Tabbed browsing hint

I didn't find Samuel Smith of Wing in the Commonwealth Graves Commission website, but I was reminded of a handy web browser feature and also found a super-handy add on for Firefox.

Like me, you probably spend time searching in genealogical databases. Once you've loaded in your search criteria the list of results pop up, but these generally only give you a summary of the results. Quite often you have to drill down into every result to get the full information in order to see if it is the person you are looking for - for example on the CWCG website you will see their service details on the results screen, but not the contents of the Additional Info field which might give you next of kin or residence.

Most browsers nowadays (Firefox, Safari, even Internet Explorer v7) have tabbed browsing. If you hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the link, your browser will open the link in a new tab behind the one you are in - this is a quick way to get lots of links opening in the background as you can Ctrl-click your way down the list of results. Once they're open, you can go to the first tab, check for the info you're trying to find, then use Ctrl-W to close that tab if it's not the one you were looking for.

Even easier for Firefox users is the Snap Link add-on - this uses the right mouse button to draw a rectangle over all the links in one go, which then all open in new tabs. This has just saved me heaps of time!

TAYLOR in World War 1

Abandoned the hundreds of SMITH entries, but it turns out George TAYLOR is a needle in a haystack as well!

[updated: Thankfully the lovely folks at Military-Genealogy.com had a George Taylor with a birthplace of Wing, so I didn't have to go through all the G Taylors over at CWGC.]

SMITH in World War 1

I'm working on updates to the military pages, trying to expand the WW1 entries with further details on each man. Names like Oscar RIMINGTON are easy to identify in the Commonwealth Graves Commission website, others like Samuel SMITH are somewhat more challenging! While I'm ploughing through the several hundred alternatives in case Wing is mentioned in the next of kin (which is the only way I can definitively identify that's our guy), does anyone happen to be connected to the Smiths of Wing?

Swamped in spam

Anyone else getting noticeably more spam over the last couple of weeks? I usually check my email twice a day including checking and clearing out the spam folder each time, but now I'm starting to find each time it's more than a screens-worth, so I must be getting at least 100 spam emails a day landing in Outlook. That's too many to flick through looking for misdirected legitimate emails, so hopefully none of your emails are getting lost in the deluge.

New look for the blog

I couldn't take the brown of the old layout anymore! I don't know how long this one will stick though....

Calling all newbies

One of the Canadian magazine publishers is about to launch a new magazine aimed at newbies to genealogy - its a good mix of generic articles and pointers to specific resources including UK ones. I know this because they've made a sample issue available to download in PDF form. If you're a newbie, you could do worse than spend some time over the upcoming Easter weekend reading some of the articles!

Discovering Family History

Hope you find something of use in it :)

Unsavoury allegations

Have been browsing some historical newspaper reports this morning, and am saddened to report that there appears to have been another immoral clergyman in Wing besides the forger Dr William DODD who was hanged in 1777. Curate William EYRE, who was in Wing some forty years after Dodd, apparently had a liking for young girls who he would adopt out of the workhouse and then turf out some years later once they'd become pregnant.

The giant map

I spent the evening making a 3 foot by 3 foot map of Wing - how was your evening?

All roads lead to Bucks - part two

And yet again, another of my lines leads me to Bucks......

There I was, innocently researching my TRAFFORD line in the Oxfordshire Family History Society transcriptions of the parish registers for Finmere. Easy as it turns out, the most recent entry is my great-grandmother Amelia Trafford's baptism in 1872, then jump back through her father George and his father John (who was the parish clerk and sexton) to arrive at his father John who was the patriarch of the whole small clan in Finmere thanks to his three marriages, the last of which gave me my Parish Clerk John.

Checking the census records, I discover that Patriarch John's third wife Susan(nah) EVERETT was, naturally, from Bucks - Adstock this time which is a new one for me. Patriarch John inconveniently died before the 1851 census but was still around in 1841, and was NOT born in Oxfordshire - anyone want to bet he was also from Bucks?

And did I mention their son Parish Clerk John married a girl who was living in Haddenham Bucks at the time?

March update

Welcome to March - it's raining here (much needed) and I think I'll head off to the library to do some Oxfordshire research today (they have a full set of the Oxfordshire Family History Society parish register transcriptions fiche, very handy).

It's a small update for the website this month - just a new entry in the Gazetteers.

It would have been a large update as I've been overhauling the military section and it was ready to go......but then a few more Very Exciting Databases were released so I thought I would check those out for any Wing-related entries first. So watch out for that military update in April.