I’ve read some wonderful books this year but this might just about be the best! Anna Keay’s fascinating guide to the English Republic (1649-1660) as seen through the eyes of those who experienced it.

A few years ago, I discovered that my 3x Gt Grandmother’s sister, Ann Port, had died in Germany ca. 1823. Yesterday I found a record of her death in Wetter an der Ruhr and I’ve spent several fascinating hours today falling deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole… 🇩🇪

I’m back down south after an emotional few days up in Edinburgh. My 92-year old dad is moving into a care home today and it all feels like the end of an era…

Having just read a refence to a marriage taking place at "St Pancras’ Old Church in 1854" in an otherwise excellent article about a case of bigamy, I thought it might be worth revisiting my blog about the St Pancras churches. It's easy; the 'old' church is (kind of) the newer of the two...

I am so fortunate to come from a family of hoarders - both my dad's side of the family and my mum's were reluctant to throw anything away. Which is why I was able to find this in a box of my dad's. It's a letter from a garage acknowledging my dad's order for his first car, a brand new Ford Popular!

Season Ten is here, and we start with 'The Seaman' with Dr. Wanda Wyporska familyhistoriespodcast.com/2025/11/11/s... #podcast #genealogy #ancestry #FamilyHistory

In 1939, when my mum was 11 years old, she won the 'Dux Medal' at her school, the 'Normal Practising Primary School' or 'Orwell Normal'. Her achivement was reported in the Edinburgh Evening News on 13 July 1939. And while sorting out a few things at my dad's house today, guess what I came across...?

I’m up in Edinburgh for a few days and it seems appropriate to post a link to a piece I wrote a few years ago about my Edinburgh-born great uncle, Samuel Christie Annal who spent the last few months of his short life fighting in the Myanmar jungle. #LestWeForget #Remembrance2025

10,000 words and counting...! 🥳 I think that's as good a place as any to stop for the day... #AmWriting

It's taken me a while to arrive at this conclusion, but I now firmly believe that the only way to finish this book is to get on with it. So that's what I'm doing today... #AmWriting

I'll be heading up the A41 in a couple of hours' time to speak to the good folk of the Aston Clinton U3A. I'm giving them my talk on using newspapers to bring our ancestors to life. It all starts at 2pm...

Just to clear everything up, the person I'm researching was born in Holwell, which was in Bedfordshire but was transferred to Hertfordshire in 1897. As a young man he moved to St Thomas Chapel which was in the Bedfordshire parish of Meppershall but was administratively part of Hertfordshire... 1/2

County boundaries weren't always as neat as we'd like them to be. The area around Meppershall in Bedfordshire was particularly complicated giving rise to this cartographical equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders: HARTFORD SHIRE intermixed with BEDFORD SHIRE The Limits uncertain #MappyMonday

Just about to head off to Dartford for my talk at the @nwkfhs.bsky.social AGM this afternoon. I'm on stage at 14.15. The M25 seems to be clear. What can possibly go wrong...?

It’s one of those confusing days for me today. First up, I’ve got a football session for Under 5 & Under 6 girls at 10am. Then, I’m off to Dartford to present my talk on the impact of illegitimacy on family history research at the AGM of the North West Kent FHS at 2.15pm.

#31DaysOfGraves Day#31 Memento Mori Seven years ago today I spent a fascinating hour or so wandering around Abercorn Kirkyard in West Lothian looking at all the Memento Mori gravestones. Here are a few of the best...

Well it is #Halloween today, so why shouldn't she get married 14 years after she died...? 🧟🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️👻

Welcome to #BigScreenThursday* Today I’ve been exploring Wiltshire in the company of Christopher Greenwood and his 1820 Map of the County of Wilts ‘from actual survey’. And a very fine piece of work it is too… @natlibscot.bsky.social * it’s a thing

#31DaysOfGraves - Day #30 Colour The municipal cemetery in Landau-in-der-Pfalz is also home to the historical Jewish Cemetery. The oldest stones are made from the local red sandstone which, unfortunately, isn't the most durable material for a gravestone. But there's a quiet beauty to them...

Is anyone else experiencing this. There are lots of websites that just aren’t ‘loading’ for me at the moment; Ancestry, Findmypast, The Internet Archive, FamilySearch. I can’t get onto my Gmail account either. But other sites are completely fine - like FreeBMD, TheGenealogist, the BBC…

I’ve just finished reading The Wager by David Grann @davidgrann.bsky.social and I can safely say that it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, fiction or non-fiction. Beautifully written and expertly researched, it’s an astonishing story which breathes life into its central characters. Stunning!

When our less-literate ancestors were asked to sign their names they most often made a simple cross but some of them were more inventive. Like John Slaytter here who made this elaborate mark on an early 17th century Leicestershire will. But what is it? A shovel? An arrow head? 🤷‍♂️

Is it just me or does anyone else see an inheritent design flaw with Friers Bridge? Map: The county of Suffolk, surveyed by Joseph Hodskinson, 1783 @natlibscot.bsky.social maps.nls.uk/view/262718411

#31DaysOfGraves #27 Trees This is the gravestone commemorating my wife's 2x Great Grandfather, Hermann Hirsch in the Jewish Cemetery in Waibstadt, Baden-Württemberg. The question is, is the tree attacking the stone or supporting it?

A sad and stark reminder that the need for awareness of male mental health matters is nothing new... Buried: John Howlet inhumated but laid violent hands on himself & had no Xtian burial Aug the 21st [1707]

I 'love' (i.e. I really don't love) how the FamilySearch 'Full Text' search is incapable of working out that some documents are written in Latin and it attempts to find English words that 'kind of' look like the original Latin. Yet another example of Artificial Stupidity...

How's a person supposed to get any work done when items like this crop in old newspapers? Who was Joseph Shore. What was his relationship to Alice Jones? What were the books? What happened to them? I need to know more...

More often than not, I don't bother to correct the appalling transcription errors on Ancestry but when I do, I usually write something like this in the 'explanation' field...

I'm doing a talk for the @fhsofcheshire.bsky.social as part of their AGM this afternoon and I just want it to be known that I didn't wake up at silly o'clock this morning and realise that the talk really needed a significant reboot and I definitely haven't spent the last three hours working on it! 😁

More excellent quality control here from Ancestry. There's page after page of this where, in most entries, nothing but the person's first name is recorded. How exactly are we supposed to find things...? 🤷‍♂️

So, who did your ancestors leave their chariots to...? 😁 "[to my loveing] wife Elizabeth Sotherton All her Jewells Rings Watches money in her own Custody Charriott & pair of my best horses & all furniture thereto belonging..."

Sometimes testators can let you down at important moments: "Item I give to my said Nephewe John Thompson's sister Jane whose husbands name I have not learned or else have at p[re]sent forgott it Five poundes of like money..." Yeah, thanks... 😁

If you were a major genealogical website and one of your jobs was to make digital copies of historical sources available online and you were digitising a major national collection of wills would you: a) check that they were all there or b) not bother so much Guess which option Ancestry went for...

It's not that the handwriting is actually that bad it's just that my head hurts knowing that I have to transcribe three pages of this... 😧

I really enjoyed this! Charles Spencer is a wonderful writer and a great storyteller. I’ve read a couple of reviews which question his choice of historical sources and I need to take this into account but he paints such a vivid picture of a period that I realised I don’t really know enough about…

Looking foward to this lunchtime chat with @sogorg.bsky.social at 12.30 BST tomorrow... portal.sog.org.uk/Event/view/1...

I had been planning to use this for the #Military theme of #31DaysOfGraves but I missed it due to forgetting... But it works equally for today's #Relocated theme as my great uncle Samuel Christie Annal was originally buried at Sahmaw before being moved in 1954 to the Taukkyan War Cemetery.

Who doesn’t love a spot of aqueous surface design on the inside of a book cover…

An autumnal visit to Kew

To put my earlier post into some sort of context, I've marked my Orcadian ancestors on this chart. This is represented on the latest Ancestry DNA database by a total of 0%...

As someone whose ancestry is 25% Orcadian this latest Ancestry DNA 'origins' update is frankly baffling. Previous 'profiles' have always fairly accurately reflected this. The estimates seem to get worse with each update... Thoughts...?

After the summer lull, my family history talk programme is back in full swing. I'm doing my second talk in two days this evening as part of the @familytreeplus.bsky.social 'Bonus Webinar' season. I'm live online at 6.30 with my talk about researching London ancestry

We're heading inside for day #14 of #31DaysOfGraves I can safely say that these ledger stones in the south aisle of Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire are the only monuments of any of my ancestors that are safe from the elements! They commemorate my 6x gt aunt Mary Port & her husband Jonathan Granger.

An early start for me today as I head off to Henley-on-Thames and one of my favourite venues, The Phyllis Court Club. I'm talking about the impact of illegitimacy on family hsitory research. Yes, it's time to talk about Lying Bastards...

The date of a will is worth paying attention to. The version of that was proved (i.e. the one that's been preserved by the court) may not have been the first version written by the testator. The death of a family member can lead to a new will being written and you can often link the two events. 1/2

Looking forward to this on Tuesday 21 October…

It’s #BigScreenThursday * and today I’m making the most of the opportunity to work on a highly complex 14 generation family tree in which nearly everyone is called either Robert or George and, for various reasons, there are hardly any surviving baptismal or burial records. * it’s a thing

I spent yesterday reading and transcribing five wills, dating from 1642 to 1794, and relating to five generations of the same family. Particularly useful as there's little in the way of supporting parish register material. And one of the wills was never proved but turned up in a collection of deeds!

I'm back in Mount Vernon Cemetery, Edinburgh for Day#7 of #31DaysOfGraves This gravestone commemorates no fewer than five members of my mum's family; her grandparents, her mother and her two brothers. Three generations on one stone...