To explore strange new worlds

I'm going to be seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where I haven't gone before - to Ireland! Not literally, just genealogically. I have signed up for the National Institute of Genealogical Studies "Research: Irish Ancestors" four-week course.

I wanted to do a course in something I knew as little as possible about, and Ireland certainly fits the bill. The couple of formal genealogical courses I have done to date covered topics I already knew quite a lot about (after the best part of a decade researching you do pick up a thing or two), so I wanted to stretch myself this time round. And I had a discount to do another course through the National Institute, so..........

I recently visited my aunt who has an Irish husband, which gives me a line to practice my skills on - should be interesting to see how things differ from my traditional stomping ground of England.

Those Places Thursday - Wing Buckinghamshire

It's Thursday!

It occurs to me (somewhat belatedly) that you may have been eagerly anticipating my own contribution to Those Places Thursday. Sadly I haven't actually written one for the occasion. As always, you are welcome to peruse the main website at http://www.wing-ops.org.uk/ (this blog is a sideline, so if you have ancestors from Wing and haven't visited the main site, prepare to get excited!) - the pages in the Industries section and the Miscellany are probably the most informative and amusing if you don't actually have a connection to Wing.

You should also check out the page of photos of All Saints Church, because I have some news to report about it. Wing is a great example of how you can take a 10th century Saxon church and modernise it from time to time, and this time the roof is the centre of attention. Solar panels were recently installed as part of the Church of England's Shrinking The Footprint iniative. There's an article and nice photo of the panels here, and if you live anywhere nearby you should definitely head along to the seminar at the Church on Saturday 5 March to learn more about renewable energy options for churches.

I'm so proud - well done, Wing!

February update

This month we have:

* an update to the DORMER family tree - Ursula, at the head of the tree, has been correctly named as Alice Collingridge. Thanks to Charani, who is undertaking a one-name-study of Collingridge, for the heads-up on the surname.

* two more newspaper articles about the murder of baby Jane BOWDEN in 1856. These expand, and in some cases differ slightly from, the information reported in the trial. I do have some further articles on this case to get typed up, and also have some further articles on the Adams murder.

* Frederick CORKETT has been added to the list of WW1 military men from Wing. In Fred's case I hadn't previously located him in the WO363 records as his birthplace hadn't been indexed and his residence was London at the time he signed up. This is probably quite common as this generation did head London-ward, so there will be more men out there that I haven't identified yet - if your man served but is not listed, do let me know.

A challenge for you

Got a blog? Got an ancestor? Tell us about their ancestral place.

One of the blogging themes at Geneabloggers.com is Those Places Thursday. Every genealogist should have a basic profile of each of their ancestral places, so this week why don't you pick one of those places, do a bit of research, and report back this Thursday on what you find?

There's a nice example here where Jen's looked at Herencia in Spain, learned a bit about its geography and history, thought about how that may have influenced her ancestor Nicanor's life, and identified what aspects of Herencia she'd need to know more about to round out Nicanor's ancestral story.

And lo, the archetypal ancestor smiles beatifically upon me

Or maybe not.

Nevertheless, I have been blessed by the current round of Ancestor Approved awards. Thanks to Geniaus and Mike - mwah! Go check their blogs out!

As long-time readers will know, I'm not one for playing by the official rules on these things, and I don't have any cider today. Boooo! I do have a sugar-rush though, so here's a surprising thing I learned about one of my ancestors this week (mostly to name-drop, you understand).

James POULTER (1809-1873) from Farnham, Surrey, somehow managed to progress from ag lab to farmer sometime between 1843 and 1847. Odd, no? Firstly, how did he get the money? Didn't inherit any, his daddy hadn't popped off yet and he was only an ag lab too. Secondly, what's someone as posh as a farmer doing hanging out in my family tree? You're making my hundreds of ag labs feel bad. Thirdly - dude, you were a farmer. How can you have no will? For several brief, shining days, I lived in hope that when the time came to check the probate index, there you'd be, but no. For shame, James.

And now to pass it on....if your genealogy blog is feeling sad and neglected without the Beatific Ancestor glaring at you, then go ahead, plug your blog in the comments, and she can come and live with you.

National Institute for Genealogical Studies

Hi everyone! No, I haven't dropped off the face of the planet, but it has been summer holidays here in NZ and the computer is not so appealing then. I did do two genealogical things of note though.

The first was the introductory course (Methodology part 1) at National Institute for Genealogical Studies based in Canada. Louise from the National Institute spoke at the History and Genealogy Roadshow I attended here back in November (and apparently never blogged about), and I signed up then for this freebie course. I was curious to see how an alternative online genealogical education provider handled things, and I was just as pleased with this one as I was with Pharos. The materials were excellent, albeit they didn't really tread any new ground for me but that was hardly the course's fault, just a factor of my experience. The interactivity of the course didn't seem as high as Pharos which was definitely more fun to do. Once you have completed one module within your National Institute course you are given access to the next module, so you don't have to wait for the next week for the materials to be given out as you do with Pharos - the flipside to that is that you don't get the same sense of camaraderie with your classmates as you do with Pharos when you are all working with the same material at the same time. Each course from the National Institute is offered more frequently (generally every two months) than Pharos at present, which is handy to know if you feel the need to upskill quickly on an area. I won't comment on value for money, as the actual cost for you may well be dependent on the exchange rate at the time, as it is for me.

The second was a vist to my aunt, who lives too far away for regular visiting, but doesn't live so far away that I should leave it so many years between visits - she's in the same country, for goodness sake! She's also interested in the family tree so I took down trees of the four branches for her grandparents based on what I've done so far (and had a crash course on diagrams in Family Historian in the process). I hope to make enough progress on that side this year to be able to write it up and share it with the family properly. While down that part of the country I also got to meet my cousin's newish baby - another leaf on the tree!

January update - Happy New Year

Welcome to 2011, everyone! There are updates scattered all over the website this month.

There's several new military men picked up from the WO97 military pensions series. Most of these are for pre-1900 service and are from the ASHPOOL, BIRCH, BRAND, DUNCOMBE, ESSEX, GATES, GUTTERIDGE, HOUNSLOW, NEWENS, ROGERS, SHRIMPTON and WOODEARDS families.

Private Joseph DUNCOMBE was Wesleyan Methodist, so he's been added to the Methodist page.

I received a transcript of the will of George TRUEMAN thanks to Alan Jones - as well as the will itself, George was a major benefactor to the Congregational Union Church and a key player in the brickmaking business in Wing, and the will contained important information on both those areas. See those pages for further elaboration.

I've done a general tidy up of external links as well.