Hertfs Past & Present - Spring 2016

This has just been published by the Hertfordshire Association for Local History and contains the following items which will interest local historians:

Entrepreneurs and Rebels looks at the people who lived in Ware in the 14th century. Such research is greatly aided by the amount of information on web sites such as www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk 

Robert the Mason and his legacy looks at what is known about the man who rebuilt the original Saxon church at St Albans. As a result of his work St Albans is the only major church in England with a great crossing tower of the 11th century still standing.

Benn's Club of Aldermen is the name pf a painting, dated 1752, in the Goldsmith's Hall, in London. This article examines hoe a grocer's boy from Puckeridge ended up in such exalted company.

Vincent van Gough's sister in Welwyn tells of the search to find which house the sister of the prominent painter lived for a short time during the 1870s.

Helping Beginners in Family History

Normally I only answer questions where someone has come up across a brick wall, or raises an issue which is of wider interest. What I don't have time to do is to carry out extensive research for free when the information is readily available online and the questioner could easily find the answers themselves. However I occasionally get well written requests for help from someone who is just starting out and, if they are to be successful in the long term they need the experience and practice to find the "easy stuff" for themselves.

See Hollingsworth/Baker Marriage in 1922 at Puckeridge for the kind of reply I like to give to a beginner who starts by sending some old family certificates. [But remember I only answer questions relating to Hertfordshire prior to about the end of the First World War.]

Picture Updates on the Hertfordshire Genealogy Web Site

Post Cards

I am currently reorganising my post card collection and relating it to the pictures on the web site - some of which have been online since the site started in 2001. Few of the older pictures have high resolution images and some need re-scanning to fit in with recent scanning and display technology. In addition there are many cards in the queue waiting to appear on the site, together with some Victorian photographs and engravings. If I was not careful this newsletter (and the associated twitter feed @HertsGenealogy) could become full of notifications such that a single picture had been added to a tiny village.

There is already a page where the menu lists recent post card updates - and the main window normally shows one of the latest updates. The latest views can be accessed by clicking on the picture on the Home page. In future all cases where a single new picture has been added or a poor quality image replaced I will wait until there are a batch of such updates.

Military

Churches

(1) There is significant added text of historical or family history interest, perhaps in answer to a question..In a number of cases a new page may need to be created - for instance to have a special page for the parish church - and such changes will be reported

(2) The picture is particularly relevant to the First World War (pictures of troops, war memorials, etc.) because of the amount of interest in this area at present the present time.

The latest single image updates relate to:

• An early picture (before enlarged nave) of Christ Church, Radlett
• A picture of Christ Church, Chorleywood and vicarage
• A multiview card of Puckeridge from the 1930s.