1911 Census

Well no sooner had I decided to pick up my family research again than the 1911 Census was published. I must admit I hadn't been paying attention so assumed it wouldn't be available until 2011.

I've had a brief scan through this evening and found my two grandparents who were born before 1911 (my Mum's parents) and all eight great-grandparents. Its also helped to find the real name of my Mum's Auntie Queenie (Evelyn Jane SALTER) and one additional Grand-Aunt, Elsie Lilian LAWRENCE who was born after the 1901 census. Not really any earth shattering results, but it has corroborated a number of facts that I had from BMD records.

There are quite a few Great, Great Grandparents who should have been around in the 1911 census so I will look them up tomorrow.

Picking up the threads

One of my New Years resolutions is to resume my family history research. The most important file I lost in my hard disk crash was a spreadsheet which acted as an index to my research; it had a list of all my family names with columns for BMD dates and whether I had the corresponding certificates as well as whether I had Census entries for them. I'm having to recreate this file from scratch and its very painful.

I have paper files with the BMD certificates, so can thumb through those and type in the dates. The census information is a bit harder. When I originally looked the censuses up I saved electronic images of the respective pages and those have gone. Some of the information I had transcribed onto my web site and I have managed to recover some of those pages from the remains of the hard disk. Once I've finished taking stock of the information I have I will be in a better position to identify what is missing.

Fortunately I have several copies of my Family Tree Maker data file, as well as a paper print out of the Genealogy Book I created with it (though that appears to be a year or so out of date). I think most of my research is here somewhere, it is just a case of finding and re-indexing it.

The lesson is that you can't have too many backups, and it pays to keep information in a number of different formats.

Gone quiet...

Wifey starting to blog has shamed me into updating this one, but the truth is that I have had very little time for family research in the last couple of years. My computer crashed a year ago, at the same time as I was moving between ISPs. The old ISP deleted my genealogy web site as soon as I gave them notice, three weeks before my contract with them expired. They didn't take a back up. This meant I lost much of my working data and I haven't yet had time to re-gather the threads.

At the moment we are up to our eyes in decorating, with a view to getting the house on the market. The grand plan is to move to the Somerset/Devon borders and for me to work from home a few days a week, travelling up to London for the other two. Of course all this is dependent on being able to sell this house, but if we can't we can stay put and at least be on top of the DIY for a few years! Perhaps then I will have the free time to get back to the genealogy.

A Major Breakthrough!

I posted the information I have about George GREENHAM and his family on the ENG-SOMERSET mailing list. I had a lot of helpful replies, including one from Jan Walker who I had previously corresponded with about GOSLINGS in Gloucester, on my maternal side.

The real breakthrough though came from Don Groves who sent me a Genealogy report on the descendents of William GRINNAM, born in Norton Sub-Hamdon abt 1470, which he had received from "Dalesman". This gives approximately 18 generations worth of GREENHAMs from the 1500s to the present day, and includes George's family in the 11th Generation - so in one bound I'm back ten generations and 300 years!

Obviously I need to confirm as much of this document as possible but it is a flying start to this phase of my research. I will update my website with the information once I've finished typing all the information into Family Treemaker.

Norton Sub Hamdon Parish Records

Now that I'm approaching the end of my quest to identify all of my 4x Great grandparents I'm starting the second phase of my research which is to trace back the GREENHAM line as far as possible.

I bought a microfiche reader on eBay and ordered the Norton Sub Hamdon parish records from the Somerset archive. I've spent the last few evenings going cross-eyed trying to transcribe all the GREENHAM baptism, marriage and burial records and reconcile them with the names in the 1841 and 1851 censuses. This has given me a load of GREENHAM families living in Norton S-H but not much proof that I'm related to any of them. My lot could just as easily be in Ilchester, Merriott or one of the other surrounding villages.

Still, I figure the transcriptions will be useful to someone and once I have completed the transcription I will put it on my web site. If nothing else it should help me contact other Greenham researchers.

Judge Jeffries hanged my 9xGreatGrandfather

I've been following up a few leads on Genes Reunited this evening and found a common link with Michael Blackmore, who has been following the Blackmore line. Our common link was John Blackmore b. 27/9/1715 who married Hannah Blanchflower b. 1719 on 26/2/1743/44 in Bromton Ralph Parish Church, Somerset.

I had got the link back to John and Hannah from Chris Ralph's research on the Yandells in Westbury On Trym, who married into the Richards family, who in turn married into the Salters.
Anyway, working back from John and Hannah we have

John Blackmore m. Hannah Blanchflower (1743/44)
Parents: John Feathelstone m. Frances Midlam (29/7/1698)
Grandparents: Thomas Blackmore m. Anne Thorne
GreatGrandparents: Thomas Blackmore (b. 1625, d. 1685) m. Joan Shute

It is this Thomas Blackmore who it appears "was Hanged by the neck from the gate house at Cothelstone Manor By Kirke's Lambs on the orders of Judge Jeffries In 1685 after the Monmouth Rebellion was put down" he was one of the victims of the Bloody Assizes.

GOSLING Census Entries

This evening I've been tracing the census entries for John and Elizabeth GOSLING and Frederick John and Mary Ann GOSLING.

There's not a lot to report really; John and Elizabeth lived in Gloucester, while Frederick and Mary started in Gloucester and moved to Bristol. In the 1851 census John and Elizabeth have Solomon INNIS staying with them, who is Elizabeth's father in law. He is listed as being from Burford in Oxfordshire so this is a jumping off point if trying to trace that family line back any further.

The only other observation is that there were six or seven John Goslings spread around the country but they mostly seemed to originate in Kempsford, Glos.