2020: Gifts of Genealogy

I've recycled last year's seasonal post with some gift ideas for the genealogist in your life.

It’s approaching the time of year when “What can I buy X for Christmas?” becomes the most pressing question.  If your nearest and dearest happen to be into family history, I have some gift ideas that don’t (a) include a DNA kit or (b) cost a fortune.  Handmade, personalised presents are the most thoughtful of all, I reckon.  And what could be more personal than the gift of heritage?  Here are my suggestions:

 A framed family tree.  There are many ways to present this; if you have a steady hand and good penmanship (or a decent Italic pen), your costs can be limited to finding a suitable frame and paper – both available at budget stores.  Or your local charity shop might have some pictures for sale whose frames can be re-used.

Another option is to print a chart.  Family history computer programs can do this, with varying degrees of eye-catchingness.  

FamilySearch allows users to freely print out their trees in a range of attractive formats. 
 
If you have photographs of people featured on the tree, these can be mounted on a chart, with or without name labels.
 
Photographs.  Compile an album for an older relative to prompt memories, and perhaps some heart-warming recollections too.  Frame any number of photographs to make a conversation piece for the hall, stairway, or living room – either in a collage frame or individually.
 
This Is Your Life.  The photo album idea could be taken a stage further to include mementos such as programmes, letters, postcards, certificates and so on, forming a record of the recipient’s life.  An appropriate presentation ceremony would add to the occasion!

Frame an heirloom.  This isn’t as unlikely as it sounds.  Medals are an obvious choice, and can be combined with photographs.  These could be military or sports awards; one of my great-uncles took part in a police tug-of-war team, and I still have the medal to show for it.  Other heirlooms might include a wedding favour, a piece of fabric with a special meaning, or even an item of jewellery.

 
A Gift For My Grandchild.  Although these types of books are available commercially, a homemade version would be something to cherish.  Starting with the grandparent, it can tell the story of how the family has grown to include the grandchild.  Make it even more personal with lists of favourite music, books, food etc., and include blank pages for the child to add their own artwork and memories.  You can find plenty of inspiration online for creating a unique family keepsake.
 
Keeping A Diary.  Generic notebooks can be transformed into the gift of a personal journal, diary or travel log – or you can buy ready-made ones quite cheaply.  Personalise the book by adding a photograph or the recipient’s name or initials to the cover.  To get them started with their writing, include a journal jar in the gift.  Any decent-sized jam jar can be transformed with ribbon or other embellishments.  Write “prompts” on small slips of coloured paper to put in the jar.  These can be questions such as “What did you most enjoy about today?” or ideas like “Write a description of your garden”. 
 
This idea might also be applied to someone writing their own life history.  Again, there is no shortage of suggestions on the internet; just search for “journal jar”.
 
 Give Them Their Story.  This may require a bit of pre-planning, and co-operation from your relative, but it can be very worthwhile for the giver too.  Over a number of occasions, chat to the intended recipient about their life, using photographs or other memory-joggers, and (with their permission, naturally) record their recollections.  This could be on paper, if your shorthand’s up to it, on audio or video recording.  Follow up by transcribing the conversation and then typing it up, printing out and compiling a book(let).  Add photos as above, bind in a folder, and gift-wrap.

As a prelude to Christmas, I’d like to finish with this video by Martin Lewis

which, if you’ve not seen before, I would urge you to watch.  Being frugal isn’t just about saving money, it’s about peace of mind, and what says more about Christmas than peace?

Get ready for St Andrew's Day

General Register House, Edinburgh

Enric, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Next week will be St. Andrew’s Day, and to mark this, FamilySearch are running a free Scottish Research Day on Monday 30 November. There will be four online workshops in the afternoon/evening, beginning at 3.30pm UK time. These are aimed at beginning researchers but the content looks suitable for anyone working with Scottish records. The webinars are

☙  Using the Wiki and Scotlands People for Scots Research - The FamilySearch Research Wiki is a rich and ever-growing resource to help guide your search in Scottish records. ScotlandsPeople is the Scottish government's site to search censuses, civil registration, many church records, wills and testaments, and more. Learn how to use these two sites to further your Scottish family history research. 

☙  Scotland Land and Property Records - This webinar will give an overview of Scotland Services of Heirs and Sasines records. They help us understand how land was transferred and are great for naming family relationships. It will show how to access those records and use them effectively to discover the family relationships in Scotland dating back to the 1500s. 

☙  Och Aye! Understanding Weird Scottish Words and Phrases - This class looks at the history of Gaelic and Scots and then focuses on the languages and words of genealogical value for people doing research in Scottish records. 

☙  Scotland Probate Records - The purpose of this class is to introduce the Scottish system of probate or, in other words, the handling of the Scottish deceased’s property, both real and personal, after death. The class will include the procedures, customs and terms associated with it as well as the time period, content and availability of the records. 

You can sign up for the webinars on the Family History Library Classes website.  This will register you for all four workshops but you don’t have to tune in to them all, only the ones that interest you.  There is also more information about other upcoming events they have scheduled, as well as a short how-to video for those not familiar with using Zoom.

FamilySearch often archive their webinars, so if you miss one or want to watch it again, you may find it's eventually available in their extensive range of videos in the Learning Centre.

Have a great St. Andrew's Day, and don't eat too much haggis...

The Next Big (Family History) Thing

 

Image Credit: FamilySearch

This week’s blog post is my fun news that I will be giving two presentations at RootsTech Connect in February. 

For those not familiar with RootsTech events, these are three-day conferences hosted by international genealogical organisation FamilySearch and have usually been held in the United States.  However, last year RootsTech London, the first of these events to take place outside America, attracted a serious crowd of family historians keen to develop their skills.

Now, like many other events, RootsTech has chosen to switch to being a virtual show, but unlike previous years, there will be no charge to access it.  It will be completely free, totally online, and accessible to everyone.  The only requirement is for you to register your interest in participating, which you can do very easily at the RootsTech Connect website, where you can also check out the archive of previous years’ presentations.  This will give you an idea of the flavour and variety of talks that have been given at past conferences, as well as some of the keynote speakers who have put in an appearance.

My contributions will be about Scottish family history: one presentation on how to use ScotlandsPeople, and another on the riches of the records of the kirk session (of the Church of Scotland).  There will be dozens of presentations to choose from, shorter than usual and pre-recorded, but with Q&A sessions during which the speakers will be available to answer attendees’ questions on their topics.  It promises to be an exciting experience!

Striking a Blow for Justice

 

Image by Lonpicman, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We tend to think – wrongly – of trade unions as a twentieth-century phenomenon, with earlier examples being few and far between, so perhaps you’ve not considered using union records to build your family tree.

Trade Union Ancestors is a website whose author has compiled an extensive list of unions, trades clubs, and other organisations representing many industries throughout history. The list is quite breathtaking in its scope and variety – take a look at the A-Z list on the Contents page to get an idea of just how many groups are included.

Also provided are suggested books for researching the history of the labour movement, and a link to The National Archives’ resources which include records of Friendly Societies.

The “striking stories” section of the site gives accounts of industrial action, beginning with the stonemasons building Nelson’s Column in 1841 and more recently with the Great Hairdressers’ Strike of 1918.

And what if your striking forebears fell foul of the law?  You may want to check out what kinds of records could help you trace that part of their story at Our Criminal Ancestors where you can also read some case studies of bigamists, fraudsters, and poisoners, to name but a few.  Find out about the development of different forms of punishment and justice systems in the Timelines.  Further reading ideas and a glossary will help you get clued up on crime.

Once you’ve done that, you may have need of the information on Prison History, where you can search a database of records on hundreds of 19^th-century English penal institutions, or contribute your own ancestral tale of incarceration.

Hopefully, looking at all these free resources will keep you gainfully occupied and out of trouble...

A Really Useful Family History Event

Want to hear about something Really Useful?  The UK’s Family History Federation is taking its annual show online on Saturday 14th November.  I don’t often recommend events that charge an admission fee, but this one has a lot going on, and I think it's worth the money.  

For £7 (paid in advance; on-the-day entry will probably cost more), you will get

• Access to six different channels of expert speakers on varied topics - and as there are more talks scheduled than you could watch in one day, recordings of them will be available for at least 2 days after the event
• An exclusive goody bag
• Virtual vendors’ stalls with specialist genealogy products
• Family history societies’ chat booths where you can ask questions of the organisations' helpers, and perhaps become a member of a group relating to your family’s history
• FamilySearch volunteers to point you in the direction of their resources and take your research a step further

(You can learn about the kinds of societies you might be interested in visiting or joining by checking out the Federation’s membership page.  And they’re not confined to place-specific societies; groups with an interest in religious families, Quaker or Jewish, for instance, are represented.  Also included are professional and one-place/name study organisations.)

Society members and FamilySearch volunteers will be available to chat during the show, and once you've asked your question on their dedicated text chat, you can decide if you want to continue with that, or switch to Zoom instead for a face-to-face discussion.  Whichever you choose, helpers with specialist knowledge will do their best to advise you.

This is the first time the Federation has staged an online event of this size, so patience on the part of both organisers and attendees will be necessary as everybody gets used to this fun new way of doing things.  And of course it means that a lot more people will be able to attend than would visit the traditional show - even though everybody will be taking part from the comfort of home!

We Will Remember Them

 

This coming weekend, Remembrance Sunday is observed in the United Kingdom.  At a time when we traditionally think of those who suffered through armed conflict, we can take the opportunity to learn more of their lives and their sacrifices – not all of life but of freedom, albeit temporarily, and of normality, not forgetting those who were left behind at home to cope as best they could.

This week, Ancestry is giving free access to some of their war collections up until Sunday 8 November.  Included in this are UK WW1 service, medal, and prisoner of war records, plus the 1939 Register for England & Wales, which listed everyone not on active military duty by household.  This is an invaluable tool for locating and finding out more about families and what they were doing at the outbreak of World War 2.

Donald J. MacLeod, 1915-1996

Family Tree magazine has an article from 2016 about how to identify military medals from both World Wars, as well as a link to the Ministry of Defence’s Medal Office which will allow you to apply for yours or a loved one’s awards, or replacements if required.

My own mother used this service and claimed my late father’s medals, which he had never received after being invalided out of the army while serving in North Africa.  They now hold pride of place in my home, framed alongside a photograph of him in uniform.

And a wonderful idea comes from genealogist Jane Barton, who has set up a virtual guided tour of Rutherglen Cemetery (on the outskirts of Glasgow) as an alternative to her usual personal remembrance tours.  Locations and photographs of gravestones are accompanied by detailed background information about their occupants, with clearly a lot of research having gone into this project. 

Leslie Barrie / Rutherglen Cemetery / CC BY-SA 2.0

Six (free) family history things to do when the archives are closed

 

Well, I was going to write another post about archives re-opening, but with potential changes on the horizon for public building access (The National Archives at Kew have already announced they have suspended bookings for the moment), I thought it might be more useful to share some things that won't be affected by changes in local or national regulations.  So I've collected a variety of family history activities you can do from home, whether your ancestors are from Britain, Ireland, Canada or Australia.

☙  Kew are still providing free downloads to their digital documents, which include wills and military records.  Their online guides give a good overview of their collections and the kind of information they hold that can help build a family tree.

☙  A great opportunity to pick up Irish research skills starts this week.  South Dublin Libraries are offering a six-week series of Zoom evening classes beginning on Thursday 7th November.  While priority will be given to local students, overseas applicants are being accepted.  It’s totally free and you can learn more about the content of the course, and sign up for it, at their Eventbrite registration page.   

☙  Looking for a free place online to store and share your family tree?  Check out this short video from the US Family Tree magazine about WikiTree, a free tree hosting service with a difference. 

☙  You may have heard of the historical forced migration of young people from the United Kingdom to countries around the world.  Many genealogists trace relatives who experienced this, and Canadian organisation British Home Children has been helping families find each other for many years. Their website includes indexes of home children who served in the military, and transcriptions of records from the UK National Archives.

☙  Also drawing on British archives is the Australian Convict Queenslanders database. Find ancestors who left the UK for entirely different reasons, and read profiles of some who shook off the shackles and made good in their new country.

☙  And finally, if you’ve come up against a no-birth-certificate brick wall, professional genealogist Mish Holman takes you step by step through her excellent strategy for breaking it down. 

Happy hunting!