Money well spent

We know that money cannot buy happiness but, judiciously applied to the purchase of just the right certificate, it can dispel a whole lot of family history gloom.

When our 2xgreat grand grandmother Agnes Burton died in Queensland in 1937, her parents were recorded as John Cameron and Agnes Anderson.

There was no reason to doubt this information since Agnes had at least four adult daughters living in close proximity who would have collaborated on the task of registering her death.

Confidence in the veracity of these claims has been shaken by an extended period of trawling through transcriptions of Scottish censuses without locating one plausible candidate for this Cameron household. There was just one course of action left. I hesitantly opened my (digital) purse and paid ScotlandsPeople to view the record of the marriage of Agnes to Andrew Burton. This revealed the bride's parents to be John Cameron and Sarah Anderson!

Naturally, locating the relevant census records took a matter of moments with the correct names. And then the implications of the new information began to flow. The full name of Aunt Sally (Sarah Anderson Cameron Burton) now made perfect sense and reminded me not to forget the naming convention when facing a Scots brick wall. Was this further indirect evidence that Sally's younger sisters may not have known their grandmother? Did Agnes Cox simply assume that, because her name was Agnes and her mother was Agnes, her grandmother was also?

Family historians need a healthy streak of scepticism. We must remember that it is most important to bring it into play precisely when there seems "no reason to doubt". Trust no-one and examine the documents. It might be £1.20 well spent.

Which Sergeant?

The image of Jack Wilkinson that illustrated the post about his Military Medal is a detail taken from a postcard that he had made in England on Boxing Day 1917 and sent home early in the new year.

On the back he wrote "Snap of self and my pal Larry ...". Of course, the family members who were delighted to receive news that he was safe and well did not need him to add "that is me on the left" because they would all recognise him immediately. A family historian working almost a century later needs a little help. I have no other photograph that I know to be him.

Fortunately, at the time of enlistment, the AIF recorded and preserved a range of physical characteristics of each man. So I have a sworn statement from Captain Cummins that Jack was 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm) tall and 190 pounds (86 kg).

Measurements made on the postcard indicate that the ratio of the heights of the two pals outside the Sergeants Mess was 17:19. So Larry must be either less than 150 or more than 180 cm tall.

Since the Australian forces did not ever recruit bantam units, Larry must be the towering 6 footer and cousin Jack is indeed the square-built iron worker on the left.

Have you read it all?

In a recent post, I stated that I knew that Jane Davies traveled to Queensland with three sisters. To be entirely honest, that is both a simplification and an exaggeration.

It is a simplification because the passenger list for the Corona includes others. The document shows that the party included her father (John), step-mother (Elizabeth), brother (William) and half-sister (Mary, who died on the voyage).

The exaggeration is because that page of the list actually does not show Ellen. And I "know" that she came, only after having exhausted all avenues for confirming my original inference that the oldest daughter was not part of the family emigration. I scoured UK census and marriage records for confirmation that Ellen did not travel.

Eventually, I admitted defeat on my left-behind theory and returned to examine the passenger list more carefully. A line-by-line review of every page revealed that while Ellen was not listed as part of the family group, she was included elsewhere among the single women. (And, of course, her surname is recorded as Davis.)

It seems that the passenger list was intended to reflect the organisation of the passengers on the ship not their family relationships. So perhaps I should say that Jane, Susannah and Sarah arrived with their sister Ellen, rather than traveled with her.

And the lesson to be learned? Read the whole of every document carefully. The first piece of relevant information that you find may not be only important evidence it contains.

For the loss of a letter

When our 2xgreat grandmother Jane Davies arrived in Queensland, she traveled with her three sisters: Ellen, Susannah and Sarah.

Until recently, I knew little more about them than their names and ages upon embarkation. In particular, I knew nothing of their married names.

There was, however, a brute force approach to finding that information. Since they were young women in 1885, it was probable that they had married before 1905 and died before 1975. It should be possible to generate a list of all marriages in Queensland by women with their names (in the relevant period) and then to investigate the registration of deaths for each one identified. Anyone listed as having the correct parents (John and Jane) was very likely to be our great-aunt.

Although the technique was a little tedious, it bore fruit. I was able to identify the married names of both Ellen and Susannah in a relatively short time; but Sarah remained elusive.

Then another source gave me a name for Sarah's husband and the opportunity to check why I had not been able to locate them earlier. At the marriage, Sarah Davies had been listed as Sarah Davis. It was not a deliberate name change because at the birth of each child, Sarah's maiden name was spelled as expected. I had been thwarted by a simple slip of the pen.

Image courtesy of Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are good manners a barrier to genealogy?

Until the 1960s, it was unthinkable that any well-brought-up child would use the given name of an adult in conversation. You learned very early that the proper way to address your parent's friends was as Mr and Mrs Brown.

Of course, if the visitors were well known to the family and you saw them often, you might be invited to call them Uncle Fred and Aunt Gladys. And therein lies the problem.

Over the years I think I managed to sort out the distinction between my "real" uncles and those who had a courtesy title (for want of a better description); but what happens if I am reviewing some old letters that contain a reference to Uncle Bill.

Should I look for a link to an actual blood-relation of the distant cousin who penned the note (someone who might also be in our tree) or just his father's good friend from the tennis club?

I am a great believer in FAN genealogy (tracking friends, associates and neighbours of our ancestors) but when children spoke of them with the same title they used for their parents' siblings, it can be quite a challenge.

Whose history?

Recently, I was sitting in a group of family historians asked to respond to the question "What names are you researching?". I recognised immediately that neither of my obvious answers was appropriate to the setting. (For the record: (i) All of them or (ii) Ones that look interesting.)

I sat transfixed as my companions reported that they were "working on my X ancestors" or "focusing on a 2xgreat grandmother's maternal line" or even "investigating the parish of Y in the county Z". I could not decide whether I admired their single-minded focus or pitied their lack of imagination.

When my turn came, I said that was in an eclectic phase and mentioned one or two that were "of current interest". There the matter might have rested (with me feeling a little odd) but for the fact that on the following day James Tanner's blog was concerned with what aspects of our genealogy receive attention (and which are ignored).

First and obviously, your own surname plays a major part in determining your genealogical research interest. This is natural and is wrapped up with issues of identity and family traditions. But how we form our predilection to one family or another is a little more complex.

That post on Genealogy's Star prompted me to revisit the uncomfortable thought that perhaps I do not "do genealogy" in the same way as serious family historians.

The scope of my own research is directly related to my motivation for undertaking it. I have no religious purpose; nor do I hold out any hope of establishing a connection to (inheritable) wealth or power. I understand that the achievements of those with whom I share a name reflect no particular credit on me. I don't crave contact with dozens of distant cousins.

I do what I do for the intellectual satisfaction of confronting a mass of obscured and/or tangled information and transforming it into something accessible to others who may have an interest. It is the same reason that I headed off to work each day for 40 years. I enjoy puzzle-solving and explaining.

For my own purposes, any genetic or legal connection that I have with those I study is almost irrelevant. The suggestion that I would study "my" ancestors but not those of my spouse is incomprehensible to me. This blog adopts the perspective of our children and always refers to "our family" because the principal audience for my research is our descendants.

An analysis of the first year of posts on this blog reveals that there are costs associated with my broad (alright, scatter-gun) approach. I do have more dangling story lines awaiting closure than might be desirable, but how could I decide that someone's tale was not worthy of attention?

Insofar as we are the product of our ancestry, it is illogical to laud the sturdy yeoman farmer while trying to hide the dipsomaniac barber. The family tree will have some gnarled branches and a few feeble shoots that also warrant (even demand) investigation.

In my defence, I call James Tanner again.

I guess the challenge we have as genealogists is to attempt to level the playing field, that is, to find information on all of the family members so that the family gets its genealogy recorded and not just certain individuals.

Battling historical ignorance

It seems appropriate to mark my 100th post with some observations on the teaching and learning of history. As a child was enthralled by ancient history but at secondary school (utterly illogical) timetabling restrictions meant that I did not study any history beyond Year 8. As a result, my working life was spent in the fields of science and mathematics. That is how careers were shaped.

Nevertheless, I do consider myself to be reasonably well-informed about many areas of history. At least, until I come to investigate them as background for some aspect of my research into our ancestors.

The looming centenary of the Great War will focus public attention on the 1914-18 period as never before. And if my relative ignorance is any indication, then it will be much needed.

Two members of our family were among the fallen in what we now term World War I. Robert BURTON died at Gallipoli in 1915 and Charles COLEY on the Somme in 1918. I thought that I knew quite a lot about one campaign and a little about the other. I was wrong.

Like most Australian kids, I "did" Gallipoli in school every April. The dawn landing, Simpson and his donkey, the stupidity (or perfidy) of British command, Lone Pine, mateship, and bully beef tins attached to rifles for the evacuation combined to build a comprehensive picture of the ultimate ANZAC conflict.

So why was I surprised to learn that Robert died fighting in an Irish regiment a decade before anyone in that branch of the family ever contemplated moving to Australia?

I freely conceded that I knew less about the Somme — mud and weeks spent in trenches pretty much encompassed my view. The modern fascination with Villers-Bretonneux as an alternative site for Anzac Day commemoration had some association with the general area but I could not explain how.

That the momentous Battle for Mont St Quentin might rival Gallipoli for its significance in shaping Australian military lore and certainly surpasses it in terms of its impact on the course of the war did not cross my mind.

Learning that the battle in which Charles died was almost exactly the opposite of my naive preconceptions of the Western Front — short sharp skirmishes in which small groups operated almost autonomously moving rapidly over open ground — causes me to doubt many of the truths that I have always known(sic) about other historical events.

It is never too late to learn and there is no doubt that today I have a different (if not necessarily, a stronger) motivation. Yet, I cannot help but wonder what I would be missing if I were to regard genealogy as a form of philately and was happy simply to collect names and dates, while remaining blissfully ignorant of the fact that the past in which our ancestors lived and died is far more complicated that we imagine.

Querypic

It is a great advantage for a family historian to be curious and open to new directions because that enables you to find unexpected nuggets of information about the lives of your ancestors.

It is a terrible handicap for a family historian to be curious and open to new directions because that leads you into fascinating and unproductive by-ways that take time away from studying your ancestors.

When a researcher has one of the second type of days, he should just try to hide the shameful secret and promise to focus on the main task tomorrow.

But sometimes the thing you stumble across is so cool that you have to tell other people about it.

In the course of compiling a list of references in Trove to the Brisbane Band, I came across a most intriguing tool developed by Wragge Labs called querypic. This creates "a quick snapshot of your search query, displaying the total number of articles your query matches over a span of years". In fact it gives the choice of either absolute or relative frequency of matching articles; and it was the differences between these that led me astray.

Could there be a clearer indication of the effect of increasing size of each issue and increasing frequency of publication over a century than in these two plots. The real growth in the absolute number of matching references is swamped by the much greater increase in the total pool as the industry grows.

I did manage to justify some of time spent on this new toy by noting the strong peaks between 1857 and 1875 just as I expected. But, even in the relative frequency plot, the spike at 1929-30 demands further investigation. Except that I promised to focus ...

Socially acceptable stalking?

I do not often spend time contemplating why I work on our family history. After all, there are too many fascinating (but unproductive) by-ways to take time away from my real research to need to waste more on introspection.

But as I checked progress on my efforts to define a particular ancestor, I did muse just a little on what I was doing. I had not only listed his parents and his children but also gathered information on his schooling and employment history, his home addresses (with details of neighbours) and was about to embark on a search of the newspapers for more background.

It occurred to me that if I knew that someone was collecting all that about me, I would probably feel a little uncomfortable and question his motives.

As I look across a collection of dossiers that include a suspicious death, three (or was it four) husbands, court appearances and an apparent complete change of identity, I wonder whether the uniform of a family historian should include a trench coat, snap-brim fedora and a battered pair of tan wingtip shoes.

Perhaps it is as well that there is no right to privacy post mortem or some of what we do routinely might attract unfavourable attention.

Nevertheless I will continue to carry out my research without fear or favour. If any of our ancestors want to opt-out of the story, they need only send me a message.

Finding J T Hollingworth

The fact that J T Hollingworth was present in the marital home on Census Day 1891 was crucial to finding more information about him.

From that, I knew that I was looking for a man born about 1845 in Lancaster. Unfortunately, birth records for Lancashire showed no matching person.

Family Search Standard Finder revealed that Staley Bridge (or Staleybridge or Stalybridge) actually lies in Cheshire and that is where the birth of John Thomas was recorded. It also was where he was living with an uncle in 1861 (prior to his marriage to Sarah) when he was employed as a cotton piecer.

While this leaves me no closer to answering my original question -- Where was John at the 1871 and 1881 Censuses? -- it does raise two new questions -- How did a boy in a cotton mill become a Gas Fitter? What brought John Hollingworth across the border into Wales?

In fact, the new questions may be related. Although spinning and weaving factories were widespread throughout the English midlands, there was little evidence of this industry in North Wales. There is only a small chance that J T Hollingworth moved to follow the same line of work.

This suggestion is supported by the next Census return; but in a manner that further complicates the issue. John is neither a cotton mill worker nor a gas fitter. In April 1871 (after his marriage to Sarah) he was a railway porter living in Tranmere, Birkenhead.

It seems most likely that he would have been employed by the Great Western Railway which ran a Birkenhead to London Express service as well as servicing most of Wales (including Rhyl, where the station opened in 1848).

It is certainly plausible that John joined the railway company and was posted to serve in Rhyl before being moved elsewhere in the network. One might be tempted to comment on the fact that he was lodging on Merseyside with the Davies family; were it not for the fact that the name is so common.

It is easy to understand that a young man might decide to change employment yet again if his second career took him away from his family for extended periods.

Although the scientific curiosity of destructively-distilling coal to produce a flammable gas had been known since the mid-seventeenth century, the widespread availability of a suitable technology was a recent development. The 1860s were the golden age of coal gas development. For a young man seeking a stable career in a growing industry, a trade supporting the reticulation of gas to households would have been very attractive (in much the same way that digital communication is today).

If there was one thing that Wales had plentiful supplies of, it was coal. So there would be no shortage of work as one town after another established furnaces and networks of pipes connecting them to homes. So it is not all strange that John Hollingworth should go home to train as a gas fitter, but it did not enable him to settle. It is the nature of an infrastructure roll-out that it demands an itinerant workforce.

John's growing family shows that he returned to Vale Road in Rhyl regularly and was unlikely to have established a "home" elsewhere. So I expected to find him in the Census of 1881 as a lodger wherever he happened to be employed at the time, and this document shows him staying in a pub in Ecclesfield (Yorkshire).

So was his presence at Vale Road on 5 April 1891 merely another weekend at home before leaving for more work or a sign that he had settled? His stated occupation suggests John was probably still a mobile worker at this time.

By 1901, he has changed his job description to Standing Engine Driver, indicating that he has turned his skills to a new field to enable him to live full-time at home. In 1911, John Thomas was living in retirement at 80 Vale Road with his eldest son John. (Sarah had died in 1906.) But in a sense he had returned to the trade that shaped so much of the lives of his family. His occupation is listed as retired Gas Fitter.

That should conclude my study of J T Hollingworth. After all, however fascinating his story may be, he is not a direct ancestor. The husband of a sister of our 3xgreat grandmother is about as tangential to my main concerns as you are likely to get.

And yet ... I know nothing about Samuel Fielding, the uncle (presumably his mother's brother) with whom he was living in 1861. Where were John's parents?

Why would anyone believe that a family history can ever be finished?

Is he talking about me?

Last week I wrote a (slightly) light-hearted list of things that I wished my ancestors had done and it included the following

Have everyone practise spelling the family name in the same way; all the time.

Then just a few days later, James Tanner had a post called Is Spelling Important? in which he highlighted the damage that can be done by a dogmatic emphasis on spelling names in just one way.

... the real issue for genealogists is whether the way a name is spelled has any significance whatsoever? This becomes an issue because of some researcher's dogmatic ignorance of spelling changes. They insist on establishing relationships based almost entirely on the way the name is spelled. They also change the spelling of names found in source records to conform to their preconceived notions of how the name should be spelled. ... You don't have to be involved with helping people with their research for long before you run into this problem and it is a real problem.

Oh dear, was I guilty of the sorts of irrational behaviour that James had identified as barriers to success in genealogy?

I plead not guilty. I do not automatically accept or reject potential ancestors on the basis of how their names are spelled. I recognise that there have been variations through time. I acknowledge that people whose names are recorded in different forms are actually part of the same family. I accept the right of each person to adopt their own form of the name; whether by accident or design.

I just wish that they did not do it! It's not about them. This is all about me and my comfort.

There is nothing so frustrating as having constructed a search query that absolutely must catch the target person (if they exist) and to have it return empty. And then to realise that the spelling setting in on "exact". Toggle that switch and (as if by magic) 2xgreat grandfather appears with an extra "s" or without the "e".

Before you judge me harshly for complaining about the need to set one switch on a search engine, let me tell you how some major products deal with spelling variants.

On the left is Family Search and on the right is FindMyPast. Each one includes a simple tick box to control the spelling searched. There is a small but significant difference. The effects are exactly opposite. If you tick both boxes, then FS will ignore any spelling other than what is entered while FMP will look for any acceptable variations.

If you work with both these tools open in tabs on your browser (as I tend to do), then you need to remember that the ticks must be opposite to have the same effect. Whatever you do on one site, must be matched by the reverse action on the other.

Ancestry does things in the Family Search way. WeRelate has a drop down list that defaults to the FindMyPast approach. Feel free to make up your own list of other search engines.

Occasionally I am tempted to write a stern letter to someone-in-authority about the need to adopt a consistent user interface for the sake of the clients; or I could just go back to abusing the ancestors for their sloppy habits. I suspect it will have as much effect.

An absent brother-in-law

In 1861, our 3xgreat grandmother Jane and her sister Sarah were living at home. The two girls, then aged 15 and 12, must have had important roles in looking after their three younger siblings while Susannah ran the family business with their older brothers John and Joseph. By the Census of 1871, both girls had moved out; probably to begin families of their own.

Since Jane was our director ancestor, I knew her married name (Davies) and that should make her easy to locate. I expected that tracing Sarah might be a little more difficult.

Jane and John Davies were quickly found living with their two small children. By a stroke of good fortune, their neighbour (also with two toddlers) was named Sarah and just three years younger than Jane. Was Sarah Hollingworth formerly Sarah Davies?

A search of the registration of marriages confirmed that Sarah had in fact married John Thomas Hollingworth early in 1867. In most cases that would be all that I wanted to know about the brother-in-law of an ancestor, but for one odd feature — J T Hollingworth had not been at home on the census day.

There could be many possible explanations for this. He might be dead, or in prison or hospital, or simply working in another area. To check these possibilities through a more extensive census search, I needed to know his year and place of birth. That should be easy enough to find by looking for he and Sarah in the next (1881) census.

In 1881, Sarah and her children were living in the old family home with her mother Susannah. Sarah reported that she was still "married" and with her son Samuel Hollingworth being 10 months old, there are sound grounds for believing that her husband had at least visited recently. But once again, John Thomas was missing from the census record of the Hollingworth family.

When the next census was conducted on 5 April 1891, John Hollingworth was at home and listed as head of a household made up of Sarah and seven children ranging in age from less than 1 to 23 years old. His birth data, so long a mystery, indicated that he had been born in Stalybridge, Lancashire in 1845. Of particular interest is that, while Sarah had described herself as a "labourer's wife", John was a Gas Fitter by trade.

That should provide an ample basis for returning to the Census of 1871 and 1881 to find just where JT Hollingworth had been.

Who is family?

Traditional genealogies focussed on a single pedigree, or bloodline, that showed the line of descent linking the client to his (preferably rich and powerful) ancestor. Females were necessary for the process of producing progeny but, unless she had a very powerful father, there was no reason to include more than the individual concerned. The idea of including references to the mother's ancestors was not only too difficult, it was simply unnecessary.

Modern family historians have gone beyond the surname obsession and recognise that ancestors on the distaff side are just as worthy of study. Our understanding of our family history is now immeasurably richer than in times past because of this; but the amount of research required has grown even more.

For all practical purposes, each family historian has an "infinite" number of direct ancestors to be researched. Even if you have located every one of your ancestors after a particular point, when you step back in time by one generation you add as many unknown ancestors as you have researched to date. It is an inverse Xeno's paradox that really does mean that you can never finish.

So why would anyone choose to research people who are not their direct ancestors? A collateral ancestor is someone related but not in your direct line of descent such as an aunt, uncle, or cousin. They are people with whom you share a common ancestor. Collateral ancestors in the current or recent generations may be personally known to you. They are the people you refer to collectively as the relatives or the relations with affection or sometimes exasperation. Remember "you can pick your friends but not your relations". You may learn about other collateral ancestors when you find that someone else is researching "your" 2xxgreat grandfather. Your common ancestor may form part of many different collateral lines. A few of those lines may seem worthy of further investigation.

But some of us cast the research net even wider. The term "tangent line" can be used to refer to a line of descent that touches one in which you are interested. Think about the younger brother of great grandfather's second wife. He has no genetic or legal connection to you in any way, but if he is rich or famous or evil or outrageous enough, then he can exercise a fascination that draws you into his story.

In my case, it is enough that these passers-by in the stream of history are puzzling. One of the powerful motivations for me as a family historian is problem-solving. If I encounter an individual or family group with information that is incomplete or inconsistent, then I want to resolve the issue. Whether the people involved are direct or even collateral ancestors does not really influence my level of enthusiasm.

I know it seems very disrespectful to my many-times great grandparents, but sometimes heading off on a tangent is just more fun.

A lesson learned

I recently encountered an intriguing line in an old census, conducted a brief search, and published a plausible speculation concerning an explanation.

I did so, not because I naively believed that I had "proved" anything, but because I naively believed that I would be able to post a timely follow-up demonstrating the need to eliminate the other possibilities for the identity of Joseph Davies (b 1882).

Simple arithmetic should have shown me that I was gravely mistaken. Matching the details of each of 10 individuals at three (and possibly four) nominated points in time was always going to require at least an order of magnitude greater time than I had allowed.

I have not abandoned the task; just assigned it a lower priority.

Ancient manuscripts

The recent QSA Bulletin from the Queensland State Archives describes plans for a forthcoming skills workshop titled Deciphering old handwriting.

That sounded particularly useful and I had visions of investigating long esses and the various abbreviations that were common in former times. In order to whet our appetites, the Archives posted digital images of the types of document that you might need help to interpret.

At least one of the documents selected was a very poor choice. It was not very old at all and the writing was just the same as I was taught in school ...

It can be quite confronting when you are forced to recognise that you are turning from a descendant into an ancestor!

A solitary vice?

I have spent quite some time over the past week contributing to the new site being established at Stack Exchange. Genealogy and Family History is described as "Q&A for expert genealogists and people interested in genealogy or family history". The site is now in public beta which means procedures are not yet fixed but all are welcome to give it a try.

The early discussions have caused me to reflect on a number of fundamentals about what I do and how I go about it. Among the issues kicked around have been:

• What are the differences between genealogy and family history?
• Why do genealogists use the same terminology as historians, but with different meanings?
• If you consider yourself a family historian, which discipline do you adopt?
• When does information become evidence?
• What is the significance or the value of an unsuccessful search?

But the big question that has been exercising my mind is "How collaborative can family history be?".

I know we all enjoy participation in meetings of our local societies, attending conferences and engaging in on-line conversation. But isn't the real work of a family historian done when inhaling paper dust in a reading room or bathed in the late-night glow of your computer screen.

There can be a real challenge in puzzle-solving to break a chink in someone else's brickwall, but the feeling is just not the same as with one of your own. Tales of my great aunt Ermentrude are a source of endless fascination, but your relatives are really not all that interesting.

On the other hand, there are occasions when another family historian mentions a way he or she approached a particular problem, a new resource or a novel technique that immediately sparks thoughts of how you can do the same to move your own research forward. Then it does not matter that you have no real interest in birth registration in nineteenth century Patagonia because that person is discussing something of value in a context that you are passionate about.

Perhaps that is why there are so many Family History blogs that no one person can possibly read them all on a regular basis. And why Stack Exchange: Genealogy and Family History has attracted 350 members in two weeks; all eager to build their own expertise by helping others find answers to their problems.

Many questions posted to date (and there have been more than 150) have been through a series of edits to get them into a form that maximises value for both the person who asked and future readers. They are not perfect yet, but the purpose of beta is to learn.

Has participation in this new site convinced me of the value of collaborative genealogy? Well, I am still happiest at my desk poring, jotting and typing in blissful solitude, but there can be no doubt that working the right "others" can certainly enhance my efforts. Especially if they bring the type of expertise and relevant experience that this group is assembling.

Not my reality

I freely confess that I enjoy watching the Who do you think you are television series. I like the British original, I loved the local SBS version, and I even watch the American episodes.

But I was concerned to read a piece that referred to the series as forming part of the continuing passion for reality television.

Reality? The shows are entertaining and, at times, quite informative but they have nothing to do with the real world of how I do family history.

How many of the celebrity hosts who began by chatting to a close family member encountered anyone who said any of the following?

• Why on earth would you be interested in all that?
• They will still be dead when you finish, you know.
• There were a lot of photos, but who knows where they are now.
• Mum and Dad didn't talk about that much.
• But what if you find someone awful in our past?

Then they fire up the website of this.season.sponsor.com and search on-line resources. Have you noticed that each ancestor's details appear in exactly the order they are needed? No-one ever has a cousin of the same name to confound the issue. There is no such thing as a variant spelling after the sixteenth century.

Next it is off to the archives to view the few(?) sources that have not yet been captured for viewing over the interwebs. The microfilm or packet of fiche that is needed is always available and there is never a wait to use the good reader. When the document is found (amazingly always near the beginning of the roll) there is not a single frame that is skewed, out of focus, too dark or shows a torn page.

And then we have the segment that really irks me. In the field, at a site significant to the history, we meet a local expert who offers some general background before opening the envelope to reveal a "document we found". Most of us can only dream of that.

Somewhere in the vaults of the producers there must be a whole lot of preliminary research on the family history of actors, sportsmen and other celebrities whose tale did not make it to air. I wonder would it be worse to be told that the program would not proceed because the evidence needed cannot be whipped up in the required timeframe, or that there are plenty of documents to show that your family was really ordinary and boring?

Which gives me an idea for the next big hit. Watch our for the 2013 series of Why do you think we care?

Making a date

According to the top of this page, today is the 16th of October. We have no doubt that tomorrow will be the 17th and that yesterday was the 15th. But yesterday was also the 430th anniversary of October 5 1582 — the day that never was.

In 1582, people (who owned a calendar and could read it) went to bed on the evening of October 4 and woke on October 15. Pope Gregory had decreed that the way dates were recorded needed to change to bring the human calendar back into line with the seasons. If nothing was done, eventually Christmas would be celebrated in the middle of summer, which would surely mark the end of civilisation as he knew it.

If your iPhone has trouble coping with the beginning and end of daylight saving time each year, imagine the difficulty of rolling out an update for every calendar in the whole world.

Not the whole world, as it turned out, because this was the time of the Reformation and in most protestant nations a new calendar promoted by the pope was rejected out of hand. If you have ancestors from Ulster, you will understand exactly how people reacted.

Nevertheless this was not just another papist conspiracy. There was sound astronomy underlying the decision and eventually the rest of the western world fell into line by selecting a day on which dates marked on the old style (Julian) calendar would be skipped. This occurred in 1752 in Britain but not until 1917 in Russia.

If that change had not been made, today would have been October 3 so the 430th anniversary of the 5th would be the day after tomorrow instead of yesterday. This highlights both the arbitrary nature of any calendar and the difficulties of getting it slightly wrong.

There is nothing inherently superior in our way of recording dates. Many other cultures maintain perfectly serviceable calendars that are not based on the Julian or Gregorian models. But any system needs to be internally consistent. Pope Gregory wanted to celebrate feast days for saints on fixed days in sequence with Easter observations held at times determined by the equinox. With the old style calendar, he could not get both right at the same time.

Apart from occasional arguments about the need to add a leap second for astronomers and physicists, there appears no need to make any further change to the system devised by Gregory's advisers. Which is just as well, because I need more time to come to terms with pre-1752 dates.

Late wedding date

Every family tree contains individuals and events that might be considered scandalous or amusing according to the bias of the observer. One of these snippets can form the starting point for a conversation that might engage family members who find the more scholarly aspects of genealogical research uninteresting.

I believed the tale of a several times great grandmother whose first task after giving birth was to get married fell into that category, but was deflated when my listener insisted that I had misinterpreted the calendar. I needed to learn about Lady Day.

The Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin (25 March) was known as [Our] Lady['s] Day. Along with Midsummer Day (24 June), Michaelmas (29 September) and Christmas (25 December), it formed the Quarter Days that divided the year. Although our immediate assumption is that these days mark the end of each quarter year, until 1752 they were treated as beginnings.

In particular, Lady Day was regarded as the first day of the New Year. This meant that January and February fell at the end of the old year (except in Scotland, where the heathens insisted on celebrating January 1).

So in this chronological list of marriages in Doncaster, 11 February 1579 comes after 21 December 1579 but just a few weeks before 17 April 1580.

When this (pre-Gregorian) calendar was in use, it was not unusual for a wedding to be celebrated in May and the christening in February of the same year. Indeed, it would have been quite common.

With this new-found knowledge I have resolved to exercise great care in interpreting dates on any pre-1760 English records.

But does it alter my story?

The marriage I had identified took place late in the nineteenth century when the western calendar was in its modern form, so the facts are clear. Interpretation is, of course, another matter entirely.

Was the wedding delayed until after the birth by the young couple, their families, or the celebrant? One possibility is that the father/groom was employed elsewhere and unable to return in time for the ceremonies to occur in the customary sequence. Which suggests another line of investigation…

Footnote: While this has enabled me to learn more about a fascinating aspect of our history, I will probably continue to associate Lady Day with God Bless the Child rather than the calendar.

Lost streets

Despite its name, much of family history is actually concerned with geography. Knowing when your ancestors did something is much richer when you know also where the event took place.

Many of the documentary records that we use provide very detailed spatial information. Upon finding an address with house number and street name, the first thing that a modern family historian will do is to enter that information into Google Maps.

If we are fortunate, Street View will allow us to look for the ancestral home without ever setting foot outside our own front door.

Of course, there will be times when no match can be found in the Google Map database. Perhaps through wartime damage or more recent urban renewal, the old street has gone forever.

When confronted with this situation, I was about to close the file and move on when I decided to run the address through Google Search. Perhaps there might be a link to an old document that mentions it and other streets in the same neighbourhood that would allow me to identify a general area even if the precise location is unknown.

What I found was a magnificent service offered by the Glasgow Guide. On their website they have a table that cross-references "lost" or changed street names and their modern replacement or equivalent.

Armed with the knowledge that Ure Street has been renamed to Uist, I could easily go back to Google Maps and view the area. Even after more than a century of changes (and some obvious gentrification), it is possible to get a sense of what life might have been like tucked between the docks, the industrial estates and the main road.

How wonderful it would be if all local authorities were to make public a list of street changes. Thank you Glasgow Guide .