Better Access to Earlier Posts on this Newsletter

When I started this blog I didn't make use of the labels facility - which allows you to quickly look at other posts which use the same keyword as the post you are currently looking at. 

This is changing and I am now using labels on all new posts (except temporary topics -such as notification of meetings). Each new post will contain the relevant place names as a label, and also the more important surnames. There are also topic labels such as "Football", "Royalty", "Brickmaker" and "Medieval Fields".

I am currently scanning the old posts and have already labelled some 200 posts - with another 200 to go - hopefully by the end of the week.

To use the facility simply click on the desired keyword at the bottom of the post. For many posts you will then need to click through to the main web site to seen even more information.

A Post Card with surprising Football and Princely Connections

Les is the webmaster of the Hadley Common web site and he sent me this post card of a house called Ludgrove in the Parish of Monken Hadley. He asked me if I could date it and I could have easily dismissed the request on the grounds that it was only in Hertfordshire for a period of 60 years during the early 20th century. However the immediate task was simple - The card was a KROMO card by the famous post card pioneers Blum & Degan. They published many views of Hertfordshire and the KROMO card series was started in 1905. Unfortunately for them, but helpfully for answering the question, they went bankrupt in 1908 - so the card can easily be dated to about 1906.

       My first reaction was that the house looked like many others that were springing into existence in Middlesex and South Hertfordshire a century or more ago and I really needed to say something more about it before posting details in this Newsletter, or writing a special page on the main web site. So I decided to dig for some background and the more I dug the more interesting the house became.

Update to a Royal connection at St Paul's Walden

In 2001 Gordon asked about the marriage of Mary Gilbert, daughter of Edward Gilbert of St.Pauls Waldenbury, Herts, and George Bowes c.1740- See  GILBERT, St Pauls Walden, 1700-1750.  At the time  I was unable to provide details.

St Paul's Waldenbury
Childhood home of the Queen Mother

Over ten years later Sue has emailed to say the couple were married in 1743 at St Botolph, Aldersgate, London. - from Ancestry.

This raises a general problem. Since I started giving online advice well over ten years ago there has been a revolution in the amount of family history information available online. For instance there was very little census information available online, and the 1881 census was only available on CD (without any images). This means that many of the early answers could be significantly extended - but in practice I don't have time to do it. However I am happy to update the pages if someone else want to continue the particular line of research.