My genealogy to-do list for the week ahead (week 5)

Last week was again spent sorting through more digital files, it seems to be taking a lot longer than I had originally anticipated.

All the information from my last visit to the West Sussex Record Office is now on spreadsheets, and most of it is entered onto my database, I just have the Framfield burials to enter into Family Historian, but that is going to be a major job so I haven’t started on that.

Working through my hard drive is taking a long time, mainly because I keep getting side-tracked into other areas I wasn’t planning to. I have been working on this for several weeks know and am still only on the As and Bs in my surname list.

I have started digging a bit deeper on the BATEMAN surname, hopefully in preparation for a visit to Gloucestershire Record Office to fill in some gaps, I will probably spend some more time on the BATEMANs this week

So this week will be much the same as last week, no substantial new research, just working with what I already have.

• Continue working through my digital files updating Family Historian and sorting out folders and standardising my filenames.
• Create a research plan for Mercy TROWER. Consisting of a summary of what I already know, decide what I want to find out and what steps I need to take to achieve it.
• As it is a new month tomorrow I shall probably order another set of birth, marriage and death certificates, so I need to decide which individuals I want to find out more about.
• Continue work on the BATEMAN family, trying to identify what happened to the siblings of Henry BATEMAN my 2x great-grandfather, from Winchcombe, Gloucestershire.

A backup wake-up call

Last night I received a nasty reminder from my computer on the importance of having a good backup.

It was around 10 o’clock and I had just finished working on my family history for the night and started my nightly backup routine. I synchronised my family history files to my USB flash drive, my grab and run emergency backup (and netbook synchroniser).

I started the synchronisation to my external hard drive and was met with a couple of error messages, to the effect that the external hard drive didn’t exist. Surely there must be some mistake, I thought, it had probably been assigned the wrong drive letter.

I opened Windows Explorer and there it was, with the correct drive letter and it looked like all the folders were there. As I drilled down I found each folder was in fact empty. All my files had gone.

I stopped and thought about it, this was my backup, I still had the original files on my PC and my USB flash drive. There were a few non-genealogy files lost that didn’t really matter, but the external hard drive stores all my digital photos. Fortunately they are all backed up on DVD and stored off-site, so I hadn’t lost anything important, it would just be annoying to have to replace the external hard drive and start again.

But something still didn’t seem right, surely the files couldn’t just disappear and leave the folders where they are, that didn’t sound like hard drive failure? The more I thought about it the more it didn’t seem right. Something told my they were still there but I couldn’t see them.

So I did the most obvious thing and rebooted my PC. Of course when the system came back up all the files were there present and correct. I ran my backups successfully and shut the system down.

Does this mean my external hard drive is on the way out or is my PC getting it’s USB connections confused? I don’t know, but it sure made me stop and think. I would consider my backup regime pretty good, but those few minutes of lost data really made me wonder if it would all work if I had to restore my files.

Not only am I going to give my external hard drive a thorough going over, I am going to review what is actual stored on it. I shall probably burn a couple more copies of my digital photos and hide them away somewhere else. Truth is I can probably delete a load of those photos, just because I have the space to store them isn’t an excuse for not going through and deleting the rubbish.

Henry and Jane TROWER of Henfield, Sussex.

I have already written quite a bit recently about the various children of Henry and Jane TROWER of Henfield, Sussex. Henry TROWER and Jane HAYBITTLE were my 3x great-grandparents, they married in Henfield on the 3rd November 1847.

Henry was the son of William TROWER and Mary TIDEY. He was born on the 26th April 1823 presumably at Harwoods Farm, Henfield and baptised not in Henfield but at the Providence Chapel, Brighton. His parents going through a non-conformist phase at the time.

Jane HAYBITTLE was the daughter of John HAYBITTLE and Harriett WOOD. She was baptised on the 16th December 1827 in the neighbouring parish of Ashurst, Sussex.

They seem to have spent almost all of their married life in Henfield, mostly at Harwoods Farm, but in the 1891 census they were living in Rusper, Sussex where Henry was still farming as he had always been whilst in Henfield. By 1901 Henry had retired and they were back in Henfield, living in Church Street.

I have mentioned Mercy, Martha, Mary and Jane in past posts, but there were thirteen children altogether. I shall try and cover each of them in a bit more detail, but in brief their children were:

1. Abraham TROWER (1848-1930)
2. Anne TROWER (1849-1920)
3. Isaac TROWER (1851-1911)
4. Mercy TROWER (1852-1929)
5. Faith TROWER (1854-1870)
6. Luther TROWER (1856-1912)
7. Mary TROWER (1858-1918)
8. Sarah TROWER (1859-1930)
9. Jane TROWER (1862-1922)
10. Ruth TROWER (1864-1950)
11. Ebenezer TROWER (1866-1956) my 2x great-grandfather
12. Martha TROWER (1867-1942)
13. Eliza TROWER (1870-1940)

Jane died on the 14th October 1905 aged 77 years and was buried in Henfield Cemetery on the 17th October. Henry’s death followed shortly afterwards on the 25th October (aged 82) and was buried on the 28th October. I have featured a photo of their gravestone in a previous post. Their grave was on un-consecrated ground, presumably as a result of Henry’s non-conformist baptism.

I have been unable to find a will for either Henry or Jane. Abraham had already taken over farming at Harwoods Farm many years ago, and there was probably nothing else left to worry about.

The lives of Henry and Jane TROWER seem quite mundane and what I considered to be quite typical of my ancestors lives. However, once I started looking at the lives of their children all sorts of more interesting stories started to appear.

Search the Australian Convicts Collection for free on Ancestry until the 31st January

Until the 31st January 2010, users registered with Ancestry.co.uk (and presumably any of the other international sites) have free access to the Australian Convicts Collection.

The collection consists of fifteen separate database:

• Certificates of Freedom (1827-1867)
• Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons (1791-1867
• Australian Convict Transportation Registers
  – First Fleet (1787-1788)
  – Second Fleet (1789-1790)
  – Third Fleet (1791)
  – Other Fleets & Ships (1791-1868)
• England & Wales Criminal Registers (1791-1892)
• Convict Pardons and Tickets of Leave (1834-1859)
• Australia Convict Musters (1806-1849)
• Australia Convict Ship Muster Rolls and Related Records (1790-1849)
• Convict Death Register (1826-1879)
• Convict Savings Bank Books (1824-1886)
• Registers of Convicts’ Applications to Marry (1826-1851)
• Settler and Convict Lists (1787-1834)
• List of Convicts with Particulars (1788-1842)

You will notice that the collection includes the England & Wales Criminal Registers (1791-1892), so even if your English ancestors weren’t transported to Australia, you are almost certain to find one of your relatives up to no good (or being accused) at one time or another.

Magazine Watch: Ancestors (Issue 92: London Special 2010)

The latest edition of Ancestors magazine from The National Archives is a special edition focusing on the city of London. As the editor Simon Fowler says "Many of our ancestors were drawn to the capital for work, education and pleasure – even if they just passed through the city. No other place in Britain had the same irresistible attraction."

There is a great selection of articles in this issue, covering a wide variety of subjects including features on resources at the Society of Genealogists and the Bishopsgate Institute.

It would be hard to pick out my favourite article from this issue, there really are so many fascinating articles. The interview with novelist Lee Jackson has introduced me to a wonderful resource, the Dictionary of Victorian London which was a result of the background research for his historical novels.

My favourite article (and it was a tough choice) has to be the one by the editor Simon Fowler entitled Drunk and Disorderly, which describes the life of Jane Cakebread who "over a 15 year period, received nearly 300 sentences" for being found drunk and disorderly.

Although she became a well-known figure through the media of the time and despite the best efforts of one or two individuals, she ended her time in a pauper asylum, with only one person attending her funeral.

The most helpful article is probably Peter Christian’s Mapping the Metropolis which is an excellent summary of the maps of London which are available online. It is going to take some time to explore all the sources mentioned, although one worth highlighting is the Crace Collection of Maps of London at the British Library.

This has to be one of the best issues of the magazine I have seen for a long time, it is packed with interesting and informative articles concerning the city that plays a key part in so many of our ancestor’s lives.