Here at TheGenealogist, we
enable users to write articles about their family history. Every month,
an article is chosen and the writer can win £100 in S&N
Vouchers. The chosen articles are featured here, with their own
page and images, for you to view. We will also be giving prizes of laptops
for the best stories of the year.
| January 2010 |
Celebrating 350 years of Samuel Pepys |
As we enter a New Year and decade, many of us have been thinking of New Years resolutions, of new projects and new beginnings. 350 years ago Samuel Pepys was also thinking the same thing and began writing a diary on 1st January 1660. He continued writing his diary on a daily basis for almost ten years, and this diary is now one of the most important documents of the period. |
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| December 2009 |
Josiah
Wedgwood |
Josiah Wedgwood was born on the 12th July, 1730 in Burslem Staffordshire into a family of potters. He was the youngest of 12 children to Mary Wedgwood and her husband Thomas and become the leader in ceramic manufacturers. As a child he suffered from small pox which resulted in a weakened knee which meant he was unable to work the foot pedal of the potter’s wheel. This led him to concentrate more on the design of the pottery rather than the manufacturing.
Read more ... |
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Birth, Marriage and Death records onboard ships |
They give detailed information which has been compiled from ships' official logs of births, deaths and marriages of passengers at sea by the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen (RGSS) and its predecessor. The records range from 1854 to 1908 and include over 150,000 individuals. Included are 288 death records for the ‘Royal Charter’, which was traveling back from Australia in October 1859, when it became caught in a storm just miles from home off the coast of Anglesey. The ship was carrying a great number of prospectors who had gone to Australia to find their fortune, so when the ship sank on October 26th it took over 67,000 ounces of gold with it. Many inhabitants of nearby coast lines became rich overnight as the gold began to wash up on the shores.
Read more ... |
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| November 2009 |
The Ultimate Sacrifice |
We all owe a debt of gratitude to those who died fighting for our country, and November 11th is the time when we remember those who died in the Great War of 1914 to 1918, the 'War to end all wars'. It was the largest conflict in history and involved 70 million people from different countries, backgrounds, religions and race. Just about every family was affected by this war, including the famous Charles Darwin, whose grandson Erasmus Darwin was killed in the second battle of Ypres. Searching in the Roll of Honour on TheGenealogist.co.uk gives three results for Erasmus.
Read more ... |
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| October 2009 |
What A Bonney Idea |
For several months I have been tracing the many branches of my wife’s family in Australia. During the mid to late 19th century there were many ways for people to gain a passage on ships arriving at the Australian Colonies. One family I was having a lot of problems with was Benjamin Bonney and his very large family from Sussex in England. After spending many hours searching through the various shipping records I was almost ready to give up. Then I saw the Family Forename Search on The Genealogist.
Read more of Mark Dodd's story... |
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| September 2009 |
The Bronte Family |
Although the legacy of the Brontë family now lives on into its third century, the life of the sisters themselves was in fact very short-lived and all died before reaching the age of 30. Despite their short lives, it’s possible to trace this family in early records which are available online.
Read more ... |
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| August 2009 |
Florence Nightingale |
Florence was raised in a life of luxury and comfort, but despite this felt suffocated by the society that surrounded her. She was often depressed and lonely, which perhaps was the root of her need to care for the sick and wounded.
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| June 2009 |
Discovering Famous Quaker Ancestors |
Sandra Adams has been researching her family history since the age of 10 and discovered on the IGI that her family were originally Quakers in the Bristol area. Her first real break-through with her Quaker past came when The National Archives, in collaboration with heGenealogist.co.uk, released the original Quaker records as part of the non-conformist record set.
Read more of Sandra Adams' story... |
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| January 2009 |
Jon the Con |
The bulky envelope sits heavily in my hands. It just arrived in today’s mail from my Great Aunt Marion , my mother’s cousin. I had written to her, telling her of my wish to write our family memoirs. I rip open the packet. Inside are birth, marriage and death certificates - dozens of them- the numbers of people here surprise me. Are all these my ancestors?
Read more of Jean Hedge's story... |
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| October 2008 |
Jane Pavey Cuff - A Convict's Journey |
For generations a veil of secrecy had hidden the secret of my great, great, great grandmother's existence. A fabricated story suggested she came from a family of gypsies, but the truth was uncovered when I came across a list of prisoners from Somerset, England in 1844 which included the name of Jane (Pavey) Cuff of Combe St. Nicholas. The discovery moved me to follow Jane Cuff's life trail. A pilgrimage which took several years of planning and research and which eventually led to the Cascades Female Convicts Factory in Tasmania.
Read more of Brad Hepburn's story... |
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| September 2008 |
A Family Story |
Joan had often wondered why she had never been allowed to be evacuated. Also, her Mother, Dolly and her father, Thomas Abraham, were very secretive about their family. Joan had often said to them that she would have loved a brother or a sister but her words were met by stony silence.
Read more of Angela Whawell's story... |
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| April 2008 |
The Real Aunt Anne |
So what did I know about Aunt Anne? Verbal information from her brother (Grandfather):
“She was jilted and went a bit funny.” Sounded ashamed of her. Mental illness was something to be ashamed of in 1900; it was spoken of in whispers behind your hand.
Thinks: What mental hospitals were in existence around Mobberley, Cheshire, circa 1900? Anne was born in Mobberley in 1882.
Read more of Sylvia Kendrick's story... |
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| December 2007 |
Family Legends: Shadow or Substance? |
"There is no such thing as an ‘ordinary’ family any more than there might be ‘ordinary’ people. We all have our tales to tell as individuals. So it is with families.
Anyone who has reflected on their family history is sure to have wondered about the family stories and legends we all heard in our childhood. Who hasn’t heard seemingly far-fetched tales as a child – ones that you could scarcely believe even in your naïve, gullible years and which as an adult seem even more laughable? Although in later years one can look back at them, and see a glimmer – just a glimmer mind you – of truth."
Read more of David Roberts' story... |
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| November 2007 |
A Voyage of Discovery |
"Among the many conversations we had, only two things stand out in my memory. The first, that we have French and Welsh blood running through our veins (well diluted by now) and second, that we are related to Captain James Cook! At the time those things didn't register much with me, I just took it for granted. After all, aren't grandmothers the fount of all wisdom and knowledge? And the family was/is of seafaring stock. It wasn't until 1977 when, as a minister in the Maori section of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, that I began to think more deeply of my 'relationship' to Captain Cook, and the need to establish it as fact."
Read more of Eric Caton's story... |
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| August 2007 |
My Three Fathers |
"Fred, my father, was a quiet man. He almost never spoke. He certainly didn’t speak to me. Not that he was hostile or unkind; he simply never spoke to me. Isn’t that strange? I cannot remember him ever saying a single word to me and I have a good memory. My earliest memories go back to Mooroopna when I was just three or four years old and they are clear and vivid. But I cannot recall a single occasion on which my father spoke to me."
Read more of J. Eric Lynas Gough's story... |
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| July 2007 |
Just By Chance |
"This is the story, taken almost verbatim from my diary, of a discovery made when I was almost 67 years of age, that changed my life. It is recorded here just as it happened.
Chance, or luck, plays a great part in our lives.
Of course when we look back at a sequence of decisions and their consequences we often feel that some greater intelligence must have planned it that way. But I believe it's luck. My story begins with such a sequence of chance happenings."
Read more of J. Eric Lynas Gough's story... |
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| June 2007 |
It all began with Jack the Ripper
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"Many years ago, when I was only fourteen years of age, my grandmother sowed the seeds of curiosity in me by hinting that we had a skeleton in our family cupboard, which was in some way connected to "Jack The Ripper".
At that age I was not interested in family history and so it was many years later before my curiosity surfaced.
I was looking for a book to read on a flight home from Singapore and spotted "The Complete Jack The Ripper", by Donald Rumbelow, and could hear the bones in our cupboard rattling."
Read more of Ken and Barbara Stride's story... |
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| May 2007 |
Have you Lost an Ancestor? Go to Jail!
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"I searched high and low when my four-times great-grandfather, Henry Townsend, a day-labourer in the Oxfordshire village of Shipton-under-Wychwood, disappeared from the Parish Records. I found his Baptism, his Marriage and the Baptisms of his six children, then - nothing. His wife, Sarah, died and was buried in the village in 1826, at the age of 79, but Henry did not appear to be mentioned again after the Christening of his youngest son. Then, quite by chance, a fellow researcher’s casual remark pointed me in the direction of the Calendar of Prisoners for Oxford Gaol."
Read more of Henry Walter Townsend's story... |
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| April 2007 |
Back to My Roots
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"I found out quite early on that my Gt. Grandfather was born at Clap Bridge Farm, Bocking, Braintree, Essex in 1874, (even though I’d been told he was born in London). My Gt. Gt. Grandfather was Head of Clap Bridge Farm from 1865 when John Foyster, my Gt. Gt. Gt. Grandfather died. John Foyster ran the farm from 1851. I lived only 25 minutes away from Braintree. I couldn’t believe my luck."
Read more of Diane Fackerell's story... |
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| January 2007 |
A Story of Courage
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"Margaret Hampton married Alan John Quinton, an RAF navigator. He was involved in a mid air collision between a Martinet fighter and a Wellington bomber in 1951. Alan, known as John, gave the only available parachute to an air cadet, Derek Coates, whose life was saved."
Read more of Carole Pharoah's story... |
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| December 2006 |
Mannix Family Tree
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"Born with a spinal defect, Mavis was to require an operation to correct this, scheduled to be carried out in 1941. William doted on his daughter and as the date of the operation drew near it was obvious to him that he would be at sea when it was carried out. Knowing that his daughter needed him, he took the decision to miss his ship to be with Mavis for the duration of her operation.
Being that this was wartime, William’s actions were a very serious offence, but his love for his daughter came above all else."
Read more of B. Mannix's story... |
