A soldier’s photos from 1945
The 70th anniversary of VE Day seemed like a good time to blog about my grandad’s soldier photos from WW2 – mainly because, although there’s n...
Author: Helen Barrell
Essex Record Office project to make marriage licence allegations more accessible
Marriage licence bonds and allegations have proved to be very useful in my research. Sometimes I might see that a marriage was performed by licence, and I ask t...
Workers’ Memorial Day – “Remember the dead, fight for the living.”
There was a terrible accident at the ropery on Wivenhoe High Street on 19th February 1855, when a boiler exploded. It killed three lads – Henry Browne (ag...
A witchfinder, an admiral, P. G. Wodehouse, the Boleyns and me
Strange things start to happen if you can trace your family back far enough, and if you can find a thread which is, let’s be honest… posh. In trying...
Review: Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2015
I’d never been to WDYTYA? Live before, and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Everyone speaks about it in excitable tones, and now that it’s...
FreeREG’s new look
After a great deal of work, the new interface for FreeREG is now online: FreeREG2. It sits over a database that contains 20,000,000 parish register transcriptio...
The Cigarmaker’s Gift
My great-great-grandfather, James Thomas Ashworth (1849-1890) was a cigarmaker, who lived in Bermondsey. There’s no surviving photos of him, as far as I k...
Elizabeth Salter, Lady Cowdray or… some monkeys?
Whilst researching the Cardinall family, I got slightly sidetracked with Thomas Bowes’ family. In 1603, Charles Cardinall, widowed, married Bridget Bowes,...
Video: You say Austin, I say Alston – Essex and Suffolk accents
An interesting note from 1745 in West Bergholt‘s parish register shows us that the vicar got muddled up with some of his parishioners’ surnames. Und...
August 1666 – a bad time to be a sailor?
I’m currently transcribing the earliest register for Ramsey St. Michael in Essex. Although the very early register is lost, entries survive from 1645 onwa...