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January 2008
Welcome to the January edition of Family Tree Forum’s magazine and a very Happy New Year to everyone from all of us who help produce the magazine. A very special Happy New Year, and our thanks, to the members who have contributed articles for the magazine. We had thought it would be an occasional or quarterly publication but, thanks to our members, we have enough material to produce a monthly magazine. This month we have been looking in particular at emigration and you can read stories about how ancestors of FTF members left their homes for the New World. There is also an article about the movement of Germanic speaking people across the world. We also begin a new series this month about the occupations of our ancestors, coordinated by Georgette. We begin with agricultural labourers or ag labs, as we have come to know and love them. It’s a very rare tree that doesn’t have a few ag labs. If you have any interesting stories about your ancestors please contact the team, although we often have themes there is always room for articles about anything to do with Family History. I was very pleased when Caroline asked me if I would write this month’s introduction because it gives me the opportunity to thank both Caroline and Velma for all the hours they work putting together the magazine. Those of us who help out on the fringes know that our excellent magazine is very much the fruit of their labours. Guinevere
| The Agricultural Labourer ( the 'Ag Lab' ) |
 | Agricultural labourers
Almost everyone has an ag lab or two in their tree, so we thought that they would be the logical place to start for our new OCCUPATIONS section of the magazine. What exactly did they do? Did they stay in one place or did they move around to find work? How were they paid and where did they live? Lots of questions to be answered which we hope will bring your 'humble' ag labs to life.
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Herrings and vegetables
My father was born in Lowestoft in 1910 and tracing his ancestors has proved a lot easier than pursuing my mother's lot around Somerset and various parts of Wales. With the help of films ordered at the LDS, I have traced many of my father's direct lines back to the beginning of parish records. Most of his family still live in and around Lowestoft and I have lots of relations there. Dad's explanation as to why the family stayed put was that there was no need to move because there was a ...
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| Looking for pastures new ... |
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That quest to find my ancestors
Thought I’d write a poem
About my family tree –
That quest to find my ancestors,
To trace their link to me. They came from England mostly,
To this alien, distant shore.
They were seeking new beginnings
For they wanted something more. They left behind the English fields,
Small villages, towns an
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Germanic migration
Until 1871 the German speaking people were independent principalities belonging to separate kings or electors. Allegiances and borders changed according to religion, land ownership and family squabbles. From the 1700s entire villages and towns were burned and many people were tortured. The towns and
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Australian pioneer
My mum was born a Haylock and there were family tales that some of the Haylock family went to Australia during the gold rush of the mid 1850s. A while after I started my dad's side of my family tree I hit a brick wall and moved onto my mum's side. Whilst searching on the internet I found inf ...
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Harbour bridge builder
As a child my granddad told us tales of his Uncle Arthur who he believed had emigrated to Australia and had helped to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. While, as a family, we believed that he had emigrated, we had never seen any evidence to suggest that he might have worked on the bridge and were ver
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The oldest immigrant?
Was Guy COLE the oldest immigrant to the colonies before 1850?
Would you have left Harrow, Middlesex in September 1848, at the age of 75, on a four-month 20,00km voyage to a settlement just beginning to flourish called Melbourne ?
Guy was the second son of John and Sarah (NUTT) COLE and was baptised
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The Founding Fathers
Ann Sotcher was my 7x great grandmother. She was born at Petworth, Sussex in 1665. I would not have expected to find that any of my relatives would have been likely to emigrate at that time, but look what happened to her younger brother John. The following is an excerpt of a document that was kindly ...
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Francis the Mormon
I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only family historian who has had to devise nicknames for members of the family tree because the same names occur again and again. So I'd like to introduce you to Francis the Mormon, brother of my 2 x great grandfather, William the drunk. Francis has cause ...
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Alfred Chapman escapes
Working my way back through my husband’s family I reached his maternal great grandfather, John Chapman. He had lived in Black Torrington in North Devon, amongst a cluster of other Chapmans and had died before the 1841 census. There was no distinguishing middle name – nothing to single hi ... Read More >> |
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Isn't the Internet wonderful!
My dad's cousin is also my godfather and he was 75 this year. I'll call him Henry. Henry loves to talk and is a mine of information. However, he has the sometimes disconcerting habit of chatting away and jumping about in the conversation between various members of the extended family and jus ... Read More >> |
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The 1820 Settlers
This story started for me when a contact from Genesreunited sent me details of a death: Elizabeth Warner died in 1840 at the Double Drift military post by the Great Fish River in Cape Colony, South Africa and was buried at Fort Brown in the Transkei. The service was conducted by Captain J. C. Cahill ...
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Hezekiah Sephton
Almost the first family I tried to research after getting hooked by genealogy was my grandmother’s mother’s family – the Sephtons. My father had many memories of their narrow boat building yard at Hawkesbury Junction, and my brother, who actually lives on a narrow boat, d
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