Feb update

I've uploaded the February update (technically it's not February for another five hours but tough!). There's new pages on the straw plaiting industry within Wing and a couple of pages about the Dormer family. Hope you like them!

DORMER

I've completed my pages about the Dormer family ready for the February update. It's been an interesting process, wading through various source records, pedigree books, biographies, parish registers, reviewing my photos of the various memorials within All Saints Church, and checking out the various inaccurate or incomplete information already out there on the web! In particular there are many pedigrees online that are contradicted or greatly expanded by the information found in the Wing parish registers and memorials, so hopefully my final version of the Wing Dormer family tree has a greater chance of being accurate. As always, it's worrying some of the things you find floating around out there.....

Back to reality

First week back at work after the holidays always seems so long......

If anyone would like to retrace the steps of my summer holiday in the South Island, they can take a peek here.

On the Wing front, I've been working on a page about the Dormers. It's actually a long weekend here in Auckland (hurray for holidays!) so there's a chance it might even be finished in time for the February update.

Record keeping

I've just ventured into my family history cupboard where all my research on my own families live - not just the Wing ones! I thought it was pretty tidy, but there's an awfully large pile of unsorted unfiled bits and bobs, surname extracts from various parish records, certificates that haven't been entered into my computerised records, and a general mess. I can feel all those ancestors frowning down on me, so it's time to give them a bit of attention this weekend. Anyone else out there feeling the same?

McNaught watch

I wonder what John Thomas Windmill Claridge would have made of this!


Comet McNaught, Auckland NZ, 18th Jan 2007

Strawplaiting

I've finally finished my writeup about the strawplaiting industry in Wing. It covers a brief description of what the life of our strawplaiters might have been like, the rise and fall of strawplaiting as a source of employment in Wing, the proportion of Wing residents involved and some key individuals and families. If you have something to contribute then please let me know now. This page will be included in my February update.

I've also converted all the burial pages to the new look and uploaded those today. As part of that a few pages were renamed, so if you get a broken link you might need to refresh your browser.

WINDMILL CLARIDGE

An interesting snippet came my way today. A WINDMILL researcher alerted me to a 1936 obituary reproduced online for John Thomas Windmill CLARIDGE, the son of Thomas Claridge and Ann Windmill (technically John was born in Stewkley rather than Wing but we'll claim him as one of ours) - he ended up a vicar, but was also a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society! Thanks for the tip Linda.

I have just fixed a couple of broken links on the front page - apologies to everyone who tried to access the marriages or burials over the last few days, you should now be able to get to them just fine. I have also converted and uploaded the directory listings (but not the master consolidated name index for the directories yet).