Spam Warning

At the end of July one of my least used email addresses was hijacked and a large number of spam emails were sent out (presumably containing some kind of nasty) as if they had been sent by me. As far as I have been able to ascertain no spam was sent out from @hertforshire-genealogy.co.uk and no messages were sent to people in my email address book. However if you heave received spam purporting to be from me over the last week or two please accept my apologies.

I spotted the problem at about the same time as did my ISP - VirginMedia - and they sent me a urgent action letter by post on the 27th July which was sent by second class mail and didn't reach me until the 4th April - by which time I had sorted the problem out myself.

New and higher resolution early post card images of Aldenham

The Gates of Aldenham House

As part of the policy to prepare the Genealogy in Hertfordshire web site for archiving I have added some new post card images of 

Aldenham 

and some of the big houses in the area. In most cases I have also added larger images (when you see when click on the original picture)

St John the Baptist - Aldenham

The "Genealogy in Hertfordshire" site is moving into Archive Mode

The shelves contain books on town & villages
The boxes are post cards, etc
The filing cabinets contain magazines, papers and notes

Old age (mine and the computer software) means that the Genealogy in Hertfordshire site cannot continue to  expand indefinitely. Having taken a few months break from actively running the web site to think things over the big problem I face is not the online system but the future of the back-up collection of Hertfordshire material that I have accumulated to support it. I have been reminded that when a local historian died some years ago the first other historians knew what was going to happen to his collection was when there was a bonfire in his garden!!!

My collection occupies three walls of one "bedroom" (see pictures) and there are overflow bookcases in the living room, two other bedrooms, and on the upstairs landing. I also have extensive papers relating to my earlier research into human-friendly computers in the garage. To be realistic I have to plan to downsize, especially as the material is not organised in a way that makes sorting it out easy.

Top Shelf - St Albans
Middle shelf - General Hertfordshire
Bottom Shelf - Dacorum (excluding Tring)
[Tring books occupy most of the shelf below]
Far Shelves - Series & general local/genealogy books

Basically I need to prioritize the material in my Hertfordshire collection, highlighting the following categories which need safeguarding.

1. Material the family may want to keep - with items properly identified with names and origins.
2. Unique photographs and documents that should end up in a permanent archive.
3. Unpublished research notes (on paper and on the computer but not yet online)
4. The basic core of published book, maps, engravings and postcards (i.e material that is almost certainly available through the Herts Archives and Library Service.)
5. Duplicate material, etc., which can be usefully be disposed of immediately on eBay or via a local charity shop.

The priority, at least until Christmas, will simply be going through the material and sorting it into categories to ensure that everything is properly identified. However I will not forget the web site. The process of sorting through the material will turn up much information which had been intended to go online but never made it. What I will try and do is selectively use such material to make one or two updates to the web site a week -  using the opportunity to upgrade pictures and check any external links. Brief details of such updates will be in this newsletter, starting in a day or two.

In updating the web site for archive purposes it is useful to give some brief statistics. The off-line master copy consists of 20,773 files of which 5,633 are text files, the rest being pictures. Of this total 18,278 files (1,431,198,000 bytes) are accessible online directly or indirectly from the home page. Many of the rest are draft pages and pictures which have yet to make it online! There are also 7,299 links to external web sites - and quite a few of these have wilted due to old age and no longer reach their intended target.

Clearly I don't have time to sort out all the problems at once but there are ways in which visitors to the site can help, For instance if you know of any significant online sources of information (say a local history web site or an online copy of a book on Hertfordshire) that is not mentioned on my site this could be useful - so I don't waste time duplicating information readily available elsewhere. In addition my time will be saved if you spot any broken links or other errors.

William Cooper of Berkhamsted and Sheep Dips

This post card sized visiting card, for John Cullwick, sales representative for William Cooper of Berkhamsted, has been added to my page on the company, together with a long press account of a demonstration John gave to the "colonial sheep dip" in Ireland in 1896.

The back of the card has an appropriate picture of a shepherd with a flock of sheep.

WW! War Memorial at Tring - Information wanted

Ian Pettigrew asks "Whether any of your readers has any information about any of the individuals listed in the WW1 section of Tring Memorial." 

He has put the developing piece of work online so you can see what he has already done. If you have any information, including relevant family photos and memorabilia, please let him know at webmaster@gerald-massey.org.uk 

Comic Postcard with a link to St Albans

When I am doing research relating to Hertfordshire I frequently create offline pages to my web site to make it easier to transfer online so that it can be shared. Some years ago I discovered that an artist using the name "Karaktus" had published some unusual comic cards in association with a company Crown Publishing Ltd. More recently I discovered that his fellow artist was "F S" and I started to research this artist as well.  Last year I decided I needed to find a more relaxing area of historical research - and what more relaxing than looking for evidence among literally millions of comic post cards.

While there are Hertfordshire connections the research has taken me deep into the problems of publishing postcards in the early 20th century - where there was a massive boom in communication (in some way paralleling the boom in digital phones). Everyone tried to get onto the bandwagon - and while some companies were spectacularly successful far more went bankrupt.

While the research is undoubtedly of more relavant to the post card historian, I have decided to put it online - as even if you are not so interested in the history you might enjoy seeing a large collection of comic post cards from the 1905-1913 period.

See the Comic Cards

.

Herts at War - A Digital Legacy

Tunes from Tring Schoolboy's Music Book (1866) being performed

Aylesbury March

It us just over a year since Beth Atkinson kindly donated William Henry Ewer's music exercise book, which records the music he was taught at Prospect House School, Tring, in 1866. The whole book can now be viewed online. While most of the pieces are well know. I have so far been unable to find out anything about one local piece called the "Aylesbury March" reproduced above.

A number of the pieces, including the "Aylesbury March" have been adapted to be played on handbells by the Tringers - a small local group of amateur handbell ringers - who will be playing it, and several other pieces from the book, as part of the Family Fun Day at  Tring Parish Church, organised by FOTCH (Friends of Tring Church Heritage) on Saturday, May 6th. A number of different music groups, including several primary school choirs, will be in the church, and the Tringers are scheduled to play at 11.00 am.

The Tringers performing in Tring Church for the FOTCH Family Fun Day in 2016

The Cricketers Public Houses of Hertfordshire

Noeleen has written to say I found your site via Google after I could not read an address in a census. It turned out to be ‘The Cricketers’ in Bennington. In 1851 and 1861 census  Frederick  Parkins was the Victualler and a Shoemaker with his wife Sarah. He was just a Shoemaker in 1841 census. In 1861 it is listed as Cricketers Public House, Bennington Road. By 1871 and 1881 census he is Publican and Shoemaker at the Green Dragon in Waltham which his wife Sarah was head of as a Widow in 1891 census. I hope this is of interest to you and I loved the addition of a shoemakers occupation plus I enjoyed reading about Cricketers Pubs on your site, something unknown to me in NZ.

I have added her comment to the page on the Cricketers pubs I first posted in 2006, together with some relevant news items from the British Newspaper Archive.

Cricket

In addition I have added an advert relating to the Cricketers public house in Hitchin from 1836 which records that the associated cricket ground was well established at that date. I have also added a Licencing Day report for St Albans for 1884 which mentions The Cricketers in that city (which unfortunately no longer trades under that name).

Spring Issue of Herts Past and Present

The Spring 2017 issue of Herts Past and Present has just been published by the Hertfordshire Association for Local History.

As always it contains an interesting collection of articles

Hertfordshire men at Passchendale, 1917, by John Cox
In search of "My Lord" Salisbury, by Nicky Webster (about researching and publishing the life of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquis of Salisbury)
William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Salisbury - The Education of a nobleman, by Alan Thomson
'Plenty of Punch and Good Company' - Bringing local history to life about a theatrical production dramatizing the life of John Carrington, farmer of Bramfield
The Enclosure of the Manor of Barnet, 1818, by Susan Flood
Local History Essay Competition - with details of essays on Knebworth, Lemsford and Croxley Green
Report of the 2016 HALH Symposium on Hertfordshire at war through the centuries.
Book Reviews: Watford : A History, by Mary Forsyth; St Albans: Life on the Home Front, 1914-18, edited by Jonathan Mein, Anne Wares and Sue Mann; On Hertford and its Environs: A Portrait in verse of Hertford and the Surrounding Countryside, by Thomas Green (1719-91), edited by Jean Purkis and Philip Sheail.

Dates for the Diary

13 May  - HALH Spring Meeting and AGM, Ware

24 June - Summer Visit, Benington Lordship, Benington

11 November - Symposium: Women of Hertfordshire, Hitchin