Welsh Ancestors

I'm going to visit a friend in Swansea at the weekend and then am going on to Aberystwyth, where I went to university. As you can imagine, I'm looking forward to it, although hoping that the weather will improve!

I'm also a little excited as I might finally get to do some real digging into my Welsh ancestors. Names make this far trickier than nearly all of my English lines, so I don't know if I'll manage to get any further, but at least I can try.

I'm not going to drag my poor friend around cemeteries again (at least, I'm not planning to!) but I will visit the new Swansea central library and archive and try looking things up in the newspaper archives there.

I might get to have another look around the cemetery in Glais and Pontardawe before I travel on to Aber on the Weds or maybe meet my long-lost relatives (living ones). If it's not tipping it down like today.

When in Aber, I'm going to the National Library of Wales. I haven't been since 2000 and this is the first time for family history. I've registered online and looking forward to it. But this will finally give me a chance to explore parish records and some other sources for the Welsh side. I don't know whether or not I'll get any answers, though.

Another friend is meeting me there (she wants to go to the library, too, so that's all right) and I also hope to see another sunset from Consti to see me through my exile. Maybe we'll drive down the coast to Aberaeron? As long as we include some bookshop hunting and go to St Mikes, we'll both be happy anyway.

I might finally have some actual pretty pictures to post here.

Little Family Reunion

I've just read my last entry and laughed. Yes, well, I did disappear elsewhere and waffle about other things. Whaddyaknow?

However, I've also had a little family reunion (and not just because my parents came to visit) as my Dad and I managed to meet up with his cousin. They hadn't seen each other for over 20 years.

Anyway, it was fun; we had a lovely time and Dad might even see them again in the West Country next year.

And it mostly came about because his cousin and I discovered we were both doing the family tree and got in touch that way. So family history has its uses!

Travels

I've been up and down to London yet again, so a quiet week here. On the family history front, a brief play with the Times online - have you seen it yet? Well worth a look, especially as it's currently free.

http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/tol/archive/

(You will need to register).

And on the fiction front, I've got one all but done, but I'm sitting on it nervously. Not for long - stories have to be let out into the wild...

No Posts!

I seem to have got an actual life this week and it's played havoc with my virtual one!

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.

Home Again

Once more back from London...

I shouldn't have to go again for two and a half weeks, anyway. Don't know what's happening to my life.

Once I've recovered, I'll have a look at what I can share on the family history front. I don't think I talked about all my certificates. (They always raise more questions, don't they?)

London Ramblings

Returned (temporarily at least) from London. I didn't visit any archives this time (sometimes you have to pay some attention to living relatives) but I did spend Friday with my sister wandering the streets of London. Seven Dials to be precise. If I can work out how to get the photos off my phone, I'll share my pretty pics of where the Jewitts used to live in the first half of the 19th century.

And yes, that is Seven Dials, as in London's most infamous slum in years gone by. But they look pretty now...