Hi there.

So my name is Helen Tovey.

I'm editor of Family Tree and with me is Nathan Ward.

Hello there.

So Nathan and I have made a little bit of progress and it is going to be a bit of a stumble along rather than a fast and fluent foray into the world of family history.

But sometimes it's a bit like that, isn't it?

So should we have a recap on what we found over the last week, Nathan?

If you remember, I was researching my father's, I was in my father's mother's line, my grandma's line, which then led back to a series of people called David Hearn, two of which called David John Hearn.

It was very frustrating.

And one of them was born in India.

So it created a bit of a mystery as to who, why and where they were there.

So I started following that path.

The elder David went over to India.

for reasons unknown and we didn't know why.

And that was sort of where it was left last week, wasn't it?

So we have gone and found a few bits and bats.

We have.

Just so that anyone who's desperate to hear about India, we have not got to India yet, OK?

But we will do.

And there's one thing, Nathan, I couldn't believe I forgot to mention it last week.

If you're looking for ancestors in India, like British India, British ancestors in India, then it's Phoebus is the place to go.

So that's the families in British India society.

And so it's like a family history.

Well, it is a family history society, but it's a really massive, impressive family history society.

And it has a free database.

online and because i'm really nosy i couldn't resist having a look to see if i could find your um david hearn um being born there in 1864 but i couldn't find him which is really annoying probably more of my bad rubbish searching but anyway i couldn't find him but it's still um a great website to to keep in mind and to go back to for researching ancestors, whether they're military or civilian in India.

We're going to park India for the minute, though.

I also had a go on that as well.

Did you?

How did you get on?

Same as you, I couldn't find anything.

One of our listeners mentioned it on YouTube, so I thought, oh, I'll go, but I failed.

Yes, park that for now.

We'll park that for now.

We're very, very keen to get next.

We know it's such a cool topic and it's such a kind of...

Well, for so many reasons, like that historical backdrop thing and just all of it.

So we will get there.

So apologies for extending anybody's patience in the meantime.

So what we did, we did have some good luck, though, didn't we?

Because Nathan mentioned that his, so the David Hearn, who was born in India in 1864, his parents married in Ireland.

OK, which is always so exciting when you have a bit of a concrete.

detail to go and explore in Ireland and so we had a look on the free Irish birth, marriage and death records online which are just so fantastic that the actual registers have been digitised and made freely available so no even waiting for two hours for this document no spending any money it's just absolutely brilliant and so we've got David Hearn, who's born in 1864, you've got his parents' marriage, haven't we?

And it's just packed with really, really groovy things to explore.

So what do you think about it when you look at this marriage register entry, Nathan?

I love it.

I just love that I'm not in Pudsey anymore, for one.

Kilkenny, aren't we?

Kilkenny Island.

And obviously it just fleshes everything out for me.

It gives me the names of my great, great, great grandad.

His wife's maiden name and obviously then the father's name is just like the English ones.

Yeah.

And it's got so many wonderful other things to follow up.

Yes.

Sorry, I got excited then.

You did.

You got the key overview things, didn't you?

So what was this David Hearn's job when he got married in 1862 in Ireland?

He was a privateer.

He was a soldier at the 36th Regiment.

Yes, and we thought he might be a soldier, didn't we?

We thought that might be why he went out to India, so that sounds like that's all going to check out, doesn't it?

It does.

I'm intrigued because, again, as I always say, my historical context is rubbish, but I don't know what a soldier would be doing around that time, so I'm really interested in this side of it all.

And he was living at the time in the military barracks in the parish of St John in Kilkenny City.

So, I mean, have you had a look and seen if you could have a look and find out what the barracks look like in Kilkenny?

Of course I haven't, no.

Have you?

Yes, of course I have.

So I'm going to open it up.

I'll have a little search.

So I thought this is so packed with details and it raises so many wonderful questions and opportunities.

So we've got this wonderful...

Just a marriage register entry.

Normal old state, you know, civil register of marriage.

But they're married in Ireland, as you say, in Kilkenny in 1862.

The groom is living at the military barracks.

His bride is living in Barrack Street.

So, I mean, for me, as a storyteller, I'm like, so he's working in the barracks.

She just happens to be living in Barrack Street and she's working as a servant.

And you can just imagine that she's coming out, scrubbing the door.

winking at him.

Before you know it, that's got to be how they met, hasn't it?

He's allowed out to kind of go walking down the street in his uniform looking absolutely fantastic.

And it's all just inevitable, isn't it?

Of course, yeah.

It makes natural sense that that story would just happen exactly that way.

Yes.

So I did have a little look for a map as well to find out where the barracks were and to find out where Barrack Street was.

Because you never know, Barrack Street might not be where the barracks are.

I haven't found where Barrack Street is yet.

You'd hope it was.

You would think it's got to be the same place.

Yes.

Apart from, there was an earlier barracks in Kilkenny, and then the one which I think David would have been working out of by the time you get to 1862.

I can't remember the exact date, but in the kind of second half of the 1800s, but before 1862, a new barracks, I think, was built.

And so it would just be...

It's just worth knowing, isn't it?

So let's say Barrack Street was where the old barracks were and they built new barracks in a different place.

We don't want to get carried away with my little love story that she's living on the same street that he's on.

Yeah?

Just to be geographically precise.

But I think it's very likely what I think.

And then, so you're David.

You're David, born in 1864.

Dad's dad is a labourer.

So that doesn't give us much to go on, does it?

The bride, Julia Farrell, her dad's a writing clerk.

That sounds pretty fancy to me.

I'm a little grey on a lot of the details of this, so I'm going to speculate some stuff and then be totally wrong, but...

Oh, no, I'm not.

I think I said to you last time I was a bit scared of the 1841 -1851 census because they were both a bit...

Shall we say sketchier?

Yes, but he was born in Suffolk, was this guy.

which, if it is the one that I found on the 1841, so he's moved over to Ireland at some point.

I don't know why that's relevant.

But I couldn't find him on the 1861 census, and obviously he's got married in Ireland in 1862.

Is there a different census I should be looking at?

Should I be looking specifically on the Irish census?

And is that free?

Is that still part of my subscription?

No, this is a really good question, sir.

So if...

If you were branching out into Scotland, then it would be worth looking for your people in the earlier Victorian censuses or even the later ones.

But obviously for Ireland, it gets a lot more tricky because many of the earlier census records for Ireland through the 1800s don't survive.

I can't remember the precise reasons why they precisely got destroyed.

Some of them got pulped in the First World War.

Maybe some got destroyed in the Four Courts fire in 1922.

I can't remember.

But for whatever reason, most of them didn't survive.

But there's a really good way to find out what does survive.

So you just go to Google and then if you just put in Irish census, it will come up with a free website.

census .nationalarchives .ie And then, so the 1901 and the 1911 survive in entirety.

There was a 1921 census for Ireland because while there was lots of industrial unrest in England and Wales and Scotland, it was obviously a lot more politically and militarily chaotic, fevered, whatever, because Ireland's going through the process of separating from the rest of the British Isles, you know, governmentally at that stage.

And so they didn't have a 1921 census.

And so they have the 1926 census, which you can look out for, which is going to be available online in April 2026.

But for the minute, so we're on this census .nationalarchives .ie website.

We could see pretty much all of the 1901 and all of the 1911 census for the whole of Ireland, because that's before Ireland becomes Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland.

And then there are other census fragments for 1821 to 1851.

So potentially, if Kilkenny survived for 1851, then we could look for your family in the 1851 census.

But if Kilkenny doesn't survive, then we can't.

1851 in England.

I haven't found them in the 1861.

But you know what?

That might just be...

No, I don't know.

I'm going to say laziness on my part.

But if they've got married in 1862 in Ireland, you've got to imagine they're probably in Ireland.

What we need to do is we're going to keep this date.

It's the 13th of January, 1862, beginning of January, 1862, that you're...

David gets married to Julia in Ireland.

We've got all these really cool details that we can go and find out about the military barracks, find out where the barracks street is.

Also, really, really importantly, you've got Julia's dad's name, Patrick Farrell, and he's a writing clerk.

So you're adding all these details to your family tree, to your research log.

And then we can go back to those online records of birth.

marriage and death and we can see you know what can what can we potentially find about the rest of the family yeah yeah for free in ireland so ireland has slightly different um or very different start dates for civil registration so obviously we've touched on this before for england and wales it's um 1837.

For Scotland, it's 1855.

For Ireland, on the whole, it's 1864, apart from for Protestant marriages, would be from 1845 onwards.

So that's how we've managed to get David and Julia, yeah?

Yeah.

Otherwise, we might be able to look for Patrick's death record, yeah?

Because that would be after 1864, yeah?

hopefully yeah he died in 1863 which should be very annoying um not to say sad so the question of where david was in 1861 sure we have a look at the military records that you found the service records because that could tell us because we know he's a soldier in the 36th Regiment at the beginning of January 1862.

But if you look at his military records, that may well give us a date for when his service began, yeah?

Okay, yes.

Okay, so can you see his military records on screen?

I can indeed.

Brilliant.

Okay, let's zoom in a little bit because his crazy old writing just does help if you can read it a bit closer at hand.

So this up in the top corner, there's not an unofficial date, but...

I think this might be a discharge.

It is.

So he's being discharged.

David Hearn's being discharged.

And the date in the top corner is the 20th of May, 1873.

So that means, and it says further on, lower down, I've just read it.

He served for 21 years and 187 days.

So if we take off 21 from 73.

1852.

Yes, so he's signed up in 1852.

So from 1852 onwards, he's out of Pudsey.

He's all over the place.

Wow.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Well, I've got him in Suffolk in 1851, so...

Oh, yes.

So was he ever a Pudsey lad then, or was he a Suffolk lad, minor middle?

He was born in Suffolk, and then eventually came over.

Hmm.

So should we just rattle through this document and see what we can learn about him?

Yeah, yeah, because it's quite exciting.

It's really exciting, isn't it?

So we're looking at his discharge papers.

He's Corporal David Hearn.

So he's been promoted a few times.

He's become a corporal, so that's really good.

We've got his military number, which is 3341.

And he's being discharged to Pembroke Dock on the 6th of May.

1873, having served for 21 years and 187 days in the military.

And he served in the West Indies for four years and 72 days, East Indies nine years, 255 days.

So out of his 21 years of service, he spent a good more than 13 years, I think.

So that's 13 years, 257 days.

Yeah.

What an adventurous life.

I mean, these are long, slow journeys.

He's not jetting anywhere on a Hercules or anything like that to get to all of these postings.

He's traveling by sail, isn't he?

And it's taking its time.

Yeah?

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah.

And I did have a little sneak peek.

I think you should be very proud of him.

So if you scroll down, it says, with regard to character and conduct for Corporal David Hearn, it says his conduct has been very good.

And he has in his possession four good conduct badges, which is pretty good, isn't it?

Yeah.

Like 21 years service and he's got four of these good conduct badges.

I think I'm impressed by him.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

The medal for long service.

Oh, it says, and the medal for long service and good conduct.

Not in possession of a school certificate.

Oh, dear.

His home appears...

Is that not his name?

No.

No, his name appeared ten times in the...

His name appears ten times in the...

Oh, my goodness.

We need Graham Bandy to help us.

Graham will go, oh, it's clearly this, that or the other.

We might have to send that to him.

It looks like by death knock.

Oh, something.

Oh, he's never been tried by court -martial.

That's good.

Good lad.

Very good, very good.

Shall we move on?

Oh, he's never been wounded.

That's nice to hear, isn't it?

Yes.

Very important.

That's just one page.

I mean, what a lot to learn about an ancestor, the one side of A4.

It's great.

I'm quite keen to see what his uniform will look like as well.

Yes, we need to do that.

You know, I haven't done that, actually.

I haven't had any peeps at that.

We could have a look at that.

You surprised me.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry.

It didn't really stick my mind.

Yeah, I should have thought of it.

And so here we go.

It's got details of his service and it's got details of his pay and details of his rank.

Right.

So he's private on the 1st of November in 1851.

And I have him down at being 16 years old at that point.

Oh, bless him.

And then he gets promoted to a corporal.

23rd of December, 1869.

That's the end of page two.

There's lots of other detail, but it's all like micro -detail, so we're not going to make everyone lose the will to live while me and Nathan struggle through the old handwriting of lots of micro -detail, which is just about his pay.

Page three just doesn't have really any information.

It could have had some information from the medical officer, but it's not filled in.

Page four.

Let's have a look and see what this says about him.

We'll take that as a good sign.

Yes, that's true.

Well, he's never wounded, I guess, so he's going to be pretty right.

He was by trade a labourer, born in the parish of Creting St Peter's in Stowmarket.

I think you knew Stowmarket, didn't you?

I had him down in Suffolk, yes, I guess.

That's correct, yeah.

But now this is giving you really cool parish information if you didn't know that already.

No, I didn't.

Yeah.

And he's aged 40 and a half.

He's five foot seven and a half inches.

I think he's...

Did we find another record of this guy and he was shorter?

No.

No, I don't think so.

I think he might have done.

I think he's grown while he's been in the army.

Because he's only a lad when he joined.

He was still growing, wasn't he?

I'm going to have to look and see if I have a funny memory that he was five foot four.

Maybe that's somebody else's research.

I think it's someone else.

I think we found a discharge note for someone else who actually ended up not being even part of my relatives.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

He's got fresh complexion, hazel eyes, brown hair, and he's got a scar over his right eye.

Well, I mean, you must be pretty excited about all of that.

Yeah, that's awesome, isn't it?

I mean, I wanted some war records.

I mean, I don't know.

I obviously wanted World War I and World War II, but just to have somebody in the military, it's quite cool.

And obviously he served for a long time, and most importantly, survived without injury, which is fabulous.

It's going to be quite cool investigating.

I mean, I don't know how to do it, but it'd be cool to investigate what he was actually doing in the army.

I mean, off the top of your head, were there any wars going on there?

So the Victorian period, so off the top of my head, my knowledge is not fluent and good enough.

But as a broad brush picture, the Victorian era is renowned for loads of ongoing wars and conflicts.

From around the middle of the 1800s, you have the Crimean War, and then going later on, you have the Afghan Wars.

At the end of Queen Victoria's reign, there's the Boer War.

So Britain is growing its massive empire and colouring the map pink.

But obviously, quite a lot of people don't want to be taken over by Britain.

So some of it's done by military force.

And sometimes the language is just interesting because it depends whose side you're on, but the peace has to be maintained.

Yeah, it's like peacekeeping operations is what you'd call it after the Second World War.

You'd have lots of UN peacekeeping operations, but basically it's the victor side being in control, isn't it?

I'm not being against the UN, but it definitely makes a difference how you...

tell this story depending on whose side you're on.

So if you have a Victorian ancestor who's serving in the military, then they will be keeping the peace.

They're going to be fighting for territory, defending territory, putting it around mutinies.

I've got an ancestor who was a soldier who got wounded in the hand putting down a riot in Barbados, which I always feel a bit uncomfortable about.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Awkward.

It is awkward.

It's really awkward.

So that's what happens in family history.

We're very grateful to have soldiers to defend us.

It's complicated.

It's really complicated.

And this is not in defence of, it's not sort of kind of, what's the word, like moral relativism or whatever.

But to my ancestor who served in the military in the early Victorian period, then he came from a very, very rural part of Ireland.

What happened was that land would get more and more subdivided.

And so you'd end up with just like a teeny weeny bit of land that you could work, but it's not going to be enough to sustain you.

And so always historically, Ireland's been really rich recruiting ground for soldiers because there's poor economic opportunities for young men.

So they have a higher proportion of young men who serve in the army.

For instance, when you get to the First World War.

All that thing about the thankful villages, there's thankful villages in, I think, in England, Scotland and Wales.

Maybe not Scotland, actually, but definitely in England and Wales are ones who, not very many, but there's some which didn't have a First World War casualty.

But in Ireland, there's not a single parish or community that didn't have a First World War casualty, which I think is fascinating because at this time, Ireland, lots of people in Ireland didn't even want to be part of the British Isles.

But there's still enough of them are serving that you don't get a single parish without suffering the loss of a young man.

Anyway, and somewhere like Suffolk in the Victorian period as well, that's going to be, you know, with the move from an agricultural world into a rising industrialisation, there's going to be harder economic opportunities.

So it's hard because for your ancestors' personal life experiences.

He could have had a really hard time in Suffolk.

So I'm kind of justifying it.

But then he would have joined up the army and done really valuable and interesting things.

But some of the things we wouldn't want to put too closely under a microscope with today's eyes because you'd be like, oof.

Because the colonial legacy, it's tough.

Yes, it is.

It's really tough, isn't it?

You can't be tarnished by the sins of your fathers, etc.

He wouldn't have felt like he was acting.

It's just different times.

It's different eras.

It's a whole ethical debate, isn't it?

Yes.

It's really tough.

And it's...

I think it's tough because it still has ongoing consequences today.

If you could say, oh, that was all done and dusted, that was all a long time ago, that has no impact on anybody's life today.

But the reason why it's tough is because you all know it does have an impact on people.

People alive today are still living out the experiences of what has happened before, in many respects, not just, I mean, colonialism, but in lots of respects.

It's very hard, isn't it, because times do change and move on and, like, I mean, this is...

probably belittling everything but like even talking about you talk to millennials about watching tv show friends and they see that it's it's not very politically correct anymore and it's it's not representing gay culture etc or ethnicity and that's just a small that's you know pop culture i'm talking about i'm not talking about war time like hundreds of years ago when maybe opinions weren't as um You're right, things do change.

I was looking after my little grandson a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it would be really fun for him to watch Pingu, because when our kids were little, they absolutely loved Pingu.

Did your kids watch Pingu?

Yes, they did, unfortunately.

Yes, so we all loved it.

It was one of those programmes that me and my husband, both our kids, we all thought Pingu was fantastic.

Anyway, fired up YouTube, got up a little Pingu video.

He was busy watching it, and then Pingu was naughty, and so his...

Dad put Pingu across his penguin knees and whacked him on the bottom.

And then my daughter was like, no, no, he mustn't see that.

Because the world's changed.

Smacking is against the law.

So he's so quick.

Before you know it, you're just in this cultural time warp thing where something's no longer acceptable.

I just hadn't even crossed my mind that was going to happen on a Pingu clip.

I'd forgotten all about that.

It's such a different world.

So yeah, when you put it into context with family history, we're talking generations.

The magnitude of difference between our moral codes of today compared to what they were living by, it's going to be worlds away and you just kind of have to be brave and know that you're going to have to deal with some of that.

Not that I've found anything dark out yet, but...

No, but it is going to change, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's going to continue to be something you have to...

But I think that's one of the things where I find the history's good because it does give you that longer view.

It just gives you a different perspective on life.

And it's really easy with hindsight to look back on something and go, that wasn't a very good idea.

Whereas when you're in the midst of something, it's harder to see the right path forward.

Yes, definitely.

It's quite fascinating looking at this record for this guy now.

Of, like, all the research I've done on people, I've done a bit on this guy and got stuck in various parts.

Now, obviously, this war record does, not war record, he's a military record, help flesh him out a bit and give me context and time and a place.

But I know he's got four kids now, so the big research person in me is like, right, when did he have these kids?

He was serving overseas for, like, 13 of his 21 years.

When did he see his wife?

When did he have time to have children?

Do they even know him?

All these questions now.

Because I've got him in the 1881 census with his wife and four children.

And we said he was discharged in 1873.

Yeah.

So he was 46 in 1881.

And I think, I'm vaguely remembering this, I think he started work as a butler when he came back.

Oh, wow.

There's a whole lot of research to do there.

Lots to add up.

So I think you need to get into some picture research.

I think some maps would be good because if someone showed you a map of Ireland, could you point to Kilkenny on it?

Absolutely no clue.

My knowledge of Ireland is rubbish.

I mean, I'm probably not shocking anybody here.

So I'm really rubbish at history.

And apart from the States of America, I don't really know anything about geography.

So I don't really know where anything is in Ireland.

If I'm perfectly honest and I feel like a proper idiot now, right?

That record says he served in the East Indies and the West Indies.

Yes.

I don't even want to make a comment.

One of them's Caribbean.

Yes.

Yes.

That's what I wanted.

Yes.

So he served all over the world.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I can't remember whether he served in the West or East, First or Second.

I think it was the East First and the West Second.

Right.

Right.

See, I did know that fact, actually.

I'm going to give myself a reprieve.

I did know that.

I was just terrified to say it out loud.

Oh, he's fighting pirates now in my head.

Yes.

Forget the Vikings.

You know, I caught you at the beginning of one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and I'm pretty sure it has the...

Honourable East India Company flag, which falls into the water, you know, with the embroidered initials.

So H -E -C on the flag.

The East Indian Trading Company.

Yeah, Honourable East India Company.

So that gets, that will be obviously earlier.

That's going to be, I think that's going to be set in like late 1700s.

It doesn't really matter.

So that's the East Indies.

So India.

Yeah.

But then the West Indies.

Yeah, we've got that established.

So anyway, so be fun to plot where his regiment served.

The thing which I don't know is whether there's two battalions, whether...

we want to make sure that you're not tracing the wrong battalion.

So I think you need to do some...

First of all, you need to do some picture research.

You need to get a map of Ireland so you know where Kilkenny is.

You need to know Kilkenny City, so Kilkenny the town and Kilkenny the county thing.

Yeah?

Mm -hmm.

And then...

Oh, this is my joke, if you know.

I think Kilkenny's a county.

No, I feel really ignorant.

Oh, my Lord.

OK.

So you need to get a map of Ireland.

Then it was really cool googling for pictures of the barracks and they were...

beautiful barracks, beautiful building.

Who knows what it's like inside.

It'd be worth trying to find out about barrack life.

It's a Victorian soldier, isn't it?

Fun.

Finding a map with Barrack Road on it, which I haven't managed to find out yet.

Finding out what his uniform was like.

That'd be fun too.

Definitely.

I'm very intrigued by that one.

And potentially for the era.

You're not just looking at like watercolour illustrations, are you?

By 1873, there could well be photographs of people from his regiment, even if you're not going to find him.

I mean, imagine you could actually find him in a photograph.

Yeah, that'd be really cool.

Just the regiment would be great, wouldn't it?

Because then it would be a really accurate picture of his uniform and stuff.

Yes.

And then I would say...

Just do some reading about the regiment.

And obviously, you don't need to know about the whole history of the regiment from when it was first raised.

But you want to be concentrating on the period that he served in it.

That will give you massive clues about where he went, give you more of a breakdown.

As far as I can see from his service record, I feel like it should say the places that he served.

I couldn't see it on there.

And those were his discharge papers.

So maybe we need to be looking for further papers for him.

And why should we be looking for all of these different things?

Should I literally be just searching for the name of his regiment in Google and the date range?

Or should I be going to particular sites?

So if we're searching for all of the things, obviously for searching for maps, then if you put in like ordnance survey maps for Ireland.

And you could put National Library of Scotland into your URL as well, into your search bar.

And that will bring up the National Library of Scotland's maps, which cover Ireland as well, confusingly.

Or there is a website, I think it's called townlands .ie, which has really detailed maps for Ireland.

I could be wrong about that.

I haven't been on it for a while.

So Townland is the smallest administrative area in Ireland.

It's smaller than a parish.

It's really detailed maps.

Again, they're free to look at.

Another good place for looking for old maps is Old Maps Online.

They're beautiful maps.

Lots of them you can't use in the magazine, which is really frustrating because they're kind of in the public domain, but not for commercial use.

But as a family historian for your own research, you can have a great time exploring them.

So that's your maps.

And then for looking for uniform and history of the regiment, then you could start off at the National Army Museum and see if they have any links.

And I don't know whether they do or they don't.

And then there's another thing called the Ogilvy Trust.

And that has links to lots of regimental museums.

Or you could just put in the name of the regiment.

So the 36th foot.

just google for regimental history 36th foot regimental history and see what comes up and obviously it's going to change name because they'd have numbers and then they might have county names it changes but it doesn't matter because you know that he's 36th foot covers the period that he was serving because that was what it's called on his records yeah but you might don't worry if you end up on a website which is called something else because the regimental names changed because it will go it will We might be having the whole history of the regiment through its whole period of existence.

So if it says something else at the top, we could even do this now, but if it ends up being called by a county name, it could be the same thing.

You're going to find the information you need within that.

What else did we say you had to do?

I think that's all.

Yeah, that's all.

It sounds like a lot to me.

I think you'll find it fun.

So the regimental history of finding out where they were serving, partly those regimental histories will tell you without you having to do any extra, go off anywhere, other place, whether they were involved in any major campaigns or activity.

Yeah, that'd be really exciting.

There'll be somebody who knows all about the 36th Foot and they'll be listening going, oh my goodness, don't they know the 36th Foot served at blah, blah.

From a tiny bit of Googling, I did see, I think it was at Culloden, but obviously that's too early.

century plus to her ancestor but yeah nice and i finally got away from pudsy definitely quite dramatically actually all over the place yeah i need to i feel like now i need to just double check when they actually did get to pudsy because these guys just are not even born and bred yes it's true i mean it's so often that you can feel like people have been there forever and my family does that they they They might be somewhere for 20, 30 years.

That's barely a generation.

It's enough for people to feel like they come from somewhere and then they're off, moved.

Yeah.

I might disown them.

As a Yorkshireman, I might decide to cut this branch off.

I'm not really going to.

That's mean.

I'm very excited about all of this.

It's cool.

It is really cool.

Oh, man.

So many questions.

Sorry I haven't got lots of the answers.

No, this is all very exciting.

If you knew this would happen though when you started your family history journey, I'd be able to help you to start with and then now we're like running into the sand.

We're going to have to, well, I mean it is really tempting.

I couldn't resist having a look for some things.

Yeah.

Do my research instead of your own homework.

Yes.

Any excuse.

I've done bits of my own homework.

I've carried on with my writing app thingy.

Good stuff.

Yeah.

And I found a little book, which my great granny, this little tiny red book, and she'd started writing in it.

And I could quickly see if I can find the words.

So, so tantalizing what she did.

So she got this little tiny book.

And did I talk about this the other week?

No.

No.

And she was writing in it in the 50s because she's writing what she's buying people for Christmas.

No, no, this is on you.

Do tell.

And I'm going to get the book so I can read out her words because it's very tantalising.

So, bearing in mind, she's writing it in the 1950s and she's born in 1895, so it's a very tiny book to have your whole life, OK?

Yep.

She doesn't have her whole life in it anyway.

What she does is she has...

She writes...

So frustrating.

It is said that grandchildren should learn of the past from their grandparents' knees.

As mine have rarely had that chance, I shall jot down a few memories as they come.

At my age, it's easier to look back than forward and less frightening.

That's quite sad because she's just gone through the Second World War, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's very sombre already.

Very sombre.

Anyway, she goes on.

I was born in Liverpool.

At the age of 18 months, I went to South Africa with my parents where we stayed for three years during part of the Boer War.

Yeah?

And then she said when they came back, they had to live in a little tiny house and they had to cook.

It was very primitive.

That's her word.

They had to cook the meat over the fire.

This is up on the Wirral.

And they used to drape newspaper around the fire to help cook the meat.

And one day the newspaper caught fire and there was a massive fuss.

But anyway, no one got hurt.

Of course, she's just fine.

Anyway, so her grand claim, she's going to jot down a few memories.

That is it.

She went to...

Which is 18 months she went to South Africa.

And then there was the fire in the kitchen.

Two sides of scribbled pencil.

Nothing else.

Apart from at the other end of the book, her Christmas shopping lists.

Her priorities.

Oh, so tantalising.

So tantalising.

It's very whimsical as well, that start as well.

It is.

Educating your grandchildren.

There's some deep wisdom to come there.

Yes.

And so she...

Again, I love it, like the context thing.

So partly she's just become a granny.

She's got a couple of grandchildren.

She went on to have, I don't know, six grandchildren, I think, in the end.

But she's got her first two grandchildren.

She's got all whimsical.

She's feeling the passing of time.

She's just got through the Second World War.

She clearly gets the importance of family history, but she managed two tiny sides.

I have a tiny notebook.

And then she forgot about that and didn't write anything else down for me.

But for her Christmas cards, Christmas cards, 1947.

This is really cool.

So I have a list of all her friends' names and how much she spent on Christmas cards and presents.

I have lists of the embroidery threads that she wants to buy.

Yeah.

I have a few different Christmas lists at the back.

And she has one where she gives my mum a pair of slippers and I think my uncle gets a farm.

And I was like, if I was the child getting the slippers and the other child gets a farm.

The injustice.

So I have been carrying on with that.

So that's good, I guess, because it means I'm hopefully not going to do what she did and just leave two sides of.

Pencil.

Unless it's a DNA character trait.

It's a DNA character trait.

Everything I've got digital.

So suddenly the cloud explodes due to AI or something.

And then all I'm left with, ironically, is two pages.

That's not going to happen.

We're all fine.

No, no.

You're a good girl now.

Yes, yes.

So should we just carry on with our research then?

I mean, I've got plenty to go at.

So yes, let's do that.

Just going to check and see whether we had any lovely messages to read out because normally we have some beautiful podcast messages.

We have been having really nice feedback.

I was in a webinar recently and then there was an accidental conversation about the podcast, Nathan, and people were saying how much they were enjoying your research journey.

I was like, oh, it's just so exciting to hear.

It's lovely that, really nice.

So I think we're all good.

If anybody...

has anything that they'd like to correct us on then we are pretty brave and we do know that accuracy is absolutely fundamental to family history so if we have got anything slightly wrong today then please don't hesitate to tell us and we will we will put out a correction as soon as we possibly can do and we look forward to seeing you all soon and Nathan Instead of me messing it up, because I mess it up every single week, do you want to say what the e -newsletter web address is?

I can only remember the end of it, to be honest.

Hyphen sign, hyphen up.

There you go.

Is it www .family -tree .co .uk forward slash newsletter, hyphen sign, hyphen up?

Yes.

That's correct.

That's correct.

All good.

Okay.