A useful tip from the Wolverhampton Family History Facebook group:

“Did you know you can also search UK census records by address on Find My Past? Just choose the census year from the A – Z, choose Address Search, and you can trace the history of a house through time. For example

https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-Records/1851-england-wales-and-scotland-census?fbclid=IwAR0xUBfFUl-v3_LvXxcd5HqpwOBk_zXGUoBNvV9nVn12XcLRepmyObPBJBU “

Invaluable for local history, but also handy if the name of your ancestor has been mistranscribed.

Happy hunting!

My grandparents, Frank Charles Spicer (1901 – 1963) and Annie Griffiths (1900 – 2000) on their wedding day – 10 November 1924.  And the cake.

I’ve been looking at old wills this week, and thought I’d share a few thoughts with you.

We often think when we can’t find a will “Oh, they can’t have had much to leave.”  But this isn’t always the case.

Firstly, it’s worth bearing in mind that right up until the Married Women’s Property Act  1882, a married woman did not have the right to have property in her own name: on marriage all her possession automatically became her husband’s. A married woman could not therefore make a valid will.  Once widowed, of course, this rule ceased to apply: but many men left their widows only a life interest in property, specifying that on her death the property should revert to – for example – a son or sons. Therefore even a widow might not be able to make a valid will.

If a husband died intestate, then one-third of his estate automatically devolved on his widow:  this is know as “Dower” *and sometimes referred to as “the widow’s third” and was not abolished until the Dower Act 1833.

Where there was no will, the heir to a property was  often – but not always – the eldest son (or daughter where there was no son). .  But in many areas of England, the system of ‘borough English” – by which the estate passed undivided to the youngest child – prevailed. So,  it’s always worth checking whether this applies.  Borough English was not abolished until the Administration of Estates Act 1925.

Shakespeare’s will (no pun intended) left his “second best bed” to his widow Anne, which seems rather mean.  But in Tudor times, a bed – and all its attendant linen and hangings – was in all probability the most valuable item a family possessed. “Second best” here indicates a guest bed – and these were often finer than the bed which husband and wife regularly slept in.  So Will Shakespeare wasn’t as mean as he’s often judged to be.

And finally: if you’ve ever looked at a grant of probate, you may have looked at the total value of the estate and come to the conclusion that the dear departed doesn’t seem to have been worth very much.  Until 1896, the value of “real property” wasn’t taken into account when evaluating the estate – and real property includes copyhold and freehold property. So a house, or business premises, providing that they were owned and not rented, fell outside the value of the legal estate.

The Blog and I return, somewhat shamefaced in the knowledge that we haven’t updated for well over a year.  This is, in part, due to yet another annus horribilis  – the details of which I shall not bore you with. However, as the Blog and I limp slowly into the sunset, desperately pursuing a pension which seems determined to outpace us, we solemnly vow to update ourselves at least once a month from now on. And we have just updated all pages and checked the links still work.  Hurrah!

In view of the somewhat – erm – unsteady state of political affairs in this country at the moment, I have asked my good friend Jane Smith for her permission to share with you her article “Elections in the 1830s”, which first appeared on her site  janealisonsmithdaily.wordpress.com/ on 30 April 2015.

Enjoy.

Week 5 of the  course returned to sources, and considered how local and general histories can flesh out your family tree.

As followers of this blog are only too well aware, this is something that I always emphasise. Mention was made, not only of printed histories, but also of maps, photographs, newspapers and a range of different types of directories.

As in previous weeks, this was only a brief overview of the different types of sources available, and I must admit that I’d have found it much more useful if the videos had actually given a close up view of the document under discussion, rather than showing someone looking at it.  But on the whole, this was quite a useful week.

Week Four of the course considered the Genealogical Standard of Proof and also DNA testing.

The Standard of Proof is important – in fact I wrote a page about this some time ago –  and I thought that this was well covered., with useful exercises. However, the final exercise – evaluating the evidence provided by four World War II ration books – had no tutor input at all, and students were left to decide for themselves how useful, if at all, these were. Opinions ranged from ‘Very’ to ‘Not at all’.

I thought that this exercise would have been of  far more use if it had replaced the end-of-module quiz, which was, as before, banal.

The section on DNA testing left me cold.  The basic principles were well explained (although the slide showing DNA inherited through several generations would have been loss confusing if a few more colours had been used on the slide!) – but after that I became more and more confused.  I’m just not science-minded, and was rapidly out of my comfort zone.

To be quite candid, I’ve never been too certain about the benefits of DNA testing.  If I can’t discover who great-great=great-great grannie was,  DNA isn’t going to help me here, because (a) we’re talking of the maternal side here, and (b) all a test can do is match me with other people who have the same markers, may therefore be related to me, and have their DNA stored by the same provider.  And DNA can’t tell you how you’re related to these people, merely that you are.  As far as I can gather, the advantage of testing is (a) you may discover hitherto-unknown distant cousins and (b) if you do, they may have some information that you don’t.

It all seems a bit of a waste of money to me.  Or have I completely misunderstood – feel free to correct me on this!

If I wasn’t confused enough already, the tutor then referred to someone whose DNA profile was “found to be a close genetic match to the current Macdonald chief of Clanranald using STR testing. Because it was already known from documentary evidence that the chief was a descendant of Angus Og of the Isles, who fought in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the closeness of the match confirmed that he was also descended from Angus Og.”

Now, I’m not doubting this for a moment, but – only two weeks ago the course dwelt upon documentary evidence (and indeed, this week has already covered the Standard of Proof), so it would have been useful to learn exactly what this documentary evidence was that proved descent from a chap who died in 1330.

Finally on this topic, this month’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ magazine includes an excellent article on illegitimacy, which advises that it’s only worth considering DNA tests once the paper trail is complete.

So – week 3 of the course is down and dusted.

This week the course tackled major sources – church, civil and religious records, looked at the types of records that might be held in physical archives and considered some genealogy databases available.

And at last we’ve looked, albeit very briefly, at BMD certificates, and how to fill in an outline family tree. This, in my opinion, is where the course should have begun. If I used the layout of the course as a template for one of my own courses, I’d expect the majority of the class to demand their money back at the end of the first week, and be very surprised indeed if I had any students left by the end of the second week.

There has been very little information about how to obtain certificates – and, in fairness, on a course which has attracted thousands of learners from all over the world, I wouldn’t expect to see detailed explanations for every single class of record, nor comprehensive lists of what records are available for which country.  But the course attempted to cover far too much information this week, and completely failed to explain how different records link in to create the whole picture: for example, that information from (for example) a marriage certificate can be used hand-in-hand with census returns – (and that, in my opinion, is the time to tackle the difference between primary/secondary sources, and direct/indirect evidence).

I seem to have used ‘in my opinion’ rather a lot this week, and I don’t want to appear a Moaning Minnie. But I will say that the much-vaunted Google Hangout, though better than the earlier one, was badly produced,  and the ‘quiz’ idiotic in places.

The forthcoming week covers the Genealogical Standard of Proof, and also DNA.  I’ll let you know…

This week the course addressed ‘Effective Search Techniques’, without first addressing what we might be researching, or indeed why.

This began by advising the creation of a timeline of events, creating a family tree (the first time that this has been mentioned), looking at the information gathered with a critical eye, and considering gaps and inconsistencies.  Where there are inconsistencies, the course suggests, consider whether these arise from primary or secondary sources.

All very well and good, but what are these sources?  So far this has not been explained.

(At this point, Dear Reader, you have obviously sensed my mounting frustration with the course.  And I am not alone in this…)

After a quick canter through a technique apparently known as ‘FAN’ (‘Friends, Associates and Neighbours’) – which I’ve always known as ‘Cluster’ genealogy – mindmapping (okay if you like that sort of thing – personally it drives me wild, and I’ve never seen that this is any different from just jotting down a list of Things To Do) and DNA (which we will, apparently, look at in more detail in a later week), we turned to names, variation in spellings, and ways to search databases.

I still maintain that this course is back-to-front.  Week Three looks at ‘major sources types’.   Perhaps we might then discover where to start.

I mentioned on 3rd February that I’d signed up on the FutureLearn online course “Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree”, and that I’d give weekly updates and comments on the course.

So – here we are at the end of week one.

To be quite honest, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag.  There are lots of links to useful websites (which I’ll add later to my page “Useful Websites”), and some useful explanations about documentary evidence:  the nature of primary, derived primary and secondary sources, issues that may arise, and an explanation of the difference between transcripts, abstracts and indices.  And this is all very good, and very important – and in fact I’ll deal with these issues in detail in later posts.

BUT – and this is a very big but indeed – I don’t think that the course has delivered what it promises. The modules for this week are entitled “Basics For The Absolute Beginner”, yet there has been no explanation of how to start tracing your family tree. It’s very important to know early on what the pitfalls are, but it’s equally important to address that simple question ‘How do I start?’ (and I’ve seen that question raised an awful lot of times in the last week.)  True, there are course participants from all over the world, so it’s well nigh impossible to explain what records exist for every single country, but the basic principles for starting out on your journey is always the same – start with what you know.

How to start out is explained on my page “Where Do I Start?  A Beginners Guide”, but in brief, start with yourself. Your birth certificate will give your parents’ names – the next step is to find their marriage certificate. This will, with luck, give you their ages and their respective fathers’ names. That’s probably the time to decide which line you want to follow (most people start with their father’s family, but you don’t have to) – and search for the birth certificate – then look for the parents’ marriage certificate – and keep on repeating this process. Fill in with death certificates (note that it can be tricky to identify the correct death cert). Use census returns for additional information. With a modicum of luck, this will take you back into the early 19th century.

Speak to relatives and find out what information they know or have – you may find they have old certificates, or photographs, or a family bible. Ask them for stories about the family (but be prepared to take these with a pinch of salt).

And when you’ve got a goodly collection of names from certificates, then that’s the time to ask yourself “How reliable is this evidence? Do I need any other documents to substantiate it – and if so, what documents do I need, and where do I find them?”

Only last night I managed to solve a problem that had been bugging me for years.  My grandmother had told me that a relation of hers (and she didn’t know the name) had kept a farm on Goldthorn Hill, about half a mile from where I live now.  I managed to identify the buildings which seemed most likely, but without a name or even an approximate  date to go on, I couldn’t resolve this.  So it’s been on the back burner for about 20 years.

Until last night, when I sat down with a cup of tea to read “Accidents” – a study of accidents in 19th century Wolverhampton written by my good friend Jane Smith.  And there was my four-times great grandfather, Joseph Hartland of Pearson Street, owning a farm on Goldthorn Hill which he rented to a (named) relative of his.  It all fits. After 20 years.

The moral is: never give up.  The information you need may well be out there somewhere – it’s just a matter of finding it.

Jane’s book is available through Amazon – if you have relatives in Wolverhampton, I can thoroughly recommend it.