The results were quite interesting (for me at least) and illustrated just how little work I did on my family tree last year.

1. TROWER (152)
2. GASSON (133)
3. MITCHELL (92)
4. HEMSLEY (75)
5. BOXALL (52)
6. KINGHORN (49)
7. FAIRS (45)
8. GEERING (39)
9. HAYBITTLE (36)
10. WREN (31)

None of the positions have changed since last year and the actual number of entries had changed very little. Only the number of Trowers and Gassons have increased and somewhat worryingly the number of Mitchells and Boxalls had decreased.

I remember removing a family of Mitchells who I haven’t been able to link into my family tree yet, but I am not sure why I have lost a Boxall. I think it might have been the result of a merger.

I know it is not really about the numbers, but it would be nice to see them increasing a bit more.

Copyright © 2012 John Gasson.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

There was no logical reason for my friend Chris and I spending just over five hours sitting on buses today, it just seemed like a fun idea. It was a coincidence that I was able to visit and photograph one of the places on my genealogy hit list along the way (more about that in a future post).

In fact the whole journey was a bit like a family history tour, passing through so many places in my family tree. Unfortunately we didn’t actually spend time off the bus anywhere other than Tunbridge Wells, but it was good to be travelling through the landscape of my relatives none the less.

The journey itself was a round trip (otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting at home writing this) of about 90 miles, mainly through East and West Sussex, but also crossing into Kent and Surrey.

For the fellow bus geeks reading this the bus routes were:

1. Horsham to Brighton (17, Stagecoach)
2. Brighton to Tunbridge Wells (29, Brighton and Hove)
3. Tunbridge Wells to Crawley (291, Metrobus)
4. Crawley to Horsham (23, Metrobus)

I have travelled on these routes before, but never the complete routes. I don’t think I have ever been to Tunbridge Wells before, by any mode of transport, but I will definitely be heading back there again. Not least because of the famous Hall’s Bookshop.

I was delighted to find a memorial below to Air Chief Marshall Dowding in Calverley Grounds (the park where we sat and enjoyed a sandwich in the sunshine). This was a perfect piece of genealogical synchronicity because he was born in Moffat, Scotland, the same town as my 3x great-grandfather Thomas Kinghorn.

Copyright © 2012 John Gasson.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type

1.  Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents
2.  Can name over 50 direct ancestors
3.  Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents
4.  Have an ancestor who was married more than three times
5.  Have an ancestor who was a bigamist
6.  Met all four of my grandparents
7.  Met one or more of my great-grandparents
8.  Named a child after an ancestor
9.  Bear an ancestor’s given name/s
10.  Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland
11.  Have an ancestor from Asia
12.  Have an ancestor from Continental Europe
13.  Have an ancestor from Africa
14.  Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer
15.  Have an ancestor who had large land holdings
16.  Have an ancestor who was a holy man – minister, priest, rabbi
17.  Have an ancestor who was a midwife
18.  Have an ancestor who was an author
19.  Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones
20.  Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng
21.  Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X
22.  Have an ancestor with a forename beginning with Z
23.  Have an ancestor born on 25th December
24.  Have an ancestor born on New Year’s Day
25.  Have blue blood in your family lines
26.  Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
27.  Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
28.  Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century
29.  Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier
30.  Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents
31.  Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X
32.  Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university
33.  Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence
34.  Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime
35.  Have shared an ancestor’s story online or in a magazine (on this blog)
36.  Have published a family history online or in print
37.  Have visited an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries
38.  Still have an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family
39.  Have a family bible from the 19th Century
40.  Have a pre-19th century family bible

I think the results reflect my ordinary run of the mill ancestors quite well, they never travelled far or owned great amounts of money/property or aspired to high office, just normal everyday folk. Just like me in fact!

I am sure you know how the list works by now, but just in case:

Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type

You will see there is lots of plain type, but no italics, the reason for that probably being that if I had wanted to do it I probably would have done it by now. Anyway here goes:

1. Own an Android or Windows tablet or an iPad
2. Use a tablet or iPad for genealogy related purposes
3. Have used Skype for genealogy purposes
4. Have used a camera to capture images in a library/archives/ancestor’s home [have you seen the cost of photocopies these days?]
   
5. Use a genealogy software program on your computer to manage your family tree
6. Have a Twitter account
7. Tweet daily
8. Have a genealogy blog [I think so]
   
9. Have more than one genealogy blog
10. Have lectured/presented to a genealogy group on a technology topic
11. Currently an active member of Genealogy Wise
12. Have a Facebook Account
13. Have connected with genealogists via Facebook
14. Maintain a genealogy related Facebook Page
15. Maintain a blog or website for a genealogy society
16. Have submitted text corrections online to Ancestry, Trove or a similar site
17. Have registered a domain name [several over the years]
    
18. Post regularly to Google+
19. Have a blog listed on Geneabloggers
20. Have transcribed/indexed records for FamilySearch or a similar project
21. Own a Flip-Pal or hand-held scanner [it is difficult scanning sections of 4' x 3' maps without a hand-held scanner]
    
22. Can code a webpage in .html [but haven't done so in years]
23. Own a smartphone
24. Have a personal subscription to one or more paid genealogy databases
25. Use a digital voice recorder to record genealogy lectures
26. Have contributed to a genealogy blog carnival [I really miss the Festival of Postcards]
    
27. Use Chrome as a Browser
28. Have participated in a genealogy webinar
29. Have taken a DNA test for genealogy purposes
30. Have a personal genealogy website
31. Have found mention of an ancestor in an online newspaper archive
32. Have tweeted during a genealogy lecture
33. Have scanned your hardcopy genealogy files [ditch the paper, it wastes too much space]
    
34. Use an RSS Reader to follow genealogy news and blogs
35. Have uploaded a gedcom file to a site like Geni, MyHeritage or Ancestry
36. Own a netbook
    
37. Use a computer/tablet/smartphone to take genealogy lecture notes
38. Have a profile on LinkedIn that mentions your genealogy habit
39. Have developed a genealogy software program, app or widget
40. Have listened to a genealogy podcast online
41. Have downloaded genealogy podcasts for later listening [something to do on my way to work]
    
42. Backup your files to a portable hard drive
43. Have a copy of your genealogy files stored offsite [several copies in fact]
44. Know about Rootstech [just because I know about it doesn't mean I am interested in it]
45. Have listened to a Blogtalk radio session about genealogy [not listened live, see No. 41]
46. Use Dropbox, SugarSync or other service to save documents in the cloud [don't trust clouds, they often bring rain with them]
47. Schedule regular email backups [do it manually, but anything important is copied elsewhere anyway]
48. Have contributed to the Familysearch Wiki
49. Have scanned and tagged your genealogy photographs [scanned them, but not felt the need to tag them yet]
    
50. Have published a genealogy book in an online/digital format

So there you go, 18 out of 50 and proud of it, especially not being on Facebook, Twitter, Genealogy Wise or Google+. In fact it is a little but higher than I expected. I do however resent getting a point for knowing about Rootstech, when I would be quite happy not knowing about it, but I cannot un-know about it now.

I thought it was about time I had another look at the most common surnames in my family tree, so I fired up my copy of Family Historian and Microsoft Excel and produced an updated list (the number of individuals with the surname is shown in brackets):

1. TROWER (139)
2. GASSON (123)
3. MITCHELL (94)
4. HEMSLEY (75)
5. BOXALL (53)
6. KINGHORN (49)
7. FAIRS (45)
8. GEERING (39)
9. HAYBITTLE (36)
10. WREN (31)

This is much “better” than last time, the top four names are the surnames of my grandparents. The HEMSLEY surname was way down at number ten last time, so it is good to see that I have done enough work to push it higher up the “chart”.

The HAYBITTLE and WREN surnames are both new entries. I remember doing some work on the HAYBITTLEs, but I don’t remember doing much work on the WRENs but I suppose I must have done.

Copyright © 2011 John Gasson.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

As we enter another new year I would like to take this opportunity to wish a Happy New Year to all my readers around the globe.

Using the place of birth or baptism for my 4x great-grandparents, I summarised the English counties that they came from (to the best of my knowledge none of them were born outside of England). Then using Microsoft Excel I came up with a simple pie chart that would illustrate the figures, the resulting chart shows quite clearly where my roots lie.

It is only a very simple chart, I could probably have spent ages tweaking it, but it is only meant to give a basic idea, and I think it does that quite well with it’s huge great chunk of Sussex ancestors. Approximately two-thirds of my 4x great-grandparents were from Sussex. If I took this further and grouped together the southern counties of Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent you would find almost 80% of my 4x great-grandparents.

So what does this prove, not a lot really, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I have inherited any of the traits of my Sussex ancestors, any more than those of my Gloucestershire ancestors. I does show that I haven’t strayed far from the homes of most of my ancestors, and they themselves didn’t stray far either. Of course there is still the annoying ‘unknown’ segment, there is possibly one Scottish ancestor within there, and I am sure as I go further back I will eventually find some foreign blood.

All these statistics are based on the best information currently available. If I wanted to be more sophisticated I could probably further refine it by using an earlier generation where known (so one 5x great-grandparent would equal 1/128 of my roots) and eliminate the unknowns by using a more recent generation. However, I think I probably have better things to do with my time than playing with numbers and pie charts.