Last night I got back into looking through my resources for the village I grew up in, St. Nicholas-At-Wade, and starting hunting down family members.

After a lot of digesting (which is still going on!), I am now finding names appearing in my tree which I recognise from growing up in the village!

Included amongst these is the unfortunate story of a mother and her 11-year-old daughter who died at Sarre in 1940 during a World War II air raid.

Families we knew, talked to and played with at school are now appearing as (distant) relatives.

It all brings more tangible meaning to the phrase ‘It’s a small world’ ….

I have finally got around to updating my tree on Ancestry.co.uk ! It took a while to merge in (it has been a while since it worked in Family Tree Maker), but I got there eventually, hopefully without mistakes.

I can now make use of the ‘hint’ feature for my new data – something I find to be one of the best things about FTM. It’s a lot quicker than manually searching on their website!

Still, I will be attending some Ancestry seminars at the Who Do You Think You Are Live! exhibition in London at the end of February, so I hope to be better armed with the skills to make the most of their website.

Exhibition review at a later date ….

The tree pages are currently undergoing an update, so please do not fret if something is inaccessible of looks wrong!

The family tree has been updated again (but note the caveats!) and can be accessed here. It also benefits from corrected HTML links to web sources, fixed thanks to a patch for Family Historian.

The number of individuals has now reached 1,174 and 291 families!

I have crossed the 1,000 milestone – the family tree has now reached 1,043 individuals covering some 256 families!

This was helped today by making considerable inroads into the ancestry of my mother’s (adopted) aunt, taking her birth ancestry back to the early 1600’s ! I have yet to confirm the information integrity – but I’m working on it!

Watch this space!

Thanks to the eagle-eyes of one of my contacts, David Measday, an error was found in the parentage of William HEWETT (b. ~1841), husband of Susan KINGSLAND. I had misinterpreted the relationships given to me from a detailed source, and had linked William directly to his grandfather, making his father his brother(?!), thus skipping a generation.

I have now corrected the tree and updated the version here. The new tree will hopefully be rolled out to other online presences such as Genes Reunited this weekend.

Thanks for spotting my faux-pas, David!

Last night I found a great site whilst Googling some family ancestors (try it – you never know what you may find – but be prepared for anything!)

In searching for Sarah Elizabeth GOLDSACK, I located the site of Larry Goldsack at http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/goldsack/ and located Sarah in the (very full) details page. It tended to suggest that Sarah’s mother was Mary Ann SHARPE, not HORN as I had believed.

This is entirely down to me assuming (again!) the wrong information. Searching on FreeBMD had found a few candidates for the family, around close registration districts; I had picked the wrong one! I should be able to easily verify this via Sarah’s birth certificate (which I do not yet have).

I have therefore updated the tree (go here) to reflect the change – I am a lot more confident in it’s reliability than my attempt!

I now have another great source to progress my mother’s side of the family!

If you’re reading this, then congratulations! You’ve found my new home!

The relocation to a new host went very well – and was switched very quickly – thanks to plenty of preparation during the week … and I learnt a few things in the process!

I also took the opportunity of tidying some things up, tweaking stuff …. and finally got family tree data online! It’s nothing great, but is everything I have so far and, thanks to Family Historian, is in an easy-to-view format. I do not have a graphical tree up yet, but this is a start, and things will change. I’ve been playing with phpGEDview and GenoPro, but am not completely happy just yet. Who knows, I may stick with the FH format!

I hope that some of you may choose to contribute and “Become A Family Friend” – check out the link on the right. Alternatively, if you have, or require, other info then just email me on info@baldockfaggfamily.org.uk; for anything else please use contact@baldockfaggfamily.org.uk

Enjoy … and thanks for coming back !!

A very belated thankyou must go to Wendy from New Zealand (apologies, Wendy!). Thanks to Wendy, who provided me with photos of some HATTON ancestors and comprehensive WANSTALL and HATTON trees, I have been able to make great inroads into these families. Her information regarding books written by Professor Barry Reay of Auckland University has proved invaluable, and contact with Barry himself lead me to purchase his book titled “Microhistories: Demography, society and culture in rural England, 1800-1930” (ISBN 0-521-89222-8). This focuses on rural society around the Boughton, Blean and Dunkirk areas near Canterbury, and includes wonderful family trees – which include my FULLER and WANSTALL ancestors!

I have started reading another of his books first, though, namely “Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century” (ISBN 0-333-66919-3), which covers rural life in sections of England (hence “Englands”) as a whole.

I have since spent many days (and still am) tracing WANSTALL families – not helped by there being three generations called Benjamin Wanstall, and other cousins/in-laws using the name too! I am also trying to pick my way through a recently found website:
http://wanstallkentandbeyond.com

Go along – and tell them I sent you!

PS. Stats updated

Here is a sample showing my family tree extents, as at 7th December 2008 – it is not supposed to be readable!

It's not supposed to be readable!

 The arc you can see shows my gt-grandfather’s brother marrying my gt-grandmother’s sister!