What I should Have Done First...

This blog sometimes seems back to front as I'm well into the 19th or 18th C with most of my researches. So, explanations:

I started this family history lark for a school project when I was 15 and got hooked. Back in those days I had no idea what you did or where you went to get information, but Mum and I asked for family documents, wandered around graveyards looking for relatives and got as far as sending for some certificates from the local register office.

I wrote to my great-aunt in Wales. I'm thankful about this for many reasons, as without her information finding the right Evans, Thomas and Joseph families would have been a battle.

So I'd collected quite a bit of information and I added whatever I could from Bridgwater Library, but I stopped while I was university and when I started work here in the North East, as I was too far away from any ancestral homes.

Then, in 2001, I received, out of the blue, a mass of copies of certificates and notes from my Dad's cousin Carol, making me look at my own information again - and progressing the Jewitt line no end.

And, of course, next came the 1901 Census online. I was vaguely aware it was coming, as I worked in a library, but was yet to discover what access to a census meant. (I'd only got as far as gravestones, birth certificates and directories.) So, luckily for me, I only tried well after the initial fiasco was over.

Taking the information I had, I found so much and I was launched into the modern world of family history. As a librarian, I've got even more access than most to free books, so I read pretty much every how-to book we had in all 13 libraries.

I returned to certificates, discovering that the GRO existed and how to get certs out of them. (You can see I started all backwards in many ways), the online 1881 index and finally, several visits to the FRC.

I studied history at university and was missing it badly and family history gave me a way of still studying it, sharing it and discovering my own family's part in the history I'd learnt.

It's addictive and fascinating and I love it.