Back in 1987, when I was a teenager, I paid a trip to London to search the General Registration indexes at St Catherine's House for a record of the marriage of my great great grandparents, James Batchelor, an agricultural labourer, and his wife, Frances Naylor. I knew that the couple had both been born in…
Oast Houses, Sissinghurst, KentImage courtesy of Derek Winterburn via Flickr- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/ The Garden of England, as Kent is often described, is the county of my birth and indeed, my ancestors have been living here since the earliest dates. Kent is known as the Garden of England because historically, it was full of pretty apple, pear,…
This year I have decided to launch a new series of blogs called Jude's Gen, which will differ slightly in content to my regular articles. I love sharing research stories and writing about specific record sources but I thought it would be refreshing to take a theme and thread through news, reviews, opinion and commentary…
Previously, in Ancestors who were Blind, I looked at how our blind ancestors might have lived with their disability, specifically looking at the life of my husband's ancestor, Hannah Lilian Woodcock. In this article, I will be looking at ancestors who were deaf, illustrated by the life of my deaf relative, Maria Batchelor (1827-1903). At…
I've been thinking recently about how a person is remembered, not just by their nearest and dearest but also by their descendants, generations later. Family stories in which they feature are one way in which memories of them are preserved. Though the majority of stories about our ancestors lives and experiences will be forgotten about…
Genealogy Jude 