Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2010 website goes live

I received an email today announcing that the website for Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2010 is now live. WDYTYA Live is the biggest family history event in the UK and will be held at Olympia, London from the 26th to 28th February 2010.

The email mentions a new Photography Gallery feature for the event, which will provide information on dating, identification, preserving, digitising and restoring old photographs. This sounds very interesting, after all who hasn’t got loads of old family photos that need sorting out.

Details on the website are still pretty basic, expect more as the event draws closer. Only one celebrity is mentioned so far, Tony Robinson, best known (to me at least) for his portrayal of Baldrick in the BBC comedy Blackadder and for presenting the Channel 4 archaeology programme Time Team.

This is one of the key events of the UK family history calendar, and this year I will probably try and go on all three days because there is sure to be plenty to see and do on all three days. I could quite easily spend three days listening to lectures. Tickets are due to go on sale soon.

WSFHS Open Day and Family History Fair

Today the West Surrey Family History Society (WSFHS) held it’s annual open day and family history fair at Woking Leisure Centre in the town of Woking, Surrey.

This was the first time I had been to the WSFHS fair, but not my first visit to Woking Leisure Centre, because it is also the venue of a postcard fair, although it has been several years since I last went there.

The leisure centre is a short walk (about 15 minutes) from Woking railway station, although it looked like I was the only one who was making my way there on foot. I arrived not long after the doors opened and the large hall soon began to fill up.

There was quite a variety of stalls, well over half of them were family or local history societies and organisations, including the Society of Genealogists and the Guild of One Name Studies. There were a couple of online data providers present, Findmypast.com and The Genealogist and several offline data providers selling microfiche, printed material and CDs, like the Parish Register Transcription Society.

First of all I checked out the stock of the three postcard dealers who were there. I struck gold on the first one, and came away with six postcards all of which were priced at £2.50 each, real bargains. After that the other two seemed over-priced, but there wasn’t really anything else that caught my eye, except for one that I already have in my collection which was marked up at £25. I was glad I already had a copy, which cost me £15 several years ago.

There wasn’t really anything or anyone special that I wanted see. I should have prepared some questions for some of the people on the various society stands, but I hadn’t. Instead I wandered around checking to see what resources they had on offer, to see if there was anything that might help with my research. I could quite easily filled several bookshelves with the various books and pamphlets that were on sale, but I was good and kept my wallet in my pocket most of the time.

I did come away with three CDs, which will hopefully help my research in the future. From the Parish Register Transcription Society I got the parish registers for Cowfold, Sussex (quite a few relations in there) and the Eastern Sussex Settlement Certificates & Bonds and Parish Apprentices, which will hopefully contain several of my East Sussex relations. The WSFHS had a special offer on the third edition of their Surrey Marriages CD, and although I already have the second edition I couldn’t resist the temptation of a half price CD.

There was much that I missed out on at the fair, I didn’t take advantage of the cafe, make use of the research room, or attend any of the talks. Next time I will be better prepared with lists of questions to ask the various stalls, I should have done this time, but it was just down to laziness on my part.

I certainly looked like the fair was well attended, it was starting to get a little too crowded for my liking, but I am sure the stall holders were loving it. I shall definitely go again next year if I get the chance.

More maps for my collection

These are my latest finds from my local Oxfam shop. Three Ordnance Survey maps of Sussex dating from around 1948-9. Not particularly old or in top condition, but they were real bargains, or at least I think so, at £1.99 each

The scale of all three is the same,  1:25,000 (about 2½ inches to one mile), which is detailed enough to show the locations and outlines of larger buildings and farms. Most of the farms are named as are many of the country roads.

The one on the left is of the Haywards Heath area. Not so many places of ancestral interest here, apart from the asylum and the village of Cuckfield.

The middle one covers an area from Washington and Thakeham in the west to Bramber and Partridge Green. This includes part of Henfield, where the TROWER family were, Ashurst (home to the HAYBITTLES) and part of West Grinstead, showing some of the places where the FAIRS family lived.

The one on the right covers many ancestral villages: Cowfold, Twineham (showing the location of Ridden’s Farm, believed to be home to my WELLER ancestors), Bolney, Slaugham and Warninglid.

Whilst I don’t expect to actually discover much new information from these maps, there is always a chance of finding the location of a previously unidentified family home, that has since been demolished or changed its name.

The real interest comes from studying the maps and comparing with the present-day maps, seeing how things have changed. For example, one thing that immediately stood out was the number of trig points on these old maps, and how few of them survive today.

They had a few others in the shop, from the same series, if they are still there on Monday I may well get another couple, although these were the only ones of real family interest for me. Although I think I need to make a list of the ones I already have because I am starting to build up quite a collection.

Could Texter make your data entry quicker and easier?

Last night as I entered the phrase “agricultural labourer” for the umpteenth time I decided I need to find a short-cut to save having to keep entering it over and over. The majority of my relations were agricultural labourers, and I don’t like using the phrase “ag lab” preferring to spell it out in full.

I turned to a little application, that I had played with briefly before, called Texter. There is nothing new or revolutionary about this program, but it is quite powerful, and I have only used it at its most basic level.

What it does is watch what you type for “hotstrings”, which are certain combinations of letters, and when you type the correct combination, it converts them into something else. A bit like using find and replace, but it happens as you go along.

In my case I set it up so that when I type the word “aglab” it replaces it with the phrase “agricultural labourer”. It is pretty simple to install and set-up. All it takes is a little bit of thought in selecting the hotstrings and a few minutes to set it up. I set up two hotstrings, “aglab” and “Aglab”, for the second one the word agricultural is capitalised.

The great thing is that it appears to work in almost any Windows program, such as Family Historian, my family history software. The best thing of all is that it is free, so if it doesn’t work you haven’t lost anything.

I have previously used it to speed up the entry of several family surnames, but there is probably no limit to what you could set it up to do, such as surnames, place names, addresses, occupations, in fact anything that you find yourself have to type repeatedly.

There are a couple of videos on the Lifehacker page, showing the basic use of Texter, plus some of the more advanced techniques.

I think this is going to save me a serious amount of typing in the future, I don’t know why I didn’t start using it sooner. Make sure you have a look and see if it could make your life easier, whether it is for family history, blogging or elsewhere.

Another family tree milestone passed

Yesterday I passed another milestone in my family history, with the addition of the 1000th individual Family Historian.

I know a 1000 individuals doesn’t really sound a lot, especially given all the work I put into my family history, but I like to think in terms of quality not quantity.

All these 1000 individuals are as a result of my own hard work, not downloaded from someone else’s online tree. All of them (I think) have source records attached in one form or other.

There are many ways I could have boosted my numbers, but to me there doesn’t seem much point, I am not trying to win any prizes, and I have the rest of my life to add people to my tree.

The 1000th individual was Ann VINALL (born in Buxted, Sussex around 1851), the grand-daughter of my 4x great grandfather John VINALL.

Normally I wouldn’t have included her in my tree at this stage, after all I am still trying to trace all not 4x great grandparents not all their descendants as well. It just so happened that in the 1861 census my 4x great grandfather is living with Ann, her parents William and Louisa VINALL and some of their other children.

I could have just entered John VINALL, and left the rest, but I don’t like leaving a family half finished, as there is a good chance I might never get around to entering them for years.