Wednesday, 8 October 2025

Family History Societies

 On a recent visit to Lincolnshire archives and spotting some volunteers transcribing records it reminded me of the unsung work carried out by family history societies.  These records are carefully transcribed and checked and are much more reliable than some other transcriptions. Buying the resultant CDs or on-line downloads is well worth the money, not only to support the FHS financially, but can generate links or ideas on the home computer which may not be seen with on-line sites.

It's great work you are doing and much appreciated. In this case to the Lincolnshire Family History Society, but to others also.

 

Here's another really useful resource for Lincolnshire marriages (post 1837)

https://mi.lincolnshiremarriages.org.uk/

 

 

Thursday, 11 September 2025

Ethel Allis and Paul Page

 Found a nice photograph of Ethel Allis with her new husband Paul Page from around 1930 on ebay. This was a publicity picture for Paul presumably since he worked for Fox studios as an actor at that time. They look happy.

Given the age of the picture would copyright still apply to it? It would be good to put it on the web-site. 

Tuesday, 19 August 2025

web-sites!

 Just caught out by thinking that a page on a web-site would stay there. So instead of the nice transcription of an early will I wanted to refer back to, I now just have the catalogue number. 

It was for a peripheral family so didn't seem that important to keep a copy at the time but has just gained importance.

Note to self: keep everything. 

Wednesday, 23 July 2025

Back again

 It has been a while. 

I can recommend the IHGS correspondence course in genealogy which has taken up quite a lot of time. 24 lectures completed at your own pace. Naturally some lectures are of varying amount of interest but there has always been something to be learned. The course is now nearly finished.

The book is also being updated from the 2020 edition - again occupying a lot of time. How can you check chapters a couple of times and still find typos and poor grammar? (no need to answer)

I also thought it would be of interest to produce a database on the lines of Custodian. The sqlite database was relatively easy to get going but a front-end for it has proved more challenging so the use of DBeaver has proved most useful in providing a place to enter and organise data.  Sqlite studio and DB browser are other apps that have proved really useful for that exercise too.

After another two trips to Lincoln archive and one to Essex archive there are many documents to read properly and transcribe.

In the past I have tended to only enter families into the Master Genealogist (and from there the web-site) when there has been enough of a group. I think this will change to include more individuals and couples, if only to get them recorded.

Another concern has been the Alce families of Sussex. Alce was a contraction of Alice and the two (with Allis etc.) were interchangeable for a time. Then the spelling appears to have become permanent - has the pronounciation of the name changed over time? Some early Alce/Allis families will be recorded to get going.