A Church Near You: a great free resource

I have used the A Church Near You website many times in the past, not for it’s intend purpose of finding a local church, but for finding a church near my ancestors. I went on the site the other day to find is has been updated, with a much improved appearance and better functionality.

As I said, the stated goal of the site is to enable you to find your local church near you, whether it is for a service or for planning a baptism, marriage or funeral. My main use however has been for finding out the dedication of the parish church e.g. St Peter’s or St Paul’s

The search process is pretty straight forward and quick, with more search options on the advanced search tab. There is also help available on the help tab (not surprisingly).

The information for each church does vary a lot, some churches are not included at all, whereas some have a vast amount of information, some of it may be slightly out of date, but it is a great starting point for genealogy research.

A favourite feature of mine is the ability to view a parish boundary map on some churches (again this is the current boundary and I am not sure how accurate it is), like this one for the parish of Henfield, Sussex where my TROWERs lived for centuries. As it is overlayed on a Google map it can be zoomed and manipulated like any other Google map.

Remember that this is website contains only Church of England churches and it is current (or recent) information, so things may have changed since it was last updated (contact details etc) and since your ancestor worshipped there. Regardless of this, it is a great resource worth checking, whether you intend to visit the church or not.

Bloated after a genealogy binge!

As March comes to an end it feels like I have been on a massive genealogy binge this month, my folders and files are certainly bloated, and my desk overflowing. I think I have consumed much more genealogy this month then the last few months put together.

The  month of March saw a flurry of genealogy activity, starting with Who Do You Think You Are Live (technically I went in February, but close enough) and ending last weekend with the Sussex Family History Group conference.

I have spent quite a bit of money on books, CDs, ordered birth, marriage and death certificates (and of course spent money on the 1911 census). In fact I have probably spent more on family history in the last month than I did in all of the last year.

Then there were the visits to archives and libraries: Hampshire Record Office, the City of Westminster Archives and the London Family History Centre, and all the associated travel costs.

It’s not that I begrudge the cost, both financial and in terms of my time, it is certainly cheaper than paying someone else to do it for me (and more rewarding).

Almost every waking hour seems to have been spent thinking about family history. I wonder whether it is this blogs fault? Am I just consuming genealogy to feed to the blog? I guess there is an element of that, but that is not the only reason.

I think the main factor is that my two main projects (the KINGHORNs and the MITCHELLs) are new and exciting, pushing me into unfamiliar territory, expanding my knowledge and setting me new challenges. With both families I had no background knowledge, no family memories (and unfortunately no photographs).

The upshot of this binge is that I have a lot of material to organise, check, add to my family history software, expand upon and finally create an interesting way of sharing the information with other family members.

For April things are going to be a lot quieter, I am hoping to make one trip to the West Sussex Record Office to clear up some loose ends on various family lines (including some MITCHELLs) and then there is the South Coast Family History Fair (at Worthing on the 19th April) when I shall take the opportunity of spending the day by the seaside with my wife!

Who to spend my 30 credits on?

Having found my 2x great grandmother Harriet MITCHELL in the 1911 census yesterday, I now have the question of what to do with my remaining credits. I have enough credits left for one more image, but who should I spend it on?

Of course I could just save the credits for the next time I have a query, but I can feel those 30 credits burning a whole in my (online) pocket, begging to be spent.

I have found entries for pretty much all of my direct ancestors, with the exception of George Thomas GASSON (2x great grandfather). However,  I know exactly where he was at the time of the census, in the East Sussex County Asylum at Hellingly, Sussex, so there is probably no benefit from finding his entry.

There may still be some direct ancestors alive in 1911 that I haven’t checked, because I don’t know when they died, so perhaps I should pick one of my less well researched lines and use the 1911 census to fill in a few of the blanks. Maybe the WALDER family in Bolney, Sussex, but there are rather a lot of them.

Perhaps it should be one of the brothers or sisters of my ancestors. There are a few interesting people that it would be useful to find out more about, such as Abraham TROWER (3x great uncle) who was the last of about 5 or six generations of TROWERs living at Harwoods Farm, Henfield, Sussex.

Or what about Abraham’s brother Luther? What was he doing in 1911? Where was he living? Would it provide any clues as to why he would commit suicide 18 months later?

And perhaps it would be worth looking for Mercy TROWER, or would it be STEADMAN or perhaps BARLEY? I wonder if the 1911 census would explain why I can’t find a record of her marriages, despite the fact she died as a widow?

Then there is William James GASSON (2x great uncle) who died of enteric fever in the First World War. He would still have been single in 1911, and probably already serving in the army, so he might not be online yet.

And don’t get me started on the BOXALLs or the MITCHELLs, they had far too many children, one image would be a drop in the ocean with either of those families.

I never have been good at making decisions, there are far to many possibilities, perhaps I will sleep on it and see who comes to mind tomorrow. Maybe I can resist the temptation, and hold onto my credits for a really worthy cause, but like a kid in a sweet shop, I doubt I will be able to resist for long!

The 1911 census and Harriet MITCHELL

I finally took the plunge and paid for 60 credits for the 1911 census today. Although I am trying to limit the amount of money I spend on the 1911 census (until it comes out on a subscription model), curiosity finally got the better of me and I decide to take a chance and download the image for Harriet MITCHELL.

I was pretty sure it was my 2x great grandmother, the age was about right and the location was Hampshire, so that was a match as well. However, I couldn’t identify who she was living with, from the indexes I knew it was one of her children because her relationship was mother.

I could have spent a fair amount of time, checking other names in the same household, what with 13 children (technically only 12 left to find because I already have the image for my great grandfather) and then the married names of the daughters (if they had married by then).

Instead I bit the bullet and paid my money and downloaded the image, and I was correct it was her and she was living with her married daughter Ellen HUTFIELD (should have been Harriet Ellen, but I will forgive them that).

So not only do I get the information on Harriet MITCHELL, but also one of her daughters, and five grandchildren (one had died). Interesting Ellen HUTFIELD described her relationship as wife, but there was no head listed. I assume that being a Portsmouth address this probably means that her husband was in the navy and away at sea.

The information I was really after of course was that on Harriet MITCHELL. She was listed as a widow, which I had already guessed she would be (I think William Henry her husband died in 1908), and her birthplace was shown as Kent, Cowfold.

Now, I know a Cowfold in Sussex, that is only a couple of miles down the road from me, but I can’t seem to find a Cowfold in Kent, or anything like it? Everything seems to point to the fact that she wasn’t born in Alton, Hampshire, but somewhere in Kent, despite what numerous census returns tell us!

Sussex Family History Group conference

Today (28th March 2009) I had the pleasure of attending the Sussex Family History Group 2009 conference at Haywards Heath, West Sussex. It was held at the Clair Hall in Haywards Heath, a small multi-purpose venue which I am familiar with because of the monthly postcard fair held there.

It was well attended, I would estimate around 250-300 people, which is probably about as much as the hall could cope with. There were three guest speakers (Michael Gandy, Annabelle Hughes and Ian Gledhill) and a handful of stalls selling various books and CDs.

Michael Gandy‘s talk was entitled “Country Poor, Town Poor” and rather than dwell on the differences between the two, the talk challenged some of our widely held views on the poor and discussed how very little has actually changed over the past couple of centuries.

Annabelle Hughes is an expert on many (if not all) aspects of Sussex buildings and their records, and we were lead through an example of her research into one Sussex farm, from the Domesday book to the present day. Her talk mentioned many sources for property records, that would be of interest to the family historian, which pre-date parish registers and are easily available (in printed form, not on the internet) to researchers.

Ian Gledhill gave an illustrated talk entitled “Oh, We Do Like to be Beside the Seaside”, which took us from the earliest days when bathing started to become popular up to the present day. The talk covered the major resorts on the Sussex coast and a few beyond, with details of the development of piers and theatres etc. that our ancestors may once have enjoyed.

At lunchtime whilst the majority of attendees enjoyed their lunch, I left Clair Hall and boarded a bus for the Princess Royal Hospital on the other side of Haywards Heath and walked a short way down the road to pay a visit to what had once been the East Sussex County Asylum, and home to my 2x great grandfather George Thomas GASSON for five years (before he was moved to the new asylum at Hellingly).

The building is quite impressive, and mostly converted to flats and appartments now, I did get some photographs but conditions weren’t ideal, there is still building work going on (at least it appears to be), I will have to return when I have more time and better weather conditions.

I walked back to Clair Hall for the afternoon session through the town, which is not particularly interesting, a few old buildings remain, but the town centre is quite modern (although perhaps a little dated now).

It was a good day, the talks were varied and well presented, the conference was well organised, and I managed to pick up a couple of bargain books from the Sussex Record Society stall (they were having a clearance sale). The fact that I got to do a bit of walking was an added bonus!