One Day in History

Today, October 17th, is the day of One Day in History. The idea is for a collection of blog-posts all written today and with a slant towards a historical theme, to be collected together and recorded in the British Library to give a national snapshot of our historical musings.

Here's my contribution:

Family history has, co-incidentally, been on my mind on and off over the last week or so. It's probably seeing "Who Do You Think You Are" on the telly that has prompted me to do some digging of my own.

It's always the case with this kind of project that you wish you made a start when some older relatives were still alive to remember - my gran, on my dad's side, in particular, especially as she was the only real link with the past on that side of the family apart from my dad himself. There are so many things about family history that I’ve just taken as read that I want, now, to discover if they are true or not. It is probably likely, for instance, that my family is originally from Wantage in Oxfordshire and has a history there going back a thousand years or so at least. It’s what I’ve always been told but I don’t just what to know the where’s, but the who’s too. Wantage was, an important Saxon town and the birthplace of King Alfred, so it’s not out of the question. It’s certainly pre-Norman.

I’ve made a small start, something which is a lot easier now so many documents and records are accessible online. It means I don’t have to traipse off to Kew, or wherever, to do this kind of thing. At least for now. However I still have a lot of gaps to fill before I can reliably start working from the online census records. As these are kept secret and locked-away under the 100 year rule I have to get at least back that far, a good few generations, before finding named ancestors. It doesn’t help that several of them had a habit of using their middle-name for every-day use, and so not being known by their recorded name. This is where living relatives’ knowledge could have been useful.

I have had a dip into the online census records and found some likely candidates, but I do need clarification. I should head back to see my parents in a couple of weeks to look through their pile of old bits and pieces. I may get some names from that and if not then assuming I have some success with this I can add names and flesh-out lives of people in them. We have several that go back getting on for 80 to 100 years. So just another 900 years to go!