Bandages and slippers

Very brief update - there's a couple of new WWI pages on the website! Read about the Rimington brothers' war service, and details of Wing VADs.

FYNES, GASKINs and some sights to see

Boy, it's been a long time since I told you what I was up to. I have been adding little bits to the website here and there, like some gravestones for the FYNES and GASKIN families. The biggest addition lately has been a timeline showing images of All Saints Church through the ages - well, through the comparatively recent postcard age of 1902 onwards! Check it out and let me know what you think. I'll have some further postcards to add to it in a few week's time.

I do have a tendency to get stuck thinking about projects rather than just getting stuck in to them, so I also reorganised my one-place study to-do lists - including consolidating them into a single list. This might sound a little like the opposite of getting stuck in, but I'm hoping the list will take the decision-making out of the equation. All I have to do is just slowly work my way through the extremely long list, completing each project and bringing all that lovely new information to you on the website. Wish me luck!

PEASE please!

In the course of looking at the PEASE men that served in WW1 it all gets a bit confusing. Perhaps you have a snippet of info that might help?

There is a William George T Pease, son of George, born on 25 August 1885 (assuming I have the correct WW1 record matched to the correct man). Can anyone confirm this birthdate, and does anyone know what the T stands for?

There is also a William son of James, also born in 1885. Does anyone have an exact birthdate for him?

The Wesleyan Methodist chapel

I came across a new resource, the 1873 Returns of accommodation provided in Wesleyan Methodist Chapels, available at My Wesleyan Methodist Ancestors, that might be of interest to other UK one-place studiers. It was a nationwide survey and will tell you whether there was a chapel in your place and the number of seatings. Wing held 411, and I've added that snippet to my Methodists page.

The voyage of the Thetis 1848

It's finally happened - I have finally published a page about the voyage of the Thetis from London to Sydney in 1848, its precious cargo of 24 Wing emigrants and what became of them in Australia. Who gave birth on board? Who returned to Wing? Who was shot to death? Find out here.

As a side note, our Wing folk weren't the only precious things on board. The 17 Jun 1848 issue of the New Zealander includes the calamitous news that the Thetis was carrying English newspapers up to 8 February on board, but with "a most unpardonable disregard to the interests of the colonies to which they were consigned made away with the papers thus confided, handing them over to the passengers of homeward bound ships which they spoke somewhere about the equator. This is abominable, as Parliament was to reassemble on the 3rd, and but for this nefarious deprivation we might probably have learnt the issue of the second reading of the bill for our new constitution." Strong words indeed!