Over the Easter holidays, I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days with my aunt and my two children in Wiltshire, whilst my husband was away on a trip. We booked a lovely bed and breakfast for two nights and enjoyed some fun excursions to nearby Lacock and Bath. On our way home…
Introduction I recently wrote a post entitled, Top Ten Tips for Tracing Your Ancestors pre-1837. One of my main recommendations was to join a family history society. Some readers may be thinking that family history societies surely belong to an earlier era, when the genealogy landscape was very different. Research then had to be conducted…
You never know when a secret, long buried in the past, will come to light. As a result of the indexing of record sources, you can stumble across information about an ancestor that you would never have looked for ordinarily. This happened to me one day when a new, tantalising, green leaf on Ancestry appeared…
Introduction It is rather sobering to think that my grandparents, (all four being born between 1888 and 1897), were part of the first generation to receive free and universal education. Prior to the passing of the 1870 Education Act, schooling had mainly been provided by church schools, the Church of England's National Society and the…
Ernest William Bullock (1893-1978) Introduction Previously, in A Wiltshire Childhood, I shared my Granddad's reminiscences of growing up as a small child in the 1890s in Marlborough, Wiltshire. The story moves on, as some time between May 1898 and April 1901, when the census was taken, my Granddad, Ernest William Bullock, and his family, left…
Ernest William Bullock (1893-1978) Introduction In his retirement, my maternal grandfather, Ernest William Bullock, decided to write down his memoirs, producing over 50,000 words on his typewriter. Many of his stories are about his adventures in the Royal Navy, which he joined as a stoker in 1911. He saw plenty of action in World War…
When I was a child, I pestered my beloved Grandma, "Tell me some stories about your family!" She didn't have a lot to pass on but mentioned one extraordinary snippet of information: a relative had lost his arm. Unsurprisingly, this fact has been lodged in my head ever since. All my life I have wanted…
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…
This is the story of Hannah Redman, the half sister of my great grandfather, Josiah Simeon Thomas Bullock. Until recently, her identity was unknown. She is recorded only once with her siblings, enumerated with them in the 1871 census as a 9 year old visitor. She was unknown because her illegitimate birth concealed her existence…
The Parable of the Good Samaritan by Balthasar van Cortbemde (1612-1633), (Image courtesy of Wikipedia) Whilst searching through the British Newspaper Archive recently, I came across a story that affected me deeply. Essentially, it was the story of a child in need and how different characters responded to his plight. This reminded me of the…
Genealogy Jude 