Welcome to our October edition of the quarterly newsletter, it’s out a little early to take the opportunity to remind you of our Annual Exhibition at the Village Hall in Pinfold Lane, on Saturday 17th October.
I hope you have been able to see the new series on “Heir Hunters” and “Who do you Think You are?” both on the BBC recently. Both series tried hard to explore new avenues for Genealogist. The last episode of the “Who do you think you are?” with Martin Freeman, explored gaps in family history and some of the reasons why these happened. The family in question were very probably carriers for the sexual disease of Syphilis! This had the effect of creating a high rate if infant mortality at a rate much higher than we see today. I also found a similar event in my own family in 1884. Because there were no family contraception in those days – most married couples and few unmarried couple generally had a child every 18-24 months – if you find that you have a gap of 2 or more years then it is highly likely that a child was either still born or died very soon after birth. This means that the child does not show up on the 10 year census returns which means you could miss them, the best place to start looking in the death records.
I had a very pleasing phone call following the publication of our last edition in July from Kath Reeves (nee Brough) who used to live in Low Street. It seems the item on memories of Ted Mason sparked a number of happy memories from her past. She actually remembers being in the yard when he explained that he had been inside the pigeon loft carrying the perches.
One quirky – and free – website available to anyone tracing their family history – preferably with a very unusual surname! – is www.medievalsoldier.org which contains information on troops who fought for England against the French in the Hundred Years War between 1369 and 1453 (Agincourt etc). Apparently there are 250000 of them. Unbelievable!!
We look forward to welcoming you to the annual exhibition.

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