One of the things I think has been the greatest help to my research has been membership of family history societies, mailing lists and this forum.
After I received the information about John and Sarah Nathan living on London Road Southwark - remember that the 1881 census was the only one transcribed at this time and there was very little on this here intarwebby thing - I went to London with a coach trip organised by the local FH Society. The BMD indexes were held in St Catherine's House (that's why they are sometimes referred to as the St Catherine's Indexes) so I went there first and found my great grandmother's birth and ordered the certificate. I then walked around the corner to the PRO (Public Record Office) in Chancery Lane and was initiated into the rituals of research there. I searched the Microfilm of the 1851 census and found John and Sarah at 24 London Road. One of the people from our coach told me that I should look at the properties to either side of my ancestor, just in case they are living close to family. I found a Hannah NATHAN a widow living with her five children and a servant at 20 London Road. I didn't know if they were "mine" but I purchased a printed copy of the page just in case.
There was a pretty long gap between that research and the next thing I did. We all know what happens when real life gets in the way of research. I was also researching my husband's family and his ancestors were more insistent for a while.
By the time I came back to my NATHAN family I had to read through all I had found and re-read the birth certificate of my great grandmother.
This told me that her father was John NATHAN, a furniture dealer of 24 London Road and her mother was Sarah, formerly GREEN. Now I could look for a marriage. From the ages of their children on the 1851 census I started my search (by this time our local library had the microfiche of the indexes) in 1844. The fiche for the NATHAN name was missing from every quarter up to 1850. I then decided to search for Sarah and that fiche was missing too! I reported it to the librarian who told me that there had been a spate of thefts of fiche but that they knew who it was and they had been banned from the library. I was stunned that someone could be so mean.
I came home and turned to a mailing list I belonged to - British-Jewry - I said I had tried to look at the BMD indexes but the fiche were missing and I wanted to find the marriage of John and Sarah. I put everything I knew about them into the message and sent it off. Within 20 minutes a lady in Canada sent a message telling me that they married in the great synagogue in London on 20th August 1845. I aksed how she knew this and she told me that the Great Synagogue Marriage registers had been transcribed and translated from Hebrew by a marvellous lady called Angela Shire and this had been published. She gave me details of how to get the book and I sent off a letter with a cheque to the address.
There was another message on the mailing list for me from a gentleman called Michael Sayers. He told me that Sarah Green was the granddaughter of Ephraim Levy GREEN who came to London around 1796 with his wife and two sons. Family story says they travelled on a herring boat. He continued by saying that he had "quite a lot of information about the Levy-Green's and would I like it. I thought about it (for a nansecond!) and said I would love to have any information he could give me. He sent me the file and I printed it off without looking at how big it was - 86 pages that's how big.
Two days later the book was in my hands! I looked for John and Sarah. Then I read the instructions and looked again. There they were JOhn son of Samuel Sarah daughter of Abraham. There was a note in the comments column that said "GSM 1808 possibly father" So I looked at that entry too. This told me that Samuel son of Nathan married Hannah daughter of David MENDES and under David's name was the word "Sephardi"
Now one of the family stories is that there is a Spanish Jewess in our ancestry. The Sephardic Jews come mainly from Spain and Portugal and North Africa. The Ashkenasi come from Eastern Europe and places beyond there. The word Sephardi meant that I had found our Spanish Jewess. I can't begin to tell you how excited I was. I wrote to the mailing list to thank everyone for their help I sent messages to Michael Sayers for the fantastic file on the Levy Green family and I spread the word amongst my cousins that our Spanish lady had been found.

"See if you can find those darned actors" was one of the things my Dad said when he handed me the files with his research. So I did. First you must remember that this happened before there were such things as FreeBMD or Findmypast. In fact the 1881 census was still in the final stages of being checked and transferred to microfiche before being released. We did have the IGI on fiche - so nothing is easy at this time.
I started by reading everything he had and then talking to Muriel's daughter, Pat, the eldest of all the cousins. She had heard the stories more often than any of us so she could repeat them word for word. Then I made a list of what we knew.
My grandmother was Margaret Annie GUILFOYLE
Her father was Charles GUILFOYLE
He mother was Bessie NATHAN
Charles and Bessie were Actors
Amongst the papers Dad gave me were several photocopies of newspaper cuttings and some very bad photocopies of photographs. When I read them I realised that these were copies of the pages of a scrap book started in 1876 by Bessie NATHAN to record her career in the theatre. I learnt that Dad had been given them when he visited a cousin who lived in San Diego, the daughter of Bessie NATHAN and Charles GUILFOYLE's youngest daughter. One of the copies was of a letterhead and on it was the permanent address of Bessie. 126 London Road SE.

Now, this is where having membership of a family history society or a forum like this is important. I was a very new researcher and what I knew about London could be written on the head of a pin. I happened to mention this letterhead to a group of members of Gwent FHS when we were packing the quarterly journal and one of them, Monica Collins, said "London Road SE, that's Southwark. I am going to the SoG next week. I'll have a look at the street directories and find out who lived there around 1876 onwards." I thought this was very kind but quietly resolved not to get too excited because she might forget and I would not ask her about it just in case she did forget.
I should have known better. The following week I saw Monica at a committee meeting and she gave me some papers. She had found that John NATHAN was the general dealer at 126 London Road in 1877. She then found him on the 1881 Census with his wife and six children. Not only that, she had looked at the 1871 Census and found them at 231 Blackfriars Road this time there were 11 children and Bessie was there amongst them! As the icing on the cake she had looked at the 1861 census where they were living at 24 & 25 London Road where there were 7 children but Bessie was not there.
This was such a huge gift to me, so huge that I knew I could never repay it to Monica so I told her that I would do my best to help other people the way she had helped me - because that's what we do in this hobby of ours.
So now I had my grandparents, my great grandparents and my great,great, grandparents. Time to get some more certificates and make sure of them.

I am a mutt genealogically speaking. Though I subscribe to the belief in canine's, mutt's are sometimes the best, prettiest, and healthiest of the animal, I am not so sure about the human correlation. I am a rather proud mutt, but my family history is a varied mixture of heritage that makes me envy those who can trace their trees back 400 or more years. I can tell you with all honesty, I will never be able to do that. Nonetheless, what I have found has been astounding.

My paternal grandfather was part Choctaw (proven), and part Cherokee (not proven). Once he said his grandpa was part Scot's Irish, funny he was right. Funny because Pop never spoke about his family, in fact, felt he was orphaned, when he had a passle full of cousins and a few Aunt's running around that he missed way too many years with. His father who died in prison was Cherokee per his grandmother, and given her heritage, I tend to believe it. You see his mother's mother was Choctaw, and what little I know of her, that was the last thing she would lie about. In the last few years of her life she refused to speak English, speaking only Choctaw. Oh, how I would have loved to have met her. Margaret's relations are rich and deep in the Choctaw tribe, two of her great grandmother's were the nieces of Chiefs. In the Choctaw tribe, the maternal Uncle was the authoritarian, and once, in the family these two men, among the most renown of the Choctaws, were once the men who decided the future of these ancestresses of mine. The males in this line, well, some left alot to be desired, but boy did the women accomplish alot. I admire them. Because of his ancestry, my grandfather was rather dark skinned. Folks in New York didn't know what he was, they thought he was Italian. In California, they thought he was mexican. When my blond and blue eyed grandmother married him, it raised alot of eyebrows. My grandfather died feeling her family never approved of him. And honestly, I think they didn't.

Though of a working class family, the Hinds' have been in the states since sometime in the 1600's. Before settling in Syracuse, where my grandmother was born, they were farmers, but the history I always heard made me think they kind of thought they were superior to my grandfather. His poverty in his youth was so much more pronounced than the struggle of the working class Hinds. Grandma's mom was a first generation American. Knowing she was raised by a widow, I imagine she knew tough times too, but it was different. G.G. (what us kids called her, because there were too many Grandma's around, it stood for Great grandma) was opinionated, outspoken. A real spitfire of a woman, and boy could she cook. I used to love to sit and watch her in the kitchen. From pictures I see her children, with the exception of my grandmother, resembled her. It's a pity she never knew her father. I wonder what drove him to suicide, leaving his very young children and wife alone in a foreign country. What must it have been like to have grown up like that? Needless to say, my grandmother, of all English heritage, is the only Yankee ancestry I have. I say Yankee, because well, the East coast is an entirely different animal from my southern ancestor's, and well they were different types of people.

My Dad's family were southerner's through and through. I have found one family member who was a Union soldier, but the rest were Confederate. Never mind that they didn't own slaves for the most part, they were what in the south were called Cracker's. Compared to the glorious plantation owners, they really didn't have much. They scraped by on their land. Most worked in the lumbar industry. They had large families and lived in communities of other immigrant families who had come to the area by way of South Carolina. They intermarried, and these communities have a rich history. Many of the descendants still live in the same area, most had branches move off and go to Texas, and became pioneers of that great state. They lived in rural areas, still covered by dense forests to this day. They were poor, and often could not read or had very little schooling. They were proud of their Scottish heritage. The English families of this side were quite the same, but they didn't come as late to the states, they were among the earliest colonists, and fought in the American Revolution. Many I believe ended up in Alabama and Florida because they were Tory sympathizers. It wasn't a good thing to support Britain back then, so they came to a wild country filled with Indians and the Spanish government. The same indians incidentally that were my maternal grandfather's relatives and neighbors. In the states we call them the Scots Irish, or sometimes the Ulster Irish, these Scottish immigrants, who weren't Irish at all. They are however the backbone of our early pioneers here in the states. Some of our best known men of history are from the same background.

I suppose compared to being able to say my family has been here for hundreds and hundreds of years, my families presence in the south for 225 years is small, but given that the country itself isnt' that old, I am proud of it. Proud of all of my family, of all that they accomplished, even if it isn't the stuff of history books.

Part English, Part Scottish, Part Welsh, Part Choctaw, Part Cherokee, Part Creek, yes, I am truly a mutt, but a proud one. I feel fortunate that I have found so many of my family, and all that it has taught me.

Growing up in Kent in the 1960s, our visits to Wales were few and far between until the M2 was opened and we got a reliable car. Even then, the drive took 8 hours and we only went once a year in the summer. There were three things we looked forward to on those long drives: crossing the Severn Bridge as we entered Wales, our first glimpse of the mountains and our first glimpse of a pit head wheel.

Auntie Polly was the last surviving sibling of my paternal grandfather and she lived alone in an end-of terrace house, next door to the Penygraig Rugby Club and opposite the Naval Colliery. A hair net over her thin grey hair served to hold her roll of curls in place. She wore an old-fashioned crepe belted dress, thick brown stockings, and brown lace-up leather shoes. Over her dress she usually wore a flowery wraparound overall that tied at the waist. I didn't know anyone else who was that old-fashioned and I thought she was ancient, but she was only about seventy-three.

On arriving at her house, we opened the iron gate and climbed the stone steps to the front door. When my Dad was still alive we went through the side gate to be back door, but after he died when I was a teenager, we thought we'd better go to the front door and ring the bell. As children, she greeted us with a smile that lit up her whole face as she took our faces in her hands and kissed our cheeks. She would always say something in Welsh and then speak to us in English.

We always went to Auntie Polly's for tea and she always served her home made apple pie, or "apple tart" as she called it. She had a very old wooden rolling pin which was worn away and, to my mother's disgust, had never been washed. She told me it had belonged to her mother. I inherited it many years later, but it disintegrated in my hands and had to be thrown away but I'm sure that the secret to Aunty Polly's melt-in-the-mouth pastry lay in that manky old piece of wood.

Auntie Polly's house was unlike any house I knew. The front hallway was dark and the walls were painted brown on anaglypta wallpaper. A single light hung from the ceiling and a black Bakelite telephone stood on the hall table. We passed two closed doors before reaching the back room where we were entertained. In this room were a few chairs, a large table covered with a thick green coarse velvet cloth, a couple of cabinets on which were a television and a radio. At one end of the room was a good sized original Victorian fireplace with the usual fireside companions and a pair of Staffordshire dogs on the mantelpiece and a mirrored overmantel. This room led to another room which I think she called the scullery. It had a two or three armchairs, a low table and a fireplace complete with cooking range, pots and a copper kettle. The 'modern' part of Auntie Polly's house lay through the back door. Taking up what was once part of the back garden was a white-washed lean-to. Spacious and very bright, due to the translucent corrugated plastic roof, this was Auntie Polly's kitchen. There was a sink with a single cold tap (this was the only running water in the entire house), a modern gas stove, a free-standing kitchen cabinet and a formica-covered table with a couple of chairs. The floor was covered with linoleum. This crude, modern addition to the home was where Auntie Polly cooked. A door to the outside led to a back garden with steps leading up to the lawn, an old coal shed and the chilly outdoor spider-infested toilet.

Such were my childhood memories of Auntie Pollie's house. Of Auntie Pollie herself, I knew very little. She spoke Welsh, sent me ten shillings every Christmas, (but didn't do birthdays) and always said "oh dear" when we offered to help her clear away the tea things. I wonder what that "oh dear" really meant. I was always told she was a tall woman but by the time I was a teenager she wasn't as tall as me, yet in the old photos, she towers above everyone, incuding her father and brothers. I do remember thinking she had big feet though.

She didn't have much to say, and we didn't have much to say to her, but what a mine of information she could have been if we had but known what to ask her. As it turned out, her house had a lot to tell us.

Every family has a story, something that has been handed down with a little embellishment or perhaps a spot of cleaning up as the years went by. There were three things that were said at Sunday tea by my Aunty Muriel and they were... perhaps I should explain about Sunday tea should I?

I am an only child but I grew up in a large family. My Dad was one of 12 children. They were kept close by Muriel who was the eldest. She had been told by her mother to look after her brothers and sister and this she did until she died - even though they were all grown up and had their own lives. When Muriel said "Come to tea on Sunday" they all came to tea. The thing is, they didn't come to Muriel's house because she lived in a tiny cottage, they came to our house because we had a huge farmhouse kitchen with a table that was six feet square.
All the brother's and sisters would arrive with their spouses if they had them and their children, if they had them. Everyone would bring something for the meal. Aunty Mary always brought two loaves of sliced bread made into paste sandwiches - this was the 1950s and 60s I am talking about. The batchelor uncles brought cakes from a shop - so exotic! Usually they were Lyons cakes.
The seating arrangements were organised by aunty Muriel who would separate us children and spread us around the table with adults between us so we could be more easily controlled and we wouldn't be able to eat our tinned pears until we had eaten sufficient bread and butter or paste sandwiches. I was brought up by a mother who made bread and jam and just about everything so a sandwich made of boughten sliced bread and paste from a jar was really exciting and then a slice of a shop cake from a box, well! how to describe the joy?
At some point during the meal Aunty Muriel would cut a slive of the shop cake and say " We are related to them," she would gesture at the cake box on the countertop "Lyons, them from the Lyons corner house" Then she would nod, pause for a second or two and finish cutting a slice of cake. The cousins (all the children were referred to as 'the cousins' as the easy way to issue orders - "tell the cousins to come and wash their hands") would pause in their scoffing of sandwiches and listen intently incase there was a good story coming. When they realised is was just that old 'related to Lyons' thing again they continued with their efforts to eat as much as possible before their mother spotted them and made them stop.
One of the adults would ask Muriel a question and she would say "There's a Spanish Jewess in our family." Again the cousins would pause in their munching to see if there would be a little more information about what exactly a Spanish Jewess was. Someone would make a remark and then say something the adults thought was funny and everyone would laugh.
I would be watching cousin Bernard because he used to try to eat his pickled onion with a knife and fork and usually it wouls shoot across the table into someone's lap and while everyone had their attention on that he would reach out and sneak one of the fairy cakes and hide it under the table. I used to make sure he kew I had seen him so he would share it with me.
Then Aunty Muriel would say "Of course, Gran was an actress, she went all over the world acting." again the cousins would hold their breath for more information. I mean to say, how strange is that when you are seven or eight or nine years old to hear your aunty telling everyone that she had a grandmother?! Amazing! I mean aunty Muriel is OLD! she told me she was older than my dad and he was ever so old - mum said he was forty something!

The ritual of Sunday tea continued for years. As the cousins grew up and left home fewer people would arrive BUT, and this is one of those things you totally accept at the time, they all still brought something as part of the meal. Aunty Mary was more likely to bring a loaf of bread made into ham sandwiches or cream cheese or salad. Aunty Muriel still brought a fruit cake and her music (she played the piano) and she still told us those same three things; that her gran was an actress, we were related to the Lyons of corner house fame and there was a Spanish Jewess in our family.

Aunty Muriel died in the 1970s and the family drifted apart. Sunday tea became just any old meal, the cousins had their own lives and families and the increased prosperity meant that they rarely met. My Dad began researching his family tree in the 1980s and found his father's line all the way back to 1807 in Pembrokeshire. In the late 1990s my parents came to live with me and my Dad handed me his research and said "Find those darned actors, and see if you can find the connection to Lyons - oh and there's a Spanish Jewess in our family, see if you can find her too."
I looked at the box of papers he had given me and said "Yes Dad" as you do when you parent tells you to do something.
I'll tell you what I did, and what I found out about all three of these stories

So, don't ask me how it happened, but I am back researching my English roots. Not the ones who have been in the states for centuries, those who are my immigrant ancestors, arriving between 1835 and 1884. Now, let me tell you, it is without a doubt one of the most difficult and confusing things I have researched. England is a whole different pickle, the setup of parishes and shires and districts, in most cases leaves my head reeling. Add to that the difficulty in actually obtaining records , well, there is a reason it's my least often researched avenue.

That said, I have had amazing success lately, thanks in no small part to some kind individuals on the b-g board and ancestry.com. I am still waiting copies of the marriage certificates I ordered, which unlike the States, is the best source of information on your ancestors, don't waste the 7 pounds ( about 12 dollars) on a death certificate, it won't tell you squat. I wish I knew that before I ordered two of them. Anyhow, even without the conformation of the information from the certificates, I would like to share what I have learned about my family, common laborers of an area known as the Black Country.

In 1884 Sarah Brampton Timmins and her two young sons are found on the passenger list of the Celtic. Husband George I can't find anywhere, but I know he came over, US phone directories for Syracuse list him as a Foreman from 1887-1890. My great grandmother was born in 1889, and sometime between then and 1893 when Sarah is listed as a widow, George killed himself.

In 1881 the family is living at 10 Frazer St, Oldbury, Worcestershire (on census its Staffordshire, but residents and genealogists tell me it's always been Worcestershire). The road no longer exists, but it was between Root End and Birmingham Rd in Oldbury. George and his father in law, Edward Brampton were glassmakers. Only two glass companies are in the area, the Birmingham Glass Plate co, and the Chance Bros Co. Since after 1877 the Birmingham company only imported and exported glass but didn't manufacture it, that leaves the employer of the men as the Chance Bros. Co., located on Spon Lane, Smethweck. It is probably about a mile from where the family lived. According to the 1880 Kelly directory, the Chance bros company employed about 2000 folks, and had school for as many as 600 children of their employees.

I could never find George in 1871 or 1861, and know I seem to know why, I found a tree, and Joseph Timmins and Sarah Phillips, his wife, had moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to work there for about 10 years, and returned in time to appear on the 1881 census. Like my George, Joseph was a glassmaker. I can't prove yet this is his family, but the odds are it is, that's why the second son of the family was named Joseph Timmins.

Edward Brampton and his wife Ruth Spicer are living in North Harbone on Oldbury Rd, actually it's Smethweck now, and again, it's within a mile or two of the factory. In 1871 the occupation of Edward, and his sons William, Samuel and John is that of a glass worker. William disappears after this census, but Samuel enlisted in the Army, and returns to the area by 1891, he married a girl Emma Dudley, but never had children. John is gone from 1881 until 1901 where he returns, living in Oldbury. He had no children either, but I think he may have gone to Australia voluntarily and returned late in life. The other girls, Emma and Mary Ann both married laborers of the area. Emma married a John Carter and Mary Ann married a Thomas Moore. I find the girls, and thier children in 1891 and 1901. Other than my own family, their children are the only descendants of Edward and Ruth that I know.

Edward Brampton was a plain old laborere in 1861, living on Maria St, again, within a mile from the factory. I think I found him on Hall St. as a boader in 1851, he was listed as Edwin though. We still don't know for sure if it's him, but he may be living in a poor house in Stanton Lacy, just north of Ludlow, Shropshire in 1841. Throughout the census, Edward says he was born in Ludlow and Shrewsbury Shropshire. The Brampton family of the area lived in both places, so eventually I hope to link him to the right branch. So far it looks like he was either the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Brampton, or the orphan son of John and Martha Brampton. John and Martha were nonconformists (non church of England).

Ruth is living in Regis Rowley in 1851, with her son, William who was illegitimate. We don't know if William who was always listed as Brampton, is the son of Edward or of another man. Ruth's baptism appears to have been found, in a Presbyterian church in Oldbury, her parents were John Spicer and Anna. I can find this couple in 1851, but in 1841 John appears to have been in prison, and none of the other family has been found. John was a coal minor who lived his live in Oldbury, and south near Hales Owen.

The family of the Brampton's lived within a five mile radius. They were common laborers, and likely quite poor. I can only imagine the lifestyles they lived. The homes that they lived in are no longer in existance, but some of the streets still remain. Slowly, and bit by bit, I am beginning to get an idea about these ancestors of mine across the pond as they say.

[QUOTE=Mutley;367986]The envelopes on the left hand side of the screen, previously ignored,
are now quite important.

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Anyone who knows me in person knows that I avoid social networks and blogs. It's not because I'm antisocial but because I know that the majority of people simply aren't interested in genealogy. Which is pretty much all I talk about these days! :cool:
That's a different story here. Everyone here is "into" genealogy in one way or another, from wide-eyed novices to qualified genealogists with decades of experience. My kind of crowd!

I'll give you a little bit of my background so you know where I'm coming from later. I'm 37 yr old with 3 kids and I have a background in laboratory science and IT. I had an aptitude for systems analysis and database design at college even though I didn't enjoy it. I suppose it comes down to that aptitude born out of laziness. The fastest way through the course was to get it over and done with quickly. |laugh1|

My mum started looking into the family history in the late 90's and had made good headway into her side by the beginning of last year. In February 2009, I thought I'd have a look at what the fuss was about. I got a free trial at the A place and gave it a go. In 3 days I'd matched mum's findings along with supporting BMD index references. By the end of the week I'd found most people going back 4 generations on both maternal and paternal sides. I made a couple of mistakes and had to prune whole branches back but I'd already got the bug. I've been paying a subscription since then.

Now I've noticed something about my approach compared to some other people's approach. I overtook 10 years of mum's family research in 3-4 days. She said I wasn't being thorough and proving a family link before going back another generation. The thing is that I was proving links through a combination of BMD and census entries along with IGI providing likely information. All I was doing at the end of the day was a database collation exercise, something that I'm particularly good at (if I do say so myself!).

So my question is this:
Is it so wrong to assume a family link if you have BMD index entries and census returns showing that a person is related to their parents?

I am passionate about genealogy. Some may say addicted. I don't mind, I just continue to do my own thing, and ignore the comments, raised eyebrows, and total lack of interest by my friends and families. They just don't know what they are missing.

I have searched for my English ancestors in the past, but to be honest, there wasn't alot of records, and it was, well, hard. I mean, why try and locate someone that wasn't easily accessible, when I have all these folks to research in the states. It made sense, and I am a procrastinator by nature, so I did what I do, I procrastinated.

A decade later, and well, most of my family lines are at a brick wall. I simply have to go places to find the information I need, and quite honestly, can't. So I am again traversing those long put aside families across the pond as the Brits say.

The whole parish, and district and shire thing at times baffles me. The IGI lists it one way, the census another, and genealogists who are much better informed, another. So no matter my skill set at research, the whole research thing in Britian is an entirely new experience. However, due to some very kind folks on ancestry.com and these boards, I have made some headway, and have truely found alot of facts. Maybe not connections, but at least I am beginning to get a glimpse of who I am researching. And that is exciting.

My great grandmother was a first generation American. She died when I was 13, and so I knew her pretty well. My grandmother and her sister, probably the best oral historians I have run across for accuracy, gave me some more information, and slowly the story of my immigrant ancestor's is unfolding.

I can only imagine the lifestyle they came from. From all that I have encountered, they were working class, likely not very well off and so different from my other families. For one thing, they knew how to give information in the census. At least that's one thing, it never changes, it's always the same. For someone in the states, whose censuses one to the next don't match, that's sure a novelty. You can actually find someone based on where they were born, wow... sure wish that were true here. Occupation, now that's surely interesting. I want to know more about theses glassmakers of West Bromwich. A genealogy friend pointed me in the direction of one factory, and I was able to find photos online. My what gorgeous stuff.

So as I am trying to figure out if the family was in this parish or that, I am learning alot, and I can only hope that folks are patient with me.

I really wasn't sure about this new-fangled look to our beloved Brit-Gen. I had some difficulty getting in here because of the upgrade and it was quite a shock when I did arrive and discovered that it was so, so......pale. Now I am aclimatising or as my lovely American soul sister says aclimating and as I find that some things haven't changed while other things are now a paler blue I am beginning to like this here new upgrade.

I love to blog, I have several blogs for different hobbies in different parts of this here intarwebby and now I can blog on B-G - my idea of heaven.
In future my entries will restrict themselves to my family history research because that is what B-G is all about. I will then encourage my relatives to visit to see any updates....