A 'small is beautiful' session with Helen, who is just about to go overseas, and Mary, who has just returned from travelling north. Helen brought along a timeline on her mother's working life with the WAAF in England she recently typed up from a hand written timeline her mother wrote for her before she died. Helen is planning to 'pad this out' with other things she knew or has found out about her mother's life. Helen also found a photo of a church in which her ancestor had been warden, with a name and place in Wiltshire, reminding us of 'Midsummer Murders' country. Helen's resource collection has developed from the colour coded paper clip collection brought along last session to thoughtfully organised display folders for each of her grandparent's 'lines', resources she has prepared duplicates of for family members.
Mary reported beginning to get back into her family history after time away, describing success in finding documents about her Great Great Grandfather in the National Library of Ireland website. Mary has been researching for decades, has so much information, has prepared a detailed family tree chart for family members. What to do next? We talked about how over time, as our research becomes 'grounded', themes, personalities begin to stand out, providing a fertile basis for story telling based on facts, often verifying stories passed through generations. Mary identified stories relating to the themes of 'Religion', 'Class', 'Occupation' for which she had stories which would provide a wonderful place to start.
Mary and Helen shared many common 'learnings' over time including the distraction of the use of different spelling of names being common; having had meetings with sometimes quite distant relatives via ancestry and noting remarkable likenesses across generations and families; and stories of half-siblings having been quietly adopted out, not being 'included' by the grandparents of subsequent children..
The destruction of many records in the Irish collection and the fact that some ship's captains recorded the number of, not the names of, passengers in steerage has made Mary's research frustrating at times, however she is hopeful that original source materials were also kept in parishes etc that may have been burnt in the fire, may appear as hints over time, and shipping records may in fact be available, even when the ancestors were in steerage. Mary is also keen to find out more about the house in which her grandparents lived in at 184 & 186 Elgin Street Carlton from the early 1900's to 1941. Did they own it, or was it rented to them by relatives? We had a look at Judy's notes on this topic and will seek out Judy's support at the next First Thursday session.
We finished the session by going back to Helen's original research quest - of finding out information about her mother's father, Bertram L, whose name Helen's mother had told her. Helen has discovered and carefully pieced together a lot of information about him over the past year; this month we took a next step working together from the large screen. We looked through 'Thrulines' from Helen's DNA test to find him, finding no shared results from any direct descendants, however tried another tack and found there was a direct descendant on his brother's line who shared DNA with Helen, establishing the biological connection. Going in to this person's tree we found the person had knowledge of her grandfather's later children and was descended from one of them, but no mention of his illegitimate daughter, Helen's mother. "It's a long story" But the shared DNA has given Helen food for thought - it doesn't appear that the person is aware the existence Helen's mother, so Helen is pausing before taking the next step of making contact! This is a good example of how 'cluster research', in which note is taken of siblings as a way of accessing information, can be helpful!
A fascinating and productive small group session!
Bev Lee
Mary reported beginning to get back into her family history after time away, describing success in finding documents about her Great Great Grandfather in the National Library of Ireland website. Mary has been researching for decades, has so much information, has prepared a detailed family tree chart for family members. What to do next? We talked about how over time, as our research becomes 'grounded', themes, personalities begin to stand out, providing a fertile basis for story telling based on facts, often verifying stories passed through generations. Mary identified stories relating to the themes of 'Religion', 'Class', 'Occupation' for which she had stories which would provide a wonderful place to start.
Mary and Helen shared many common 'learnings' over time including the distraction of the use of different spelling of names being common; having had meetings with sometimes quite distant relatives via ancestry and noting remarkable likenesses across generations and families; and stories of half-siblings having been quietly adopted out, not being 'included' by the grandparents of subsequent children..
The destruction of many records in the Irish collection and the fact that some ship's captains recorded the number of, not the names of, passengers in steerage has made Mary's research frustrating at times, however she is hopeful that original source materials were also kept in parishes etc that may have been burnt in the fire, may appear as hints over time, and shipping records may in fact be available, even when the ancestors were in steerage. Mary is also keen to find out more about the house in which her grandparents lived in at 184 & 186 Elgin Street Carlton from the early 1900's to 1941. Did they own it, or was it rented to them by relatives? We had a look at Judy's notes on this topic and will seek out Judy's support at the next First Thursday session.
We finished the session by going back to Helen's original research quest - of finding out information about her mother's father, Bertram L, whose name Helen's mother had told her. Helen has discovered and carefully pieced together a lot of information about him over the past year; this month we took a next step working together from the large screen. We looked through 'Thrulines' from Helen's DNA test to find him, finding no shared results from any direct descendants, however tried another tack and found there was a direct descendant on his brother's line who shared DNA with Helen, establishing the biological connection. Going in to this person's tree we found the person had knowledge of her grandfather's later children and was descended from one of them, but no mention of his illegitimate daughter, Helen's mother. "It's a long story" But the shared DNA has given Helen food for thought - it doesn't appear that the person is aware the existence Helen's mother, so Helen is pausing before taking the next step of making contact! This is a good example of how 'cluster research', in which note is taken of siblings as a way of accessing information, can be helpful!
A fascinating and productive small group session!
Bev Lee