This article first appeared in the Gwent FHS Journal for June 2014. It is reproduced here with the consent of the Editor of that Journal and the author of the article How good are you at finding things on this here intarwebby? Really? I am useless, absolutely useless. I have lost count of the number…
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Researching your family history online is a long and daunting task. It can take up to days to find one piece of information. But it is also important to keep in mind how far you have come as well. If you feel you aren’t getting anywhere, or you’re not making the progress at the speed…
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Medical records are an excellent source of information that can tell us a lot about our ancestors’ lifestyle. Having said that, as they are confidential documents, they are difficult to get a hold of; not only are they confidential, but hospitals would have closed, merged, been taken over and changed names. So depending on policies,…
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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…
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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…
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The names of Blackadder, Darling, Lieutenant George and Baldrick will be familiar to people nationwide thanks to the BBC’s Blackadder series. But they may be surprised to learn that the characters, originally invented by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, really did exist. Specialist military genealogy website Forces War Records has the proof. To mark the…
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If you are new to the genealogical way of life, there is a lot of vocabulary and terminology that you may not know. It doesn’t help that us genealogists are lazy either! Because of this, we have dulled down a vast amount of our vocabulary into acronyms and abbreviations, just so we don’t have to…
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We have previously posted about useful genealogy research tips for beginners however, even our most seasoned of genealogists need help from time to time. With that being said, we have mustered up some of what we think are the most useful tips when it comes to genealogy research. Break through the Brick Walls Brick walls…
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The concept of apprenticeships have been around since the Middle Ages; an expert craftsman takes on a young worker in exchange for food, lodging and, as times have developed, money. When stamp duty was payable on indentures of apprenticeships, the official records of apprentices were kept in England and Wales between 1710 and 1811. You…
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Schools are a primary source for genealogists. Almost all of the school registers will have records of the children who attended; these records will include important information such as date of birth, the address, the name and occupation of the parent/guardian, the name of the previous school attended and sometimes the reason for leaving (if…
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