Wednesday 22 April 2009

Another Certificate - Peter GUTHRIE death

I've ordered a couple of certificates from the GRO in Belfast now and I've been very happy with the service. It costs £12 to buy a certificate from them but always seem to arrive within a week even if I've been a bit sketchy with some of the information I've provided.

Peter GUTHRIE was my gtx2 grandfather. He died on 14 May 1888 at the age of 91in the townland of Pharis in the parish of Loughguile in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. He was a farmer and I think that the farm he had was probably the same one that my mother was brought up on.

He was a widower but so far I've had no joy in finding out who he was married to. His son, Daniel, married Jane LOUGHRIDGE. I have no idea if Daniel had any siblings. Peter appears on Griffith's Valuation in 1851 but that doesn't give me anymore information about the family.

I am slowly piecing together bits of information about Peter but the most interesting bit can be found here. According to this book one of Peter's fields was called "the graveyard field" because they found human remains and coffins!

Latest Certificate - EAGLES/JAMES marriage

Another certificate landed on the doormat today.

It's for the marriage of my husband's gtx3 grandfather and gtx3 grandmother.

Their names were James EAGLES and Sarah JAMES. James and Sarah got married in Croydon, Surrey on 30th August 1854. Strangely enough my husband actually lived in Croydon for a few years without knowing that he had a family history there.

James' occupation is given as coachman - this tallies up with the census entries I have for him. According to wikipedia, a coachman was the servant who preceded the chauffeur in domestic service before cars.

The certificate also gives me the names of James and Sarah's fathers. William EAGLES was a carpenter and Edward JAMES was a gamekeeper.

One of the witnesses was Mary Ann JAMES, I'm wondering if James and Sarah named their first child after this person - Mary Ann EAGLES is my husband's gtx2 grandmother. Perhaps this witness was a sister of James?? Something else to investigate

Sunday 12 April 2009

Saturday Night Genealogy Easter Eggs

So I'm trying out Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun on Genea-Musings - a Genealogy Easter Egg Hunt!!

The first step is to pick a place from my research that I don't know much about. I've picked Gibraltar. My husband's great grandmother comes from there and I'm intrigued to see if I can find out more about her and her family and how they ended up with a family in England.

Step two is to go to Google and put in the place name, the state name, and the words "genealogy" and "society." I decided to search on [gibraltar genealogy society].

For step 3 I pick the web site that looks the most interesting or promising, and search for data about your ancestor(s) that lived there. The first result that came up was the Gibraltar Genealogy website.

So let's see what I can find out.

The first stop was the message board to see if there was anyone looking for the same family as me - ROBBINS/FAIRCHILD/HERNANDEZ. Unfortunately I didn't find anything but I may leave a message.

I then followed the links on the website. Many ended up at sites that were no longer updated (some didn't even exist!) but there were a few that might give me potential leads. I will update the blog if any of these come to anything.

Thanks to Randy for highlighting a new and fun way forward though!!!

Friday 10 April 2009

Oops - it's been a month....

Can't believe it's been over a month since I updated this blog.

Life has been busy - I've been away on a girlie weekend, then had a christening to organise and just got back from a wedding.

Hopefully things will get back to normal now and I'll be able to update on my genealogy. I've managed to get at least 1 certificate in the last month or so, continued organising and managed to do my first of the month back up onto our new hard drive.