Tag Archives: documents

Six Days, Six Stones – Part 5: Macclesfield Cemetery

This is the fifth of six blog posts, written and published over six consecutive days, looking at some of the family graves that my wife and I visited as part of a recent road trip to celebrate our 40th wedding … Continue reading

Posted in Document Sources, Local History, research, Stories, Surnames | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Six Days, Six Stones – Part 4: Longnor, Staffordshire

This is the fourth of six blog posts written after a recent road trip during which my wife and I visited a number of ancestral burial places. You can read the earlier instalments here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part … Continue reading

Posted in Document Sources, Local History, research, Stories, Surnames | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Six Days, Six Stones – Part 2: Lacock, Wiltshire

This is the second of six blogs, written and published in six consecutive days, each one focussing on a particular family gravestone which my wife and I visited on our recent 40th Wedding Anniversary road trip. You can read Part … Continue reading

Posted in Document Sources, Local History, research, Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Sunday Morning, Farringdon Road

I’ve always been passionate about art, and a few years ago I stumbled upon a little-known group of early-20th century artists known collectively as the East London Group. I was instantly captivated and wanted to find out more about them. … Continue reading

Posted in Local History, research, Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The original and best

This blog is dedicated to the memory of genealogist Lorine McGinnis Schulze who passed away recently. I had the pleasure of working for Lorine over the past few years, transcribing several early English wills for her. Lorine’s enthusiasm for the … Continue reading

Posted in Document Sources, research | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

When Digitisation Goes Bad Part II: Death’s Apprentice

or…Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back Onto The Internet This is the second part of a blog post looking at some particularly bad examples of digitisation in the world of family history research. In the first … Continue reading

Posted in digitisation, Document Sources, research, Soapbox | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

When Digitisation Goes Bad Part I: The Night Of The Living Death Duties

This is the first part of the latest in a series of blog posts looking at the some of the problems behind the way that we access family history sources via the major commercial websites. In previous posts I’ve looked … Continue reading

Posted in digitisation, Document Sources, research, Soapbox | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Please Release Me…

…being a very brief history of the releases of the English & Welsh census returns. We need to understand right from the start that the primary purpose of the census has never been to produce a resource for the benefit … Continue reading

Posted in Local History, research, Soapbox | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Respectable Printer Of The Times

This is the second part of the story of John Joseph Lawson, printer of The Times. In the first part, A Gross And Scandalous Libel, I covered his ‘trial’ in the House of Lords in 1831. In Part 2, I’m … Continue reading

Posted in Document Sources, research, Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Gross And Scandalous Libel

I was watching some old episodes of Who Do You Think You Are the other day and I was particularly taken by the one featuring Ian McKellen; as engaging, enthusiastic and warm a subject as you could possibly hope to … Continue reading

Posted in Document Sources, research, Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment