I wonder if you read the heading above and thought as I did many years ago; “what is a convict love token?” It was just over 5 years ago when I received a phone call from Paul and although I cannot recall our exact conversation, the reason he was phoning me was to ask if I might be able to find out the original owner, or rather inscriber, of a convict love token he had purchased at an auction. At … Continue reading
Finding a “mariner” in your family tree, might sometimes lead you to discover that he was in fact a merchant seaman. Other terms you might see are merchant mariner, officer in the merchant navy, merchant navy seaman, master mariner, etc. These are more often than not, some of the hardest ancestors to research, due to the fact that very few records exist. In fact, after 1858 you will not find anything until the First World War began in 1914, because … Continue reading
I can easily list a multitude of reasons, or rather joys, that my profession as a Genealogist brings; not only to me but a lot more often to my clients. There are certainly times I will exclaim a loud “YES!” when I uncover information that I know will delight the client and their family. There are also times when my hand goes to my mouth and I quietly say “Oh my gosh…” because of a newly found piece of information … Continue reading
As a genealogist by trade, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients tell me something similar to this: “He/she isn’t from our line because the surname is spelled Byrnes instead of Burns” or “Oh no, ours is Elliot with one ‘t’ – not two”, or “Our line is MacIntosh with an ‘a’ not “McIntosh”. And to be fair, they all truly believed it – they were quite unaware of the ever-annoying variants of surnames when tracing back … Continue reading
It would often be better if children had no parents at all So begins a favourite book of mine about criminal children in Victorian England, aptly called Fagin’s Children, by Jeannie Duckworth. I remember reading this opening statement, made by Lord Shaftesbury in a speech he gave in the 1860’s, and thinking “that’s quite a statement to make, and I’m not so sure that I would agree”. Well – after reading the first few chapters I too was thinking … Continue reading
