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Showing posts with label search. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search. Show all posts

28 Feb 2016

European Genealogy across 13 countries - a story starting in the Lakes

  I idly wondered whether Arthur Taylor, living in London age 18, might come back to marry in his native Keswick.  He did!
And on clicking behind the link I spy his wife looked like Isabel Kroll.  This didn't sound like a lasting marriage.  What was he up to?  But I couldn't find anything more, so gave up on him.


But then I found a reference to a lady living in Italy, who just had to be Arthur's daughter, and the game was on.  Arthur turns out to be the International YMCA's 'man in Italy' while Mussolini is at the helm.
It takes me a good year to recover from these Italian revelations before I finally get the will of Arthur Taylor's daughter, Signora Barone.  I certainly expected that the dalliance with Isabel Kroll would long have past, but concluding Alice's long and passionate will comes the note from the clerk...

And then, buried in the text, Isabella's mother is listed with a very English-looking name, Rosalie Stuart-Cowen!  I already knew about Scots in Poland, but Scots and Germans (?) seemed to hold an interesting tale to explore.  Considering I lacked both Isabella's birth, death and previous marriage, it was remarkable what I eventually crowbarred out of the internet.

Here is Isabella's first marriage, which I did not find by idle Googling, but only by the specific search indicated.
Here is Isabella's tree now.

The following countries are covered on the map below
England - where Isabel married in 1907
Denmark - where Isabel's first husband was born (place given as father's birthplace in 1920 census for her elder children)
Sweden - where her daughter Anna's son Hans was a citizen in 1954, likely as an adopted child, and believed to be his final home
Poland - where Isabel's second husband worked in the 1920s after WW1
Netherlands - where Isabel's sister Georgina was living until about 1900 (at The Hague)
France - where Isabel's two elder children (and grandson Hans) were born (Paris, Vaux-sur-Mer)
Italy - where Isabel's second husband worked in the 1930s and where her younger daughter (Alice) settled (in Sicily)
Switzerland - where Isabel's mother died in 1890 (unsubstantiated) and where her sister Rosalie died in 1927 and where her sister Georgina married (in Lausanne)
Germany - where Isabel's sister Rosalie married in 1883 (at Stuttgart), and where she herself was born (source 1920 census), and where her father was born (ibid)
Greece - where her first husband went to live, presumably after separating from Isabel
Canada - where Isabel's youngest child was born in 1908
USA - where Isabel was living in the 1920 census (Washington DC), while her second husband performed his YMCA duties, and where her two elder children settled, and where her mother was actually born
Brazil - where her grandson Hans (John) came to reside or work in the 1950s
What a surprise to tumble out of a marriage in the Lakes.  Lastly a picture of gorgeous Giarrattana in Sicily:
 This was the second Sicilian connection to emerge.  As well as Il Dottore Barone from Noto, I have Signor Leone from Naro a century before.  Agreeably close to Montalbano's fictional Vigata, which I watched sorrowfully in the denouement to this Sicilian episode.  But as Sicily recedes, step forward Malta - even further south, as new home for a descendant of Annabella Airey.

6 Apr 2014

Making work for the postman

Of the 14 letters I finally sealed up today, 10 were to new cousins.

They were scattered around the edges of England with a disproportionate number (33%) in what was once Lancashire.

Few of the addresses were in the phone book - but luckily 192.com was on-hand to help me locate them.  After learning the postcode area (for example DH7), I've taken to using a house price website called Proviser (example pages are from Bradford), to capture the full list of streets within that postcode area.

I also consult Google maps to see if there are other clues - relatives living nearby, or a geographical feature that would make one part or other of the area more likely.  Within Proviser I note down the names of village settlements, for example within Blackburn there is Mellor.  I double-check that the address I need doesn't include a village name.

Now I can whip through the list of streets in Proviser - including or excluding the villages as found by my earlier checking - and quickly narrow the field to the correct street.  Possibly the longest search was for a relative in Walks Avenue (Manchester).  It's a big old postcode area, couldn't easily be split up and W is right at the end of the alphabet.

Sometimes it makes sense to do a visual.  When looking for an address by the Lakes, there just seemed to be a tonne of possible addresses - so I picked out some likely streets from looking at the map, and was proven correct.

If you are unlikely and your relative lives on a densely populated Old London Road (which tend to be rather long) there could be a lot of houses to the one postcode.  Or worse, finding a relative lived in a tower block in Plymouth - there were at least 10 floors and in the order of 90 different properties all occupying the same thousand square foot.

It's useful if somebody on the property is in the phone book (not necessarily the person you expect) and if somebody's ever held a directorship.  One trick I used in Liverpool at a down-at-heel neighbourhood, once very grand, was looking in the 1984 phone book to see if the address was given there.  It was.

On the whole, it needn't take that long to search a postcode.  The bulkiest areas can be divided into villages - and postcodes for central urban districts might only cover a few dozen streets.  The worst area I searched was BB2 - 10 pages of addresses mostly all in Blackburn itself, so few could be eliminated (or focussed on) by determining if the address was/ was not in a surrounding village.

It can be embarrassing when you've spent ages pinning down your postcode and got the address only to find that the person was in the phone book all along.  I was looking for a Richards family member in Romford and missing a possible entry in the phone book was understandable as it was just such a common name.

Another trick is to know the combination of names of a couple.  I mentioned here how knowing that John B Jones had a wife Ann E enabled me to focus-in on the only couple in the country who shared this name-combo.  (Name slightly changed to keep them anonymous.)  For this highly mobile couple who'd lost contact with relatives 30 years ago, and had left their Midlands address 20 years ago, I needed a miracle to pin them down.

The site to use for comparing addresses with postcodes and vice versa is the Royal Mail's Postcode Finder.  It used to offer only a measly 10 searches a day - which got you nowhere, particularly if you're still struggling to understand its search boxes.  It's considerably more relaxed now, particularly since it's been sold out of our hands to the lowest bidder!

Once you've found your address, you still need to write the letter, prepare and include copies of documents, keep a photographic record of what you've sent and muster up sufficient envelopes, pens, stamps, paper, printer ink, and power cables to get the show on the road.  In fact I recommend writing the address on the envelope as the very first thing you do - then at least the myriad documents can be filed in the correct place as you prepare for dispatch.  I would certainly recommend sending a stamped-addressed envelope, unless you strongly suspect you'll be getting an email response.

As for writing the letter itself, some tips on this business can be found a few pages up.

It's now slightly more work than it used to be when I got all my addresses from wills, and later in the brief periods when electoral roll full results were easy to come-by.  But I'd rather have all the information relatively easily than just a portion of the information ridiculously easily, which is how I'd describe family history 20 years ago...  (Plus you never used to know until too late, just who was hiding behind those terse phone book entries.)

For today - some folk I've been hunting nearly 20 years, others turned up yesterday when I took a detour down a branch I'd not known existed.  We will have to see what comes back.

5 Apr 2014

Searching for burials - summary of the UK websites' offerings

Gravestone records are becoming a bit of a minefield out there.

Deceasedonline is the only UK-centred site, and probably the most determined to sign up local authorities and to make money.  They look strong for Wiltshire, Wakefield, Bolton, Cheshire West, London Boroughs.  I should mention it gives only burial registers, not gravestone transcriptions.

Billiongraves are good in some very specific parts of the UK: Sandbach, Nuneaton, Kensal Green, Beaconsfield, Leigh, Hindley, Lowton (these in Greater Manchester area), Stockport, Bangor, Conwy Valley, Llandudno

Findagrave.com is ubiquitous for the US, and its results now pop up in Ancestry searches.  However, I've never found any UK entries - it claims to have 27000 records, though this might be cemeteries.  I gave up trying.  Possibly the dropdown county box for England works in other browsers (not Chrome).

Gravestonephotos has Devon, Durham, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Surrey and North Yorkshire.  It will shortly release Wymondham Abbey gravestones, which I'm excited about.

Interment.net is very patchy and doesn't appear to have had any new content for awhile: it is strong in Durham and Bedworth (Warwickshire) with some 'select' graves listed for Burnley, Colne and some parts of Greater Manchester.  It also has reasonable Cleveland coverage.

Findmypast may have some monumental inscriptions (the same thing as gravestone transcriptions) but the results are mingled up with the burial registers, so it's hard to find what you're looking for

Other useful sites:
Australia Cemetery Index - made a good breakthrough on here, seems strong for NSW
Ontario cemetery project - have never found anyone on this
South Africa - truly useful