I commend people, who are researching their family trees, to go and join the Family History Societies for the areas where their ancestors came from. Not the least for the help you can get from these knowledgeable folk.
One of my own areas of interest is Devon and so it was, with much pleasure, that I bumped into the party manning the Devon Family History Society’s stall at the recent Who do You Think You Are? LIVE show.
When I say, bumped into them, it was more like they bumped into me; or at least their visitors did and I do mean this quite literally!
You see, I was volunteering for a few hours each day on the Society of Genealogists book stand at the show. Our area backed on to the Devon FHS stall and as a busy group of people, armed with their computers loaded with data to search for show goers, they had many visitors wanting to sit down with them. This meant that the chairs sometimes strayed into Society of Genealogist’s territory and hence the bumps to the back of mine, and others on the SoG bookstall’s legs and rears!
Now, to show that I certainly took it with good grace, I decided to interview the Chairman of Devon Family History Society, Maureen Selley about a certain interesting aspect to our FHS (yes, I declare an interest, I am a member!) and that is the Acorn Club.
Apart from the fantastic data that the society has, some of which it is now licensed to findmypast.co.uk a rare facility is its pages for young family historians.
Recently I have seen that Ancestry.co.uk has launched on-line the Land Tax Valuations from 1910 London. Now we all know that property goes up and down, with most home owners expecting that the long term trend is up. Well this data collection reveals that the historic values of some of the capital’s most famous streets and landmarks from just over a century ago and no surprises that they were lower then than they are today.
Originally the records were compiled in 1910, from across the UK as part of David Lloyd George’s 1910 Finance Act and later refereed to as the ‘Domesday Survey’. The reason behind the government gathering this information was as a means to redistribute wealth through the assessment of land value.
What do the records contain for family historians? There is a listing of the owners and occupiers of the properties and it includes the address, value and annual rental yield for the properties in London in the early 20th century.
The average 1910 property could be purchased for a price tag of just £14,000, it would seem – almost 3,000 per cent less than today.
Of particular interest are the values of famous landmarks included in the collection. The Bank of England; worth a mere £110,000 in 1910, the Old Bailey; worth just £6,600, and Mansion House; which contrastingly was valued at an impressive £992,000. St Paul’s Cathedral also features, but without a valuation as it is listed as ‘exempt’ from tax.
Perhaps more surprising is that the media-hub Fleet Street, was then home to numerous newspapers from outside of London including the Liverpool Courier, Yorkshire Evening News and the Newcastle Chronicle! A property on Fleet Street cost an average of £25,000 in 1910, compared to £1.2 million today.
The records provide us with a valuable snapshot of the ownership of land at the beginning of the 20th century. It may help those with ancestors who appear in the collection to find out more about their forebears respective financial situations and the lives they led a hundred years ago.
Ancestry.co.uk International Content Director Dan Jones, whom I interviewed recently at Who Do You Think You Are? Live about their website, comments: “These records are especially useful as a census substitute for people tracing their London ancestors who may not have been captured in the England and Wales 1911 Census.
“The collection offers a fascinating insight into our capital at the beginning of the 20th century – a time when Britain was on the verge of major social, political and economic change.â€
The collection complements the extensive census records, ranging from 1841 to 1901, already online at Ancestry.co.uk.
Now here is a very special interview for you from my trip to the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE show at the end of February.
I was on my way to The Society of Genealogists stand, where I was volunteering on the second hand book stall as a way of giving something back to the SoG, when I spotted the well respected genealogist and author Anthony Adolph. He was taking questions from show-goers on the stand of the “Your Family Tree Magazine”, a publication for which he writes articles on surname research.
As a shareholder in an independent bookshop I am also aware of Anthony Adolph as an author of several books, including Full of Soup and Gold: The life of Henry Jermyn and many titles on family history.
He was gracious enough to give me a wonderful interview that began by reassuring me and my blog readers/ YouTube Channel viewers, that “we have all reached points in our family trees where we are stuck.” He revealed that he has been tracing his own family tree for getting on for thirty years now. “First of all as a complete and utter amateur, as a schoolboy, ” Mr Adolph said, “and then later on I became a professional.”
Giving some hope, to all those of us who find we are facing a brick wall, he charmingly admits that, just like everyone else, at the beginning of each of his family lines he is completely stuck.
The interview then goes on to touch on the four techniques for getting further back:
Oral History
Paper based
Surnames
DNA.
Anthony Adolph then reveals that he has become quite passionate about the latter and how DNA in genealogy enabled him to discover that the “cap” to his family tree was unusual. It seems that the Haplogroup, from which he descends from the genetic Adam and Eve, is G and so from Armenia, Georgia and Turkey. This is in contrast to the fact that most men in Europe are from group R.
While at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live show last week I was so glad to get to talk to Nigel Bayley of one of the UK’s most important look up websites TheGenealogist.co.uk.
Nigel kindly explains about the new search facility that they have recently introduced and also about some of the new data bases that have come on line at the subscription site.
Nigel Bayley Managing Director of The Genealogist.co.uk
Jersey Family History Forum at the WDYTYA? Live show 2011
I had to be up, showered and breakfasted for 6 am, in order to make my way to Jersey airport and the 7 am “red-eye†to London Gatwick. The fact that I, not in any way a morning person, was prepared to do this stems from the timetable of workshops that I had seen for the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE show at Olympia.
First on, in the Society of Genealogist’s Regional theatre was “Researching Your Family History in Jersey†given by Sue Payn and James McLaren and I really wanted to be there for the workshop. My bus to the airport, the flight to London and the coach transfer to central London all ran reasonably to schedule and so I was in the building by 10.15. and taking a seat in time for the presentation.
James’ began by clearing up the perennial misunderstanding by people from outside of the island, regarding Jersey’s constitutional position. As a Jersey born and educated person, myself, I have spent most of my life making similar statements to his and so a smile warmed my face as the familiar words rang out.
I am often heard saying that we are not part of England and Wales, nor are we part of Great Britain, nor the United Kingdom and we are not in the EU, but are British Islands.
As James said: “We are a Crown Dependency: we owe allegiance to the British crown, but in most other respects we are self-governing. We have our own legal system, large parts of which are quite different from English law. In this respect we are similar to Guernsey, but please understand that we are not the same! It’s like the difference between a Mercedes-Benz and an Austin Allegro – the principle is the same, a vehicle that gets you from A to B, but the detailed implementation is rather different.â€
This brought another smile to my lips as the old rivalry, with our sister Bailiwick of Guernsey, was introduced to the good folk in the workshop. Both Bailiwicks trace a Norman heritage and when in 1204 King John lost his French possessions, the Channel Islands kept allegiance to the British Crown.
One of the first things you are going to find, if you are researching your ancestors from Jersey is that the records are invariably going to be in French, as this was the official language of this island until very recently when English has become dominant. James pointed out that Jersey was very largely French or Jerriais-speaking until the middle of the 19th century, and so a lot of legal records long after that were kept in French. The deeds to my house, for example.
I have often heard people in the island refer to these documents being written in “proper French†to distinguish the language used from Jerriais, the name given to the Jersey French patois spoken in the island, which even comes with variations in pronunciation across the 45 square miles of the island!
Jersey people have always travelled far from their island; some to settle away in places such as Canada, Australia and of course to the United Kingdom. Some stay and some return. As James said the reason Jersey folk travelled was “– partly because of our rules on inheritance, partly because there was money to be made in trade, partly to serve Queen and country in the armed forces, and more recently because the only way to get higher education was to go to the big island to the north of us. Consequently there are numerous people in the UK who have Jersey ancestry somewhere in their past.â€
I shall be returning to the subject of Jersey Ancestors and have more from James McLaren from the Channel Islands Family History Society in another post on this site shortly.
Family historians will find out by watching my interview with Dan, where this important family tree research site will be heading in the next few months and it seems that Ancestry’s focus will be on continuing the development of parish records on ancestry.co.uk that they had started with London and the registers from LMA and also bringing us more occupational records.
The interview is just one of a number recorded at the UK’s largest family history show: Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE at London’s Olympia. The event is a fantastic mix of workshops, exhibitors and more for those of us passionate about family tree research.
To watch the other videos navigate to the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE 2011 button on the bar above, or simply watch at my YouTube channel: www.YouTube.com/NoseyGenealogist
WDYTYA? Live is, as many of you know, the UK’s largest family history show. It’s a great place to find over 200 family history exhibitors all under the one roof. The stands ranged from The Society of Genealogists, Ancestry, TheGenealogist.co.uk, findmypast to small business and the various Family History Societies.
Also of fantastic value were the many workshops going on throughout the three days.
More videos will be added to the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE pages on this blog. See the pages tabs above.
Here is the first of my From the showvideo reports.. https://www.noseygenealogist.com/blog/who-do-you-think-you-are-live-2011
In which I get to talk to Mr Tom Dennis, the editor of the popular family history publication: Your Family Tree Magazine. It was at the 2011 “Who Do You Think You Are? Live” show in London that I caught up with Tom on his magazine’s stand and got to hear the plans for some of the family history articles and features that we can look forward to in his magazine over the next few months. We also get an insight into what resources we should look out for on the cover CD and hear how the on-line forum for family historians is developing.
Your Family Tree Magazine Editor talks to The Nosey Genealogist
You have probably guessed that I spent much of Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live show at London’s Olympia. I got to take in some informative workshops, talk to many like minded family historians and even interview a few people on the stands for a forthcoming video section of this blog.
But who and what I gleaned will have to wait as Murphy’s Law struck and the laptop that I have been lugging around has played up and is refusing to help me update you.
Just as soon as I can, normal service will be resumed!
I’ve just seen some figures and they are impressive. Last year, the fourth ever annual family history event at Olympia managed to attract in more than 14,000 family historians over its three day run!
Known as Who Do You Think you Are? LIVE this show has established itself as the biggest family history in the calendar for those people passionate about researching their family tree.
Sixty percent of the visitors were attending for the first time and so the organisers have managed to go on attracting people to come and see what the family history community and business have on offer. This can only be good for our hobby as it shows just how many people are continuing to turn to family history as a pastime.
Nearly twenty eight percent, of those taking the organiser’s survey said that they had started to research their tree in the last two years, with 56.5% having begun within the last 5 years and 17.4% being old hands and been doing their research for more than fifteen years.
I’m going this year and will be reporting back on the three days here on my blog and on my YouTube channel as well, so keep coming back to the Nosey Genealogist!
And what was the highest rated attraction of going to the show? The survey suggests that it was the various exhibition stands.
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