52 weeks of abundant genealogy - week 1

I have no idea how Chris Paton does it (check his profile to see what a busy boy he is) but his British GENES blog highlights pretty much everything you need to know or might be interested in as far as the UK genealogy world is concerned. It's essential blog reading - I don't always have time to keep up with everything (who does?) but I know it'll all be there in his blog. Thanks, Chris!

This blogpost is part of the 52 Weeeks of Abundant Genealogy series from Amy Coffin and geneabloggers.com

The moving target - 1798 inclosure map

Last year my superstar genealogy friend Paul took photos of Wing's inclosure map for me. Inclosure took place in 1798, so the map and its key as to who was given what land-wise is pretty useful. I'm about a quarter of the way through transcribing the key, and as it will be pertinent information for the farms project I would like to get the inclosure map transcription done before resuming work on the farms. It's making the Moving Target list!

I will certainly be able to get this done this month. For those keeping track at home, I'm now expecting to be gainfully occupied for at least three-quarters of 2012 - what else might make the list?

[For background to The Moving Target series of posts, see the story so far]

Bookshelf: World War II London Blitz Diary by Ruby Thompson

I recently read a book that you, my dear readers, may also be interested in so I'm interrupting my Moving Target series to bring you my review from Goodreads:

World War II London Blitz Diary: A Woman's Revelations Enduring War and Marriage by Ruby Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This diary is a very illuminating look at what life during the London Blitz was like. Life-long diarist Ruby talks about both the external events of WWII and her personal experiences on a day-to-day basis living through the Blitz, as well as general family and society events and opinions. Being able to read something that was being written each day, without the benefit of hindsight as to what was historically significant, was very refreshing. The sheer repetitiveness with which the various air alerts each day are recorded gives you a real sense of what it might have been like - without going through the lack of sleep and shattered nerves, of course!

Ruby makes particular comment about how she fully intends her children to read the diaries some day so that they know a bit more about who she really was - the impact of various societal constraints meant she felt unable to truly be herself. This also gives the reader permission to experience her sometimes harsh comments about life and her husband without feeling that you are intruding.

The diaries have been edited by Ruby's great-granddaughter. She has let the content stand as is, and accordingly some comments will likely make modern readers cringe a bit, but thankfully there has been no editing to make the diary more dramatic, as a novelised version might have been. The copyediting could definitely be improved, for example there are a couple of sentences in two entries that were duplicates of other entries, and there are apostrophes where there shouldn't be. While Ruby's family members are listed at the beginning of the book, I felt it would have been more useful to the narrative to add these as footnotes or editorial parentheses as each new person (or place/issue of significance) was mentioned, to explain who they are and their significance in Ruby's life.

The content itself and the fact the diaries survive is a true gift to Ruby's descendants, and now to us as well. This is volume 1 of an intended 4-volume WWII set.

The moving target - farms

In 2011 I started work on the farms project. This is a series of pages with information about the farms and farmers of Wing, organised by property into regions/hamlets of Wing. I think this is going to be one of the more significant and globally useful projects within the one-place study.

So far I've completed the hamlets of Ascott and Burcott. Still to come are Crafton, Cottesloe, and "other". For these, I have roughly collated the basic information from census records and directories. The real work is in fleshing these out with additional information, attempting to work out the location of the farm, looking for any family connections between farms, and writing each farm up into a cohesive and interesting passage. I also have to complete a summary page about the agricultural industry in Wing as a whole and what working life would have been like for our farmer/ag lab ancestors.

I've learned that these farm pages actually take a lot longer than I would have expected. It will also get more problematic from here on in as fewer of the farms are actually named. However leaving this project half-finished will make me feel guilty every time I think about it, so I definitely want to get it done. Using my estimate of 4 hours a week being the time I can commmit to the one-place study, it'll probably take me a couple of months to finish each page. Allowing a month for the valuation books project, and another month for a stint of work on marriages from the parish registers, that means it'll likely be the end of August before it's done.

Long-term, I'll be able to expand these pages as more information comes to light. I also want to incorporate much better mapping of the farms - ideally identify the fields that encompassed each individual farm over time ("time" realistically being only 1798 onwards), and overlay these onto a modern map. Even if I've been able to achieve an accurate identification of a particular farm using various historical maps and records, I don't have the technical skill to realise my vision of the final map on the website. I suspect that's another huge learning curve - and huge learning curves take time!

[For background to The Moving Target series of posts, see the story so far]

The moving target - valuation books

[For background to The Moving Target series of posts, see the story so far]

A project I've already committed is the 1910 valuation books project being undertaken by the Buckinghamshire Genealogical Society. They are taking digital photos of the valuation books, which give information about physical buildings, and members of the BGS are transcribing them. I've volunteered for Wing and it looks like the images might be available in a month or so, so this will have top priority once they arrive.

As I'm doing this as part of the wider BGS effort which will be available for sale down the track, I won't be able to publish the Wing data on the website. However I will have that information available offline to incorporate into other Wing OPS projects where relevant. I'm hoping that these valuation books will provide some timely information about the farmhouses of Wing - more about that tomorrow!

The moving target - parish registers

[For background to The Moving Target series of posts, see the story so far]

I've always found parish registers fascinating - they're an interesting read, irrespective of the individual families involved.

Wing's parish registers for the period 1546 to 1812 were transcribed in the early 1900s by local historian A. Vere Woodman and published by the Bucks Parish Register Society in 1914. I have a copy of this, and so far I have found them to be pretty reliable. Doing my own transcription of this period, particularly the earlier, more unreadable years (which likely would have been in better condition when Woodman looked at them a century or so back) would be nice but wouldn't advance the one-place study much. This means my focus should be on the 1813+ period.

I've already transcribed the burials register up until 1909, the latest date that has been filmed by the LDS and thus the latest date accessible to me in NZ. I won't be able to progress this until any subsequent images are available.

The marriages are the key area which does feel like it is currently a bit of a gap in the study. It would be nice to do these consecutively from 1813, but the extra information provided on marriage entries from 1837 makes that later period much more valuable in establishing family lines. The marriages to 1881 have been extracted in the IGI but this doesn't contain all the information recorded, and if it's anything like the baptisms there may well be omissions.

Speaking of baptisms, I have already covered off the 1813 to 1870 period. It would be lovely to extend this up to at least 1911 in the first instance, but I don't think this would add quite as much as the marriages would.

I'd worked out  the number of entries involved in each register on previous times that I have ordered the various films. It looks like the marriages average out about 10 a year, less than I had expected - and while each one takes a while to transcribe, the good thing is that I can just complete and upload individual years if I wanted to, rather than completing the whole register. So I think I will go ahead and order in the LDS film of the marriages starting in 1837 and see how I go.

The moving target - census

[For background to The Moving Target series of posts, see the story so far]

First up, the census records. So far I have transcribed and made available online the census for Wing for 1841, 1871, 1891, plus the enumerators summary books for 1911. That leaves 1851, 1861, 1881, 1901 and the full 1911 census.

There's a clear distinction here between what has value for me personally (in terms of ease of accessibility to the information) and what has value to other researchers who use the Wing One Place Study website. Transcribing all of these other years is still a goal. But I'm not sure it's a particularly important goal anymore.

My personal standpoint was that where a non-profit organisation, such as a family history society, was already transcribing a census year then that year isn't a priority for me. I believe that family history societies are valuable (particularly once they figure out how they will evolve in the internet age) and I'm not keen on inadvertently cutting off their sources of revenue. The Buckinghamshire Family History Society has the 1851 census available, and the Buckinghamshire Genealogical Society currently has 1861 and 1881 (and 1891 which I've already done for Wing). The 1881 census is freely available via FamilySearch. That leaves the two most recent years, 1901 and 1911, which are available commercially only. These also have the highest population numbers and the most pieces of information to be captured so they would be a very substantial job.

Hands up who likes seeing their ancestors' handwriting? Me too. So I would think any transcription of the 1911 census is somewhat redundant when any sane genealogist would have a clear preference for actually looking at the household schedule completed by their ancestor. I can't provide those, due to copyright, I can only provide transcriptions - useful for me, but you guys are going to need to fling some money at the big commercial providers to get what you want.

Something that might be worth me investing a bit of time in is updating my 1911 enumerators summary spreadsheet to add any other surnames that appear in each household. That would make that spreadsheet a more useful finding aid for me (if I'm going through looking for a surname I tend to want to grab all instances of it, rather than just one individual or a particular family group), but I'm not sure if this would be something that is useful for the website. It would only take around half a day to flick through and do this.

This leaves the 1901 census as the next census I should transcribe. That year there were 1740 individuals in Wing, with both enumeration districts completed by gentlemen with fairly readable handwriting (hurray!). If I average out 3 minutes per person for the transcribing and checking process (including the head-scratching and investigation phase for unknown place-names and the like), it should take around 87 hours. Assuming I can find 4 hours a week for this project (I work full-time and should focus more on limiting the amount of leisure time I stare at a computer), that's 22 weeks to complete, or around 5 months. I'm finding it difficult to get excited about now that I've done the numbers. I'm sure there's other things that I would find more fulfilling than this particular project right now.

I've already ended up a a different place than expected by taking this fresh look at things - previously I'd been waiting until 1 Jan 2012 when that previously-redacted infirmity column on the 1911 census becomes available so that I could get started on the 1911 census. Now I can park that project - and simply check out the infirmities of my own families instead!