James Tanner of Familysearch has written a very informative and interesting article on fully utilizing your smartphone to do genealogy research. For a bit of effort to get to know how the various functions on your phone work, you don’t need to carry piles of paper around if you have a smartphone. I have the Ancestry app on my ipod touch and my tablet and have found it very useful.
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Hello! My name's Liz Plummer and I have a textile arts blog over at Dreaming Spirals. I have recently got into family history research and so I decided to start a blog about it, talking about my discoveries and journey along the way. Feel free to leave a comment, especially if you are also researching any of the same surnames. Most of my ancestors lived in Staffordshire and the West Midlands in the UK; a few wandered over from Cheshire and perhaps Shropshire. The main surnames I'm researching are: Docksey, Meredith, Hopkins, Simpson, Cooke, Swetmore, Lunn, Cooper. I'll put a full list further down the sidebar. |
Recently I went to the National Archives in Kew and looked up various wills on the microfilms owned by the Family History Center in Exhibition Road, which is based in Kew while their building is being renovated. One of the branches of my family tree are Fosters from Darlaston in Staffordshire. Darlaston seems to have been a bit of a hub for the Foster surname especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so last year I tried to group the various families together and put a tree on Ancestry. As part of my efforts I looked up several of the Foster wills and here are some of the details of the ones I found. If you are interested in having a copy of the transcript of any of these, let me know and I will send it to you.
Humphrey Foster, nailer of Darlaston – will made 1737, probate 1739; Mentions wife Eliz., daughter Martha and son Jose. (presumably Joseph) witnesses George Plant, George Wilks, Thomas Forshaw?
Aaron Foster, chasse forger of Darlaston – will made 1763, probate 1764; mentions wife Anne, son John sons in law Walter and Thomas Lunn, daughters in law (?) Elizabeth widow of William Ford, Anne wife of John Platt, Mary wife of James Taylor Other people mentioned – Joseph Dangerfield, Matthias Bayley witnesses Squire Foster, Richard Spink and Samuel Spink
John Foster, farmer of Darlaston – will made 1811, probate 1822. Mentions nieces Mary and Nancy Foster, daughters of brother Josiah Foster; sister Sarah, nephew Moses Horton, niece Mary Horton (children of sister Sarah). By the time probate was granted, his niece Mary was Mary Adams, wife of Charles Adams, gentleman. witnesses : John Hughes Glazier Darlaston, John Sansom Shoemaker Darlaston
Nancy Foster, spinster, Darlaston, will made 1819, probate 1823. This is the Nancy Foster mentioned in the above will made by John Foster as she mentions his legacy in a codicil. Mentions friends Edward Crowther and Stephen Falkinor or Halkinor Crowther, both of Wednesbury, Gentlemen, her sister Mary wife of Charles Adams (see above), witnesses: Jas Hunt Surry Street Strand, E.M. Hunt Clerk to Messrs Crowther Sols Wednesbury, ? Horton of Darlaston Shoemaker
Job Foster, gunlock forger of Darlaston – will made 1820, probate 1822; mentions wife Eleanor, sons Stephen, Job, Moses, daughter Hannah, son in law Thomas Butler witnesses Stephen Foster, Joseph Woodward, D Slater If anyone is researching any Foster families from Darlaston do let me know – I would love to swap information! It has been a while since I updated this blog but I suppose that the ancestors aren’t going anywhere so I might as well take my time documenting them! Since I wrote my first blog post about William Hopkins I think I have discovered what happened to his brother Ephraim. I searched in the Find My Past Worldwide Army Index for 1861 and found an Ephraim Hopkins who was a private in the 94th foot regiment stationed at Mean Meer, East Indies. I couldn’t find any more about him including any army records so I went to the National Archives in Kew and looked up the Muster Rolls for the regiment. I discovered that he had joined up in the late 1850s. He seems to have embarked for India almost immediately and he seems to have spent about 5 or 6 years there until, sadly, the last entry I found was: 9 April 1865 Died at Chundegurh en route to Kussowlie. Disease ‘bronchitis chi?’ or sri. (or chr for chronic?) I ran out of time while I was trying to trace him forwards in the records to see if there was confirmation that he joined up in Stoke on Trent so I don’t have definite proof that it was our Ephraim Hopkins. However, the only other Ephraim I can find either in birth registrations or in the censuses of the right age lived in Worthing and that one died in 1858. But next time I am at TNA I will look up the relevant muster rolls to see if I can find him immediately he enlisted, and also try and find his enlistment papers but probably the fact that he died in India explains why I couldn’t find his army records on FMP, as they are records of soldiers who were discharged to pension. But at least it probably ties up another loose end. I wonder how long it took for William to discover his fate? UPDATE: on my next visit to Kew I looked up the previous muster rolls for the regiment but could not see any entries for him under new recruits, so I don’t know exactly where he joined up or any more information – does anyone have any idea where I can go from here or whether there are likely to be any more records of him in any archives? Since I visited Walsall Local History Centre a few months ago to try and sort out all my Taylors and Fosters (and subsequently Birds) in Walsall and Darlaston, I have been following Walsall Council’s Twitter feed. A lot of their tweets aren’t really relevant, although they had an interesting 24 hours which they called #Walsall24 (the hashtag on Twitter denotes a collection of tweets which people have tagged with the same ‘title’ so you can follow all of a conversation at once on one topic). In this, the Council tweeted over a 24 hour period telling us what was happening right there and then in the Council (it was over the winter so I can’t now remember what it was, but do remember I found it an interesting insight into the various activities of the local Council over one particular time period. Over the next week they, in partnership with various other Walsall bodies like the Local History Centre and the Police, are tweeting under the hashtag #Walsall100 . This is what they describe it as (from their webpage):
It sounds interesting: one of my ancestors, Elizabeth Taylor, was running a pub in Green Lane called the Bull’s Head in the 1861 census and several members of her family were miners, and another branch of the family, the Lunns, were locksmiths and hinge makers there. So hopefully by following this Twitter feed I will find out more about the history of the town. I do think that this is a great imaginative use of a council’s Twitter feed and wish more councils would use Twitter. After he read my blog posts about William and Hannah Hopkins, my brother Dave kindly sent me a few photos that I didn’t know existed. This one is my great grandmother Minnie Hopkins in the doorway of one of the greengrocers’ shops. Dave said it was the Market Street, Fenton shop, but I think it might be the one in Church Street (now Christchurch Street) because my mother told me she remembered the arcades outside it, and if you look carefully you can see them reflected in the shop windows, along with some of the buildings opposite.
The following photo is one of the shops in London Road, Stoke, and I think it must be the one at 7 London Road because it says C Hopkins on the window, which would be William and Hannah’s son Charles who was at 7 London Road in the 1901 census.
It is really nice to see photos of the shops – this is the sort of thing which brings family history to life! I just discovered the British Library’s Sound Recordings archive and spent a couple of happy hours listening to their sound clips. They have a large collection of old voice recordings – try going to the Accents and Dialects section and putting the county of your ancestors in it, and see what comes up! They have other categories too – the oral history section and a large music collection (old country songs and that sort of thing). Definitely worth a visit to make your ancestors’ lives come alive! |
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