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.
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.
I have updated the contact information for people wanting to buy any of these publications.
Anthony Taylor has provided some additioina information
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?
Anthony Carter pointed out that my original illustration was the wrong species - and I have replaced it with a more relevant picture.
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?
Brenda emailed me with some more information and I have added her note as a comment.
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. .
Valentine published a large number of post cards of Hertfordshire. Not only are most of their cards numbered but they published many of the cards in different formats at different dates. Triggered by a request of high resolution images of several of the post cards of Hemel Hempstead I decided to produce high resolution scans of all the Valentine cards of Hemel Hempstead and district (Apsley, Boxmoor and Bovingdon) I currently have (see menu of all cards added), together with details of their backs. This has been done on an experimental basis and there is no plan to extend this to all Valentine cards in the immediate future. However work has been scheduled to update the layout of the information on Hemel Hempstead.
