Our parents' marriage certificate gave us our paternal grandfather as Samuel Frederick WRIGHT and our maternal one as George HORNCASTLE.
FreeBMD gave a probable marriage of Samuel Frederick Wright in 4Q 1889 to either Emma Louisa Coker or Mary Ann Turvey but which? I searched for them in the 1901 census without success, it was only later that I found that granddad called himself Frederick on census returns. Then I remembered that Dad had said that his mother was buried in Chingford Mount Cemetery. I found an email address for the cemetery on Google and a very helpful lady found my grandfather's burial and in the same grave my grandmother, Mary Ann!
FreeBMD gave a possible marriage of George Horncastle in 2Q 1904 to either Sarah Hunt or Florence Lardant, again which one. This marriage was after 1901 so I did not think the census would be much use until I found George Horncastle living with his parents and Florence Lardant as the lodger!
So now we had our grandparents names, Samuel Frederick WRIGHT and Mary Ann TURVEY and George HORNCASTLE and Florence LARDANT.
Friday, 24 October 2008
Thursday, 23 October 2008
The beginning
I started researching my family in January 2006, a first cousin, Jean Alice HORNCASTLE (1935-2005) had died in September and my sister thought that she might be the last of the Horncastles. Both of us had been considering our family history so we got together and I wrote down everything about the family we could remember. I remember our sense of shock when we realised that we did not know the names of our grandparents!
We pooled our documents and photographs which we had shared after our parents' deaths and I scanned them all and started investigating our family history.
Our timing was fortunate, Ancestry had just released the UK 1901 census and allowed its partial use for free for a month, FreeBMD was making good progress and we had our parents' maariage certificate which gave us the names of our grandfathers. I was computer literate, we already had broadband access and I had time.
Almost all my research has been done online but I have also met up with several of my distant relatives both via email and in the flesh. Much of my tree has been developed from contacts via GenesReunited which is well worth the £10/year membership. The exchange of information is vital to family history research but must be done with caution. Fortunately, I have only come across a few 'grabbers'.
My sister and I have also had fun visiting places associated with our family in England and on the Continent.
We pooled our documents and photographs which we had shared after our parents' deaths and I scanned them all and started investigating our family history.
Our timing was fortunate, Ancestry had just released the UK 1901 census and allowed its partial use for free for a month, FreeBMD was making good progress and we had our parents' maariage certificate which gave us the names of our grandfathers. I was computer literate, we already had broadband access and I had time.
Almost all my research has been done online but I have also met up with several of my distant relatives both via email and in the flesh. Much of my tree has been developed from contacts via GenesReunited which is well worth the £10/year membership. The exchange of information is vital to family history research but must be done with caution. Fortunately, I have only come across a few 'grabbers'.
My sister and I have also had fun visiting places associated with our family in England and on the Continent.
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