Brief Notes on Other Activities in September

Fewer posts upfront last month - but over 6,400 page views on the Newsletter and while the number of visitors to the main site is less than in September 2013, the number of pages views was higher. I was involved in a lot of activity in the background (see below), including some computer problems with upgrade to Windows 8.1 and entertaining our Australian visitor - with visits to Bletchley Park and the British Schools Museum.

Karaktus. I have acquired another card in this distinctive series by an unknown St Albans artist but half a dozen of the series still escape me.

Ben Tomlin discovered the page on the photographer Samuel Glendenning Payne, and we discover we share Rolls family ancestors, starting from William Rolls (1726-1798) and Mary Devonshire (1729-1804) of Bicester, Oxfordshire.

I have added an attractive post card of the Old Red Lion public house, High Street, Bushey, from about 1910 by a Watford stationer, Jackson & Co.

I have had several queries recently where people have asked for help who appear to have never read a general guide on family history, have never brought a birth, marriage or death certificate to check details, and have limited their activities to the indexes on one or two web sites. As a result they had made a very elementary mistake of assuming that is a name and date are approximately right it MUST BE MY ANCESTOR!!!! Perhaps I should insist that everyone should look at Right Name, Wrong Body" before asking me a question.

I have added a post card from about 1910 showing two thatched cottages in Widford.

I have added information about Grove School, Watford, in  1932

Gatward Clock

I have added a note about the 250 years booklet about Gatward, Jeweller, of Hitchin.

John has written that he has some post cards written to Mary Burrage of Abbots Langley and asks if anyone is interested.

I have updated the link to FreeBMD (no longer part of Rootsweb) and also the link to the Football Club History Database on the Apsley Football page.

To see what happened I have pinned a picture of the Apsley Football team on Historypin. As the picture has Apsley parish church in the background the location can be identified to be in one corner of the car park attached to Sainsbury's supermarket. As expected Historypin insisted in moving the pin from the correct position onto the London Road - demonstrating that the package is unsuitable for accurately recording historical data on a map.

There have been some additional replies and retweets on @HertsGenealogy

I have had several requests for high resolution images, which have been supplied and I have sent about half a dozen other emails on minor points ...

An Outrageous Coincidence - Small details in pictures can be important.

Click for bigger image

Armed Forces

I recently purchased this post card on ebay because it was taken by a St Albans photographer who took pictures of soldiers during the First World War. The scene could be almost anywhere but might just be somewhere in St Albans. Because it was a "lost" picture with not supporting notes on the back to say who it was or where it was taken no one else wanted it - so I brought it because it was going cheap.

However I scanned it and a small detail became visible and my eyes almost popped out of my head.

Have a look at the larger image and see if you can see what made me excited. It may not make you excited - but if you compare what you see with other information on the front page of this Newsletter you will be able to understand my I was so surprised..

To find out what  I discovered about the photograph click HERE.

P.S And if you can help identify the soldier on the horse (or event his unit) let me know...

Knotted Cousin Marriages & Errors in FindMyPast census returns

Ancestors

Sometime ago I had message from a distant cousin, Joy, our common ancestors being William Burchmore (1765-1841) of Flamstead, and his wife, Hannah Dolling (1770-1826). Filling in details of the links will take some time as it actually means adding yet more cousin marriages to the already very complex Who is Related to Who? family tree. The new key link is William Bates (1798-1865) of St Pauls Walden & Wheathampstead. William Bates' first wife was Mary Cox (1797-1830), daughter of my ancestor William Cox (1760-1802) of Hatfield,  and whose second wife Jane Burchmore (1802-1882) was the daughter of my ancestor William Burchmore (1765-1841).

A Burchmore hair memorial broach

William Bates' daughter Mary Ann Bates (1825/6-) married her cousin Jonathan Cox (1821-1881) of Sandridge, who was a grandson of William Cox (1760-1802) of Hatfield. His son Edmund (1839-????) married Mary Kidman (1842-????) brother of Alfred James Kidman (1831-1875) of Kimpton who married Emma How (1834/5-1916) who was a granddaughter of William Burchmore (1765-1841). His son George Bates (1842-1928) married  first Jane Lines, daughter of Thomas Lines of St Pauls Walden, and later Laura Ann Dear (not part of the cousin network so far). William's daughter Jane Bates (Joy's ancestor) married Henry Alexander Taylor whose first wife was almost certainly the Elizabeth Smith of Sandridge, daughter of Elizabeth Burchmore (1784-1851), daughter of Thomas Burchmore (1760-1816) of Flamstead - who in turn was brother of William Burchmore (1765-1841) and son of my ancestor Thomas Burchmore (1729/30-1806).

Virtually all of the above was gleaned from original unindexed census returns and parish registers in the 1980s - twenty years before any significant computer indexes were available. I am currently checking against modern indexes, including online census returns, to fill in the gaps before drawing up a detailed report - which will undoubtedly reveal more cousin links.

I have only just started - and errors in FindMyPast census returns are coming in thick and fast. Many of the errors suggest no attempts were made to check accurasy but at least they do correct errors if you report them. In the last few days I have corrected a "Petty" to a "Patty", a "Hill" to a "Cox" (an incorrectly applied ditto), and pointed out that the words "Liggars Farmer" are not part of an address, and appear nowhere on the original document!

News Items on my Great Great Grandfather, Francis Reynolds.

As part of my writing a review on the British Newspaper Archives I decided that the case of my ancestor Francis Evered Reynolds was worthy of attention. What I knew was that he appears to have abandoned his family and was involved in some way with horse racing. I successfully discovered that he effectively went bankrupt in 1843 but that one of the horses he trained won a race at Swaffhan in 1861. However I suspect that there are other racing references in the Archive which I could not identify.

Did you ask Grandma about it?

The Locke Diamond Wedding Photo Album

Of course you didn't - because you were young and having fun, and you were interested in the future and not the past. But now, perhaps 60 years later , you wish you had asked Grandma about her Grandma - and a lot more of other questions she could have helped you with.  Now you are retired you have time to research your distant ancestors. You will have collected lots and lots of information to pass on to your descendants. In fact you may be struggling to fill in some details of your comparatively recent family history and the relevant records have not survived.

But have you forgotten something?