Instagram and Family History

Apple products have never really wowed me.  It's hard to grab text from a webpage now, with an iPad, so I tend to take screenshots.  And I thought maybe to put these screenshots on an Instagram account.  But it's easier, once a month to place them on Google Drive, and then use my PC to put them on a regular hard-drive the old fashioned way.  And maybe go back in and take PDFs of webpages in order to truly capture the text.  (However, text files are among the most unwieldy of the lot, as you cannot control the formatting.)

So, let's hear it for Instagram anyway!  A blurred cheer.  I was fairly sure this lady was my cousin.  I followed her progress as she said she was going to England (an example of the classic 'future in the past' grammatical tense).  I saw her itinerary screenshotted as a Google Map, and there on the route was the rural south of England.  Bingo!

There is no way this west coast jetsetter would have gone to this sparsely-peopled area were it not for a certain great-aunt.  Flicking through the Instagram pages, there she was.  The 4th cousin in California visits the last of the Lowrys in England.  Well, almost the last, as my grandmother is still alive too.  She seemed pretty old when I last wrote in 1992.  This lady put me onto all the rest of the cousins.

If anyone else has used Instagram for family history, let me know...  This is a really stunning photograph, by the way.

Britons in Africa

Africa United was a great movie.  I seem to remember getting pressurised to watch it while somewhere really unexpected like the University of London students' union or a socialist demonstration, or possibly strolling through Mayfair.  We need to be united in our search for records in Africa.

Britons in Africa is now online.  It is a showcase database, enabling people to be surprised at finding one of their folks on the great unexplored continent.  The Stirling Castle, Dublin Castle, Walmer Castle and a dozen other Union-Castle ships could get you to a new life in as little as 23 days.

However, until recently, those 23 days could see your descendants in England closing the door completely on your life, as no genealogical information was obtainable from South Africa, which became a Republic (after Afrikaaner-dominated voting) in 1961.

Now, on FamilySearch, Natal marriage records are online (to 1955) and Zimbabwe deaths, in a somewhat crude index up to the last days of Ian Smith.  It looks like the card indexes were hurled out on the table and rapidly photographed before possible destruction by the incoming government.  Who knows.  It's great to have them.

These new databases that allow us to follow our relatives around the world, should be applauded.