if this could be the uniform of people who worked for the St Albans Gas Company. Can anyone verify this - or come up with an alternative suggestion?

A Wig-making Factory in St Albans in the 1930s

Brenda emailed me with some more information and I have added her note as a comment.

Name Variants in Find My Past

The latest edition of the Lost Cousins newsletter contains an article about the problems of searching for people with multiple given names which you might find interesting. Every online site has its searching idiosyncrasies and it is important to find out what they are.  .

Report on June activities.

My comparatively quite summer produced more activity than planned with 20 post in the month despite the fact that I took a holiday in Devon and had the problems of a "minor accident." (To complicate matters further the courtesy car was scrapped by another car when properly parked - but as the culprit and an independent witness left notes on the windscreen my insurance should not be affected,). All this meant that I had to shop round for a newer car in a hurry. The result seems to fit all our requirements - of which having comfortable seats was an important requirement when you get older and stiffer. The only problem is that the tailgate of the estate is too high for a short person to be able to close.

The Japanese Garden at Cottered

One post during the month caused a lot of activity - and there was marching activity on the main web site. On 21st June the BBC TV programme Gardener's World included an item on the Japanese Garden at Cottered, I had earlier been approached to see if they could use the c1930s old post card I had on the web site showing the garden so I watched - and within half an hour of the end of the programme I posted The Japanese Garden in Hertfordshire. Within half an hour there had been 60 hits rising to over 250 within 24 hours - and over 1000 within the week. There were over 800 hits of the Cottered page on the main site, possibly because my 1930s picture came out top on the relevant Google images page. The total page views on the site in June was 6,372 and the total number of visitors to the main web site was 23,456.

I am thinking about the long term plans for this web site, and I feel the priority must be to document areas where I have original, unpublished material in the "queue" and also to get the support library in better order - and possible sell of unwanted items on ebay to try and clear some space.