When I first started looking into my family history in the 1980s there was very little information available on the internet (in fact the internet was hardly out of nappies) and research involved many, many trips to the record offices in London and the County Record Offices, where hours and hours and hours were spent turning catalogue pages, squinting at endless reels of microfilm in darkened rooms and making endless notes of what I had found, and not found. The result was a fairly extensive family tree going back along the various branches to the early 1800s and in a few cases, back to about 1750. All my notes and conclusions were in A4 notebooks and ring binders plus an eclectic assortment of paper documents, certificates, letters, postcards, photographs, newspaper articles and written reminiscences from family members. When work and family life got too busy everything was put away in boxes in the loft and has stayed there ever since, waiting for semi retirement to allow me time to continue my searches. Hooray! Luckily, in the meantime, huge amounts of work have been going on to digitise tens of thousands of documents through national and government departments, family history societies big and small and by dedicated individuals who give their time and enthusiasm to help us all gain easy access to a myriad of previously hidden information. So, I am hooked again but now I am able to do so much research without even leaving the house. My mission now is to fill out the bare bones of the Family Tree with background information and stories about the families of my past, finding out who the people were in the family photos and what their lives might have been like. Here is one of the many items in our family shoebox. You can read more about these people in future posts.
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About MeI've always been interested in the Past Stories of my family and have recently found the time to delve deeper into the lives of the people who went before me. Previous Posts
1. Making a new start 2.The Qui Vives 3. From Ruby to Silver 4. A postcard and a passenger list 5. Louisa's story Part 1 6. Louisa's story - the second part 7. Three generations of Joseph Shearsbys 8. The Down-Under Adventures of Thomas and Catherine Skitteral Categories |