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Discover Your Ancestors Periodical online magazine

 

If you like family or social history then this online publication will be right up your street!

In the March 2023 issue of the Discover Your Ancestors Periodical you can read the following great articles:

 

Meet the court leet: Archivist Rachel Bates reveals how court leet records can provide a fascinating window into early modern society, as well as aid family history research


Discovering Rugby, Tennessee: Helen Baggott tells the story of a utopian community which didn’t quite work as planned, but has left an interesting legacy for today


Shocking times: Nick Thorne traces historical records for Hertha Ayrton, a pioneering British engineer and scientist overlooked because of her gender


The madness of Ilda Orme: How do you finish writing a biography when you don’t know how the subject’s life ended? Follow Nell Darby on a fascinating and frustrating quest


The father of self-help: Lorraine Schofield tells the story of Samuel Smiles


History in the details: Materials – rubber

Sign up today for only £24.99 and receive the following:

  • 12 monthly issues of the Periodical
  • Access to 500,000,000 birth, marriage and death records
  • Free data: Titanic passenger list
  • Free ebook: Kelly's 1931 Directory of Bromley; including Bickley, Chislehurst, Orpington and District

https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/subscribe/

 

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Latest edition of Family History digital magazine out for May

 

In the May 2022 issue of Discover Your Ancestors Online Periodical:

The semaphore line: Semaphore towers provided a vital means of military communication before the invention of the telegraph. Caroline Roope passes on the message
A history of swimwear: As the warmer months beckon, Jayne Shrimpton explores what our forebears donned to enjoy the water
Mistress of riddles: Nick Thorne investigates the famous author whose colourful ancestors fled France
The Victorian coffee roaster: Researching the coffee roasting industry in 19th century London exposes the risks involved in what was often a family business – risks that could end in court, as Nell Darby reveals
Times of transition: Khadija Tauseef tells the story of her grandfather, who lived through the partition of India and Pakistan and devoted his life to helping people
History in the details: Materials – cotton (part 5)

Sign up today for only £24.99 and receive the following:

  • 12 monthly issues of the Periodical
  • Access to 500,000,000 birth, marriage and death records
  • Free data: Titanic passenger list
  • Free ebook: Kent, Bromley and Chislehurst 1916 Kelly's Directory

https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/subscribe/

 

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Latest edition of Discover Your Ancestors out for March 2022

This month Discover Your Ancestors have another packed Online Periodical for family and social historians! https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/subscribe/
Articles include:
Our centenarian ancestors: A perhaps surprising number of our 19th century ancestors reached their 90s or even their centuries – and press interest in their age can really help the family historian, as Nell Darby explains
The marvels of Metro-land: Caroline Roope discovers the London commuter suburbs promoted by the expanding Metropolitan Railway in the early 20th century
A welfare pioneer: Sadie McMullon tells the story of Agnes Marshall Loomes, a pivotal figure for infant welfare
Addressing Sir Alexander: Nick Thorne addresses where Sir Alexander Fleming lived – the man who discovered penicillin by chance in Paddington
History in the details: Materials – cotton (part 3)
Sign up today for only £24.99 and receive the following:
– 12 monthly issues of the Periodical
– Access to 500,000,000 birth, marriage and death records
– Free data: Titanic passenger list
– Free ebook: Berkshire, 1911 Kelly's Directory
 
 
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Fascinating February edition of online Discover Your Ancestors

The Discover Your Ancestors monthly periodical has just been released for February 2021 and it has some really fascinating articles this month. From Buffalo Bill's visit to England to some interesting crime stories from the past and more inbetween! Here is what to expect inside the pages of this online magazine:
 
• Victoria’s transatlantic treat: Caroline Roope tells the story of when Buffalo Bill amused the queen
• Kindness everywhere: Keith Gregson discovers that concern for birds is not something new, as he tells the story of the hugely successful Dicky Bird Society
• PM, pig breeder and police pioneer: Nick Thorne traces residential records for the two times prime minister of the United Kingdom. Sir Robert Peel
• The strange case of Lucy Strange: In the midst of WW1, one woman lost both her life and her public reputation: so why didn’t Lucy Mary Strange’s family get justice? By Nell Darby
• The untold story of ‘Doctor Dick’: Will Hazell investigates the chequered career of a man who scandalised Cornwall in the late 19th century
• History in the details: Materials – wool (part 1)
 
Discover Your Ancestors is available now online:
https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/current-issue/
 
 
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How our ancestors decorated their homes for Christmas

Decking the halls

Ruth A Symes explored how our ancestors decorated for Christmas, from mistletoe to paper chains in an archived article from Discover Your Ancestors

Greenery and fruit, sparkle and snow, colourfully dressed tables and walls inscribed with Yuletide mottos – Christmases past were decorated using much the same general combination of ideas as Christmases today. But the specifics of the way our ancestors decorated their homes at any given time in the past depended not only on tradition, but also on what was currently most novel and up-to-date.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, domestic and church decorations at Christmas tended to be simple and worked on the principle of bringing something of the outside world indoors. Our ancestors would decorate their lamps, candles and tables, very shortly before Christmas Day, with material such as holly, ivy, mistletoe and berries collected from hedges and winter gardens. The candles (attached to the greenery with wax or pins) would be lit only on Christmas Eve to minimise the danger of fire hazard. The Rev James Woodforde, who kept a diary from the mid-18th century onwards, recorded that he filled his house with holly and lit a great wax candle especially for Christmas. Fruit and vegetables, imported from overseas, or newly-grown in British hothouses, were considered decorations in and of themselves. The Market Post of December 25th 1848 noted that in Covent Garden that Xmas season, the supply of pineapples, apples, pears, hothouse grapes, foreign grapes, walnuts, lemons and oranges was "seasonally good and sold readily".

A typical home at Christmas in the mid-Victorian period, would have been decorated to draw the eye towards the fireplace, which would have been ablaze with colour and sparkle. The popular installation of a Christmas tree in the domestic environment was widely attributed to a widely publicised etching of the Royal family at Christmas, complete with a tree (decorated with tinsel made from real shavings of silver) in the London Illustrated News of 1848. Mottoes or biblical quotations, with the individual letters cut out from paper and decorated with coloured rice or cotton wadding to imitate snow were often strung across the walls.

Trees were decorated with ornaments made from lace, paper, scraps of newspaper and magazine illustrations. Spurred on by the royal endorsement of Christmas, our Victorian ancestors proceeded to go decoration-crazy as the century progressed. As the Supplement to the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent of Saturday 24 December 24 1881 commented, "[Christmas decorations] are no longer hung around a room haphazard – as pineapples, apples, holly bough here, a bunch of berries there, a trail of ivy elsewhere. They are carefully planned and artistically constructed."

--- Reproduced with kind permission of Discover Your Ancestors Online Periodical ---

Read the entire article for free on the Discover Your Ancestors site 

Or take a look at the latest issue, books and subscriptions: https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/

 

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