For many of us Anne Reid is a familiar face on our TV screens. Perhaps we remember her as Valerie Barlow from Coronation Street, or Jean in Dinner ladies?Or it may be from the more recent series of programmes in which she stars along side Derek Jacobi as Celia Dawson in Last Tango in Halifax.
Acclaimed British actress Anne Reid MBE, is the next of the celebrities to feature in the Who Do You Think You Are? programmes. In her episode she discovers that her family tree features ancestors who were employed as solicitor’s clerks in Liverpool, but who came originally from Scotland. Tracing this respectable line further back in the records she comes across a Scots schoolmaster and becomes upset to find out that he ended up marooned on the other side of the world having served a sentence for fraud that saw him transported to Australia from Scotland.
Read TheGenealogist's full article here...
On this day in 1752 the 3rd of September became the 14th as part of the changes caused by the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar into England and Wales and crowds of people rioted on the streets demanding, 'Give us back our 11 days.'
The Gregorian reform had started in 1582, in Pope Gregory XIII’s time but took some time to be adopted by Europe.
The first day of the year, or Supputation of the Year became the 1st of January under the new calendar system. Prior to this the year began on Lady Day, or the 25th March. The Calendar Act 1750 had changed this situation, so that the day after 31 December 1751 was the 1 January 1752. As a consequence, 1751 was a very short year – it ran only from 25 March to 31 December!
The year had previously been broken up into quarters, still in use for some legal practices, Lady Day (25th March), Midsummers Day (24th June), Michaelmas Day (29th September) and Christmas day (25th December).
To throw even more confusion into this situation, Scotland had already changed the first day of the year to 1 January in 1600 and so 1599 was a short year there ( remember that in 1600, Scotland was a completely separate kingdom). What has to be recognised is that when King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England in 1603, the possibilities of date confusion must have been very large indeed. Today it confuses many a family historian.
The loss of the 11 days was required to balance the calendar with the solar year, as it had gone out of sequence over the span of the centuries.
Choirmaster, Gareth Malone, is not the first in his family to perform to an audience. Music and drama is in his blood. From an ancestor that appeared at King George V’s Coronation Gala to a Dublin impresario.
Tracing back the family to Gareth's great-great-grandfather, researchers have found that he was an English actor, comedian and singer named Edmund James Payne. Gareth's forebear begun on the stage in the 1880s playing more than 300 roles including parts in The Shop Girl and The Messenger Boy. A critic from the time described him as a "little man with a very funny face with which he could work wonders" while another report says that Payne was a "universal favourite and a very great comedian".
Research in Dublin has also unearthed that Gareth's four times great grandfather Daniel Lowery was in the theatre. Family legends, passed down to Gareth, were that Daniel had been a theatre impresario in Dublin. It has been discovered that there had actually been two Daniel Lowerys, father and son - the latter having been the manager and impresario while the father had the talent and had created the theatrical legacy.
Read full article about Gareth Malone's ancestry on TheGenealogist's website.
As September rolled in and autumn replaces summer, family history research returns to many people's mind. What better time, then to read about this fascinating subject of researching your family tree in an online periodical designed and written by a team of best in class journalists to support and guide you through your genealogical journey?
In this month's edition of Discover Your Ancestors Periodical you can read the following articles:
‘A true and perfect inventory’: Melvyn Jones describes the domestic comforts of a late 17th century farming family
Picturing the past:Nick Thorne explores how a free online image archive adds atmosphere to family history research
A day at the museum: For the last 400 years, museums have helped people to experience the world’s treasures
WDYTYA? is back: The popular genealogy TV show returns looking at various celebrity trees
Are benefactors in the frame: Unique research into the lives of people who donated paintings to Glasgow’s museums
The legacies of history: Jill Morris explores wills from the 14th to 19th centuries, available online
History in the details:Jayne Shrimpton on clogs
Regulars: News & Events / Books / Place in focus: Northumberland / Classifieds
http://www.discoveryourancestors.co.uk/subscribe
Model and former wife of Sir Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall is a Texan who moved to Europe in her teens. Her father’s family, however, emigrated to the USA from Lancashire in the 1880s. Jerry’s mother’s side were from pioneering roots, trailing west across America at the time of the Frontier.
Hall's investigations into her family history take her all over the USA as she traces the movements of her pioneer ancestors, who at various times owned large chunks of farmland, often fighting native Americans in order to hang on to their newly acquired property. "I can't believe such important information was lost all these years!" she gasps.
Read a full article here...and find out more about Jerry Hall's ancestors.
Mark Thomson, Director General of Her Majesty’s Passport Office, has been formally appointed as head of the General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO).
Mr Thomson, who is also Director General of Her Majesty’s Passport Office and sits on the executive management board of the Home Office, becomes the 21st Registrar General since the civil registration of births, deaths and marriages began in England and Wales in 1837.
His appointment to act as head of the General Register Office (GRO), formally agreed by the Queen, has been made following the departure of the previous Registrar General, Paul Pugh, who has taken up a new role outside HM Passport Office.
Registrar General Mark Thomson said:
The General Register Office is a very important part of the services provided by Her Majesty’s Passport Office and I am honoured to be appointed Registrar General.
I look forward to continuing my work with colleagues in GRO on modernising the registration systems and to ensure our customers receive the best, most efficient service possible.
The GRO oversees registration services to the public, including the registration of civil marriage, civil partnerships, births, deaths, stillbirths and adoptions.
It is the Registrar General’s responsibility to make the regulations that govern registrars and the registration processes. He is also required by law to create a free search index of registration records available to the public and to issue certificates on request.
For more information about the Registrar General and the GRO, visit the organisation page of Her Majesty’s Passport Office.
The Sir Derek George Jacobi's story on Who Do You Think You Are? was one of equal contrasts. Though we found out that he is from working class roots in London, with a boot maker for a grandfather, as we delved further back in time we discovered that his family are from much grander stock, one having mixed with Louis the Sun King until his religious belief had him imprisoned and he escaped to England.
Sir Derek's ancestor was Joseph de la Plaigne, a financier and French Protestant from Bordeaux who had to conceal his religious beliefs from his monarch in order to remain in favour with the Catholic Louis XIV. In 1701 de la Plaigne was found out to be a Protestant and incarcerated in prison at Loches in the Loire Valley. Making his escape he, like many Huguenots, made his way to England.
In 1708, at the age of 70 and living in England, Joseph de la Plaigne married Salome de la Bastide. Researchers have found that the wedding took place on the 7th August at St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, London. The couple's son, Guillaume, was born soon after this with his christening taking place on the 28th May 1709. The now elderly Joseph died not a long time later and researchers from TheGenealogist website have been able to find his will in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills collection accessible on TheGenealogist where if you are a subscriber you will be able to search for images of the actual Wills that had been lodged with the PCC for probate. In de la Plaigne's case the document shows that Joseph was born at Bordeaux and was living in the Parish of St Anne's, Westminster when he made the will.
To see a copy of the will and to read TheGenealogist's full article on Sir Derek Jacobi's family history click this link. TheGenealogist website has a broad suite of resources to find ancestors in the records.
The National Archives blog has announced the release of the latest batch of the MI5 files to view at TNA in Kew while a selection have been digitized.
They write that "As always they contain a fascinating new glimpse into the murky world of Second World War and Cold War espionage and provide extraordinary insights into some of the most famous of all spies."
http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/grandmother-us-spy-recruited-philby/
The family story of Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg, known better by her stage name of Jane Seymour, is an emotional rollercoaster of a ride. Her Father’s family are Jewish while her mother was a Dutch Protestant who had endured being in a Second World War Japanese concentration camp.
The television episode followed Jane as she discovered more about her two great-aunts, Michaela and Jadwiga who had experienced the horrors of Poland under Nazi occupation.
TheGenealogist website, meanwhile, has discovered that Jane's paternal grandfather, Leon Frankenberg, had come to Britain after his family had fled persecution in Eastern Europe. He was the lucky one as he established his own business and became a respected member of his local synagogue community as recorded in the London Jewish Seatholder's records now searchable on TheGenealogist.
Read full article on TheGenealogist site and discover more about Jane Seymour's family history.
Did you see the first programme in the 12th series of Who Do You Think You Are? on TV?
Paul Hollywood, from The Great British Bake Off, was taken back to his grandfather's WWII experience in North Africa where his grandfather was sent as soon as he had completed his training. At Medjez el Bab in Tunisia, Norman's Light Anti-Aircraft division were protecting the infantry from enemy air attacks at the time of the major Allied offensive to take Tunis from the German forces. With the enemy throwing bombs and missiles at them it was hard on these men.
From there Paul travelled to Italy, where he learnt about how his grandfather was part of the landing force that became trapped on the beaches at Anzio for four months, surrounded by Germans and all the while under constant aerial bombardment. Paul gets to see the landing area where his grandfather and the other men would have felt like sitting ducks, with death and devastation all around them. Norman and his comrades finally managed to land and their gun was then transported five miles inland. Unfortunately for them the regiment was soon surrounded by the enemy in a dangerously exposed area. Huge numbers of men had no choice but to dig themselves into 7ft long fox holes and spend months trapped, coming under repeated German shell attacks.
In May 1944 and thanks to Norman's regiment's extraordinary efforts, the stalemate at Anzio was broken. The next month the Allied armies went on to liberate Rome, but not without the loss of 14,000 lives. Paul's grandfather brought back from this conflict a visible memento of his terrifying time. He had developed a facial tic that stayed with him until he died.
Researching his line even further back, Paul Hollywood was seen in the Who Do You Think You Are? programme to use TheGenealogist's 'family forename search' to find Alexander McKenzie, a Wood Turner who had come down to Liverpool from his native Glasgow.
Following his Scottish family line up to Glasgow he then found that the next generation in the McKenzie family was a Glasgow Policeman, down from the Highlands, who had a certain amount of trouble avoiding alcohol.
Paul then discovered that his great, great, great, great grandfather Donald McKenzie, was a Highland postman with quite extraordinary stamina. Not being able to afford a horse with which to cover his rounds delivering the mail to 30,000 people, Donald simply ran the 120 miles with the mail every week.
