Hello and welcome to Family Tree Talk, our lovely podcast with me, Helen Tovey, editor of Family Tree and my wonderful podcast co -host.

Oh, that's me, your sidekick, Nathan Ward.

Hello there.

Yes, of course it's you.

How are you, Nathan?

I'm good, thank you.

How are you?

I'm very well, yes, yeah.

Full of busyness.

Full of busyness, yes.

So we've had a really exciting meeting recently.

We've been thinking about all the things we've been doing with Family Tree, which is not just a podcast.

We do a magazine and webinars and e -newsletters and courses and social media posts.

We do all sorts of things all over the place, don't we, to help people learn more and more about this lovely, lovely hobby of family history.

We are, yes.

It's good, isn't it?

It's all encouraging stuff.

I'm looking forward to seeing what we do.

Spoilers.

We have had some really interesting talks recently.

And one of them was a DNA talk.

I'm not going to talk about DNA.

I don't want to make you feel all hot and sweaty and nervous, Nathan.

But in the talk, it was...

John Cleary, who's a really brilliant speaker on DNA, a very good tutor on DNA.

And he, as an aside, was talking about some of his ancestors who were Irish and they'd gone to New York.

And he said, just as an aside, I'm not quite sure why so many Irish went to New York.

And then...

this of course I'm such a rabbit hole person like give me a rabbit hole I'll just fall down it so I had to find out why so many Irish went to New York and I only did a few little bits of googling but the kind of most obvious overreaching reason is particularly maybe from the middle 1800s when there's the the great hunger so the Irish potato famine lots of people emigrated to seek not just a better life, but just to see life elsewhere.

And many of them went to America.

But if you're dirt poor and you're escaping such kind of penurious circumstances, you haven't got spare cash when your feet touch soil across the Atlantic, have you?

So they just went to New York because that's where they arrived.

That was their port of arrival and they had no more money to move any further.

At the time, New York's developing, quite big building industry, so there's work for people, so they stayed.

So what this made me think of is back to your ancestor, back to David Herden.

It's all these reasons, all this push -pull thing, why people move.

Like, are there pushes making them move?

Are there draws, like attractions, to make them move somewhere?

So it's a cool topic, isn't it?

It is.

It's fascinating, isn't it?

And again, for me, you're instantly adding texture to...

to the world like this is an aside but like when you watch westerns or even i play a computer game called red dead redemption there's loads of irish cowboys in america and you are like what why are there so many irish people in america why are the cowboys but obviously like you've just said it's all right that's why yes yes and then gone with the wind i think they're called o 'hara aren't they A horror family?

I've not seen it, I'm afraid.

Oh, well, I watched it and I loved it when I watched it when I was young.

And then I tried forcing one of my daughters to watch it when she was a teenager.

She thought it was some sort of social experiment and torture session because it was so long.

And it had lost its appeal for her generation.

Maybe it's got it back again.

But at the time, it was too long and she found the lead female protagonist too whingy.

The youth of today, I don't know.

Short attention spans.

Yes, yes.

So also we had a wonderful email from a podcast listener, which again was on this theme of like push -pull.

So shall I read out what our lovely listener said?

Go for it.

I love a good bit of communication.

I do as well.

It's nice to know somebody's listening.

So Marilyn writes, so enjoying the podcasts.

Yeah, sometimes our head spins with everything that we cover.

Anyway, she has been very interested in your story about your David Hearn.

And she's also been thinking that she has a mystery of herself that she's been trying to solve.

And it's why one of her ancestors, so it's her two times great grandfather.

He's called Jasper Morley and he was born in Tottenham in England in 1831.

And he was a sawyer, a journeyman, and his father and brother were carpenters.

And they all seem to be living in Tottenham.

quite happily, when suddenly in 1852, he leaves and journeys to Australia.

And she's trying to work out what prompted him to do that.

And she wonders whether we have any thoughts, because to her mind, the family looked quite stable.

So she's like, why would he suddenly leave and go to Australia in 1852?

So Nathan, why do you think he might have put you on the spot?

Why do you think he might have left to Australia?

My instant reaction, and this is, again, preconception from the world, is that he's been a naughty boy and he's a convict and he's been sent over to Australia.

But I don't know when that time frame is for when we sent people over to Australia as convicts.

Ah, well, that's a really good point.

So, yes, so after, so next year we have the 250th anniversary of the American...

I'm going to probably say it wrong, but the Declaration of Independence in America splits itself off from British rule.

And so we can't keep sending our convicts there.

And so we have to start sending them to Australia.

And I can't remember the start date, but it was from the later bit of the 1700s.

And out of the, well, but going back to the Irish collection, lots of, there's a disproportionate number of Irish people which get sent as convicts to Australia.

But no, his wasn't a convict thing.

So I...

Again, another rabbit hole just fell down somewhere else's.

To not contend with falling down my own rabbit holes, I have to fall down other people's rabbit holes as well.

So I did a bit of Googling and that's King MacCasey.

He's roughly in the building trade.

His family are working as carpenters and things like that.

And so the London building trade was really good, really strong in the 1850s.

And Crystal Palace, things like that are being built for the Great Exhibition in 1851.

He hasn't really probably got an incentive necessarily to leave.

Scouted on a bit more to find out what else happened in the 1850s in England.

And there was a strike.

There was a massive builder strike in 1859, but that's after his time.

And they were striking.

I hope this makes you feel better if you think you're too busy at work.

So the rules had recently changed before the 1859 strike to say that they...

The maximum working day was a 10 -hour day, but I think that was six days a week.

Wow.

For manual labour, that's a lot of work, isn't it?

Very tiring.

So they were striking in saying, please give me only work.

Either they wanted to work, you go down to nine hours a day, plus a half day on Saturday.

Yeah.

Or stick with the 10 hours a day and have Saturday off.

I think it's something like that.

But still, it's hard work.

Anyway, so that's after his time.

So then I thought, well, I can't particularly see a push reason why he left London in the early 1850s.

So then I thought, well, let's see if there's any pull reasons.

And gold was discovered in May 1851 in Australia.

So I'm like, that's got to be it, hasn't it?

You're a young man.

Your foot is some fancy free.

You're obviously...

physically fit and healthy because you're working in a manual trade.

And news comes back that there's gold being found in Australia.

We've already had the gold rush already kicking off in America.

So all those happy stories of fortunes being made, overnight fortunes, will have come back.

So by 1852, within a matter of months, he's got himself, he's got the funds to go, which wouldn't have been cheap.

And he's got himself up to Australia.

Do you think?

This is guesswork.

It's me and my story.

Full blown, who needs AI to make up stories?

I can do it all by myself.

But it seems possible.

What do you think?

I think that sounds like a great story, at least.

Yeah.

An adventure to Australia to make your millions in gold.

Sounds fabulous.

It does sound fabulous, doesn't it?

So that's my surmise.

But with me, I do love the thinking and the motivations of what...

made people move because even if it's small reasons there's always a story that that motivation is always a story it's quite good that you're seeing it from two sides as well because i don't think i'd naturally do that like you say the push and the pull you'd be like why did they go not what drew them it's good to actually have that mindset isn't it i i wouldn't have thought of that way no so that i will know i i have to admit that unfortunately i can't remember Who kind of coined that as a phrase?

I don't know whether it's just like, in my mind, it's general knowledge that everyone goes push, pull.

You have to think of push motors and pull motors.

But there is probably some really clever genealogist or historian who thought of that.

To my shame, I don't know who it is.

But it's definitely not me who thought of it.

I heard someone else say it and I was like, this is a great idea.

But it's kind of widely known, yeah?

But it is really helpful because rather than fixating on why did they leave, why did they leave, you kind of be like, well, why did they go?

Like, what was enticing them?

It just generates more context for you as well, doesn't it?

It's like, yeah, I can imagine myself being stuck going, well, I don't know, he just fancied joining the army, so he did.

But actually, it could have been, he's been told he can go to the Caribbean and do this and that and the other and suddenly it's a big draw.

But yeah, the gold rush, that sounds cool.

It does sound cool, doesn't it?

I could have had some interactions with my ancestor, Captain Thunderbolt or whatever he is.

Yes.

Not that I've actually managed to find any relations to him yet.

No, is he on your rabbit hole list?

Yes, that was another listener, wasn't it, who said that they've got a ward called Captain Thunderbolt who was a notorious bush ranger.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Well, you never know.

Family issue is always stranger than the truth.

Well, it is truth, but always stranger than fiction.

So you could end up with a connection.

I'd like one because, I mean, this is the closest I've been to finding anybody vaguely famous.

I mean, I've never heard of this guy, but he has his own Wikipedia page, so that's enough for me.

But I do think my chances of being attached to this guy are very, very slim.

So thinking about...

like why people move there's the other again this is not me i just i just don't everyone else knows it's not me but i don't want you to think it's me um is that with the um fan that fan network says it's the friends associates neighbors have you talked about that before so that's when you're researching your family whether they're whether you're just researching them within their community to come aside for you it would be so not just looking at your family but you're looking for the friends, associates and neighbours of your family members.

It just builds out your understanding of their lives.

So who did they work with?

Who did they live near?

And you do sometimes find that a neighbour might be the informant on a baby's birth, even, or on somebody's death.

And suddenly you can start to piece together their world and populate it.

Because your family didn't just live on their street all by themselves.

Yeah.

They were all there, real living human people.

making a community and so it's fun to do that and it's also really useful because you know your missing great auntie might be living with one of them on one of the census or if they emigrate they might have emigrated together because they were all from the same line of work or the same religious community or whatever yeah that sounds really good it touches a little bit on what we mentioned the other week about your ancestor not being just this brief moment in time that we find in one document and then we obsess on just that one document and make them this one thing whereas they actually are many things and placing them in the community helps with that, doesn't it?

It just gives you a sense of their world more.

Definitely, definitely.

And I do like the kind of little quirky labels that people come up for things like push -pull or fan or whatever because when you're doing your research it's...

It's like a little memory aid, isn't it?

Whereas if you have a complicated theory without a little label on it, your poor little brain has to remember the whole theory and what it means.

Whereas if you have the little quirky label, you can go, I can see what can that do to help shed light on what I'm trying to research at the moment.

Yeah, it's like a good pause for thought, isn't it?

Stuck on a particular thing.

Why isn't this working?

Oh, well, what about if I think, what's the push and it's not working there?

Then what's the pull?

It does just make you think out of the box a little bit, doesn't it?

Without actually challenging your brain too much.

Definitely.

That's such a simple thing, the push -pull, which I hadn't considered, but I'll definitely use it.

It's like logic problems, isn't it?

And you're all about puzzles, aren't you?

I love puzzles.

So you're good at family history because you just like the puzzles.

I bought an escape room board game the other day.

yeah me and my friend we had like a you know late night got a glass of wine out and played this escape room board game it comes in a very small box it's a one -time use so you can only play this game once and it involves you know you end up it gives you like a little manual some pieces of paper some cards and you've got to follow a path through these puzzles and this quiz in this journey and it's it is just like doing family history research and it just felt like i was working basically oh funny yeah it's like here's a clue go to this book, read this document, and then there are key little words you pick out and then it'll lead you to another page where you're suddenly having to fold the page to find a different date.

And it all links back.

It's all very clever, but it's thoroughly absorbing.

But it was literally like, this is like an obscure version of family history.

It was really good fun.

Yeah.

And were you much better than the other person?

Were they a family historian as well?

I think it was good teamwork all round.

It was really good.

I think wine made it better, but yes.

Yes.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, that's just how my brain works, apparently.

I think family history, it does really lend itself to a game.

There's a box of family questions and I've seen them advertised just on social media.

I think they're called Tales or Tales .com.

And the idea is they are loosely linked to family history and they're to invite you to...

have better conversations with your today family but I think they do feel to me as though they relate to family history because they that's what we want to do we want to that's what one of the things I love about family history is you have really good conversations with your living day family family history is great because it's something that everybody's got in common with each other well our ancestors are what we have in common and so even if you haven't seen maybe a distant relation for a while you've got that in common or the generations i think that's a problem isn't it as well like you take it for granted that you can always talk to these people and without being doom and gloom you're not going to always be able to talk to these people but when you've got them it's not natural instinct to bring up the past or find out their history is it without like a good prompt we'll be like oh yeah this this actually is going to be quite interesting i've always got this thing where my nana used to um I actually found this out at a funeral.

She used to work at a cinema.

It's not a big detail.

It's not anything massive in her life.

But I didn't know that until the funeral.

And it's like, I kind of would have liked to maybe have talked to her about it.

But I didn't have a clue that that was part of her life.

And it just changed my view of her.

Because obviously she was always this old lady who was my nana that would give me sweets and I'd cuddle, blah, blah, blah.

But you don't think about her having a job and her role and her youth or anything like that.

Speaking of asking people things, so my mum -in -law, she's been really, really helpful.

I couldn't read lots of those Welsh place names.

Yes.

Even in this recent time, they're like 1911, 1921 census, so I feel like a great big baby not being able to cope, but I couldn't cope.

And I know that I could find the details from other records of where they were born, but I want to make sure that everything is interesting.

Sometimes people don't put the same birthplace across the records.

I want to have...

information from that record I don't want to go yada yada I know where they're born anyway I want to be like this record says they were born there anyway she has been so helpful when she first looked at the record she couldn't decipher it either but then her and her husband spent ages piecing things together and not only did they provide me with the old Welsh names but they provided me with the modern day well because this is back to front The names recorded in the 1911 and 1921 census were like anglicised versions and now they've been Welsh.

They're in Welsh because obviously Welsh was kind of banned and then it had to be revived as a language.

And so they provided me with the modern day Welsh version of the English versions which were used for a hundred years ago.

Bonkers.

Anyway.

And so she provided me with really help.

That's a lot of labour of love.

So I really appreciate her doing that.

And then she also provided me with little snippets of, she knew like one of the places she knew by a nickname for it, a family nickname.

She said, oh, this must be, which I can't remember the name now because I've got it written down.

This must be that place that they always used to go and visit.

They used to visit one of their relations there.

So it all made sense to her.

Yeah.

It's an advantage to me, partly they're her.

ancestors not mine um and partly she's that one generation closer and then she said that because i'd found on the 1921 that the family were claiming that they could speak welsh and english and she was like no my mum could not speak welsh so whatever the record said that her mum said she could speak welsh my brother -in -law's this is that her mum couldn't speak welsh so that's another thing where just you records are good And I'm not saying they're wrong, because maybe her mum could earlier in life, but then something that fell by the wayside.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Just presumed, really, I guess, maybe as well.

Like, oh, yeah, she speaks Welsh.

That's really useful, though.

I mean, without your mum -in -law there, that's a lot of work that you might not have even been able to do by yourself.

Yes.

Well, I wasn't making much headway at all, so I'm really grateful to her.

And to be fair, she spent a lot of time piecing it all together.

I love it the way...

It kind of makes you feel old, but it's really important that we do write down what we know.

And like what you just said, you didn't know about your grandma having watched in the cinema, but the chances of your boys finding that out are just minimal.

So we do have that capacity, the older generations have the capacity to reach a little bit further back in time, whether on our own memories or memories that have been handed down to us.

And so my mum -in -law was having, she could remember these people clear as day from over a century ago because it's her own mum.

It's tricky, though.

Again, I'm going to use the word I'm sweating on this now.

But obviously, previously I've spoken about, I can't even, I don't want to say a name out loud now.

But anyway, Marianne Briggs, Briggs Wood, Briggs, whatever.

She got married three times.

You know, it was a family history mystery.

It wasn't.

It was something that's been handed down.

That's what happened.

She got married three times.

And obviously the documents disprove that and it was actually she got married twice and her husband got married twice or my great -great -grandad, whoever he was.

But my mum has talked to my great -auntie about this and she disputes it and says, oh no, no, it's all wrong.

And I've even placed, because she remembers all of the brothers and sisters or children from this relationship, should I say.

Yeah, the children from this relationship were her aunts and uncles or great aunts and uncles.

And she remembers them.

But she talks about likenesses and how they looked like and certain people look like certain people.

And isn't convinced of what I've been saying in the documents.

But her memory could be tainted.

And like, oh, so I'm taking this as fact.

It freaks me out a little bit, the conflict between the two.

I'm more prone to lean towards agreeing with what I found in the documents and she's youthfully had a flight of fancy and thought, yeah, everybody looks alike, we're all family, which they are.

They're going to have some DNA that matches in some way.

But it's hard, isn't it?

I don't know what I'm saying, really.

No, it's hard and I think whether it's...

It is like it's really fun talking to family about family history.

But inevitably, at times, you have different interpretations.

You might be shocked by different things from a family member with whom you're sharing a story, or you might find something funny and they find it shocking, or you might just completely dispute how you interpret the facts.

And you have to kind of weigh up lots of things because when you're actually having a conversation with them, you're tempering your own natural enthusiasm and your own natural...

maybe with a bit of diplomacy because you're like, you don't want to just stampede over the other person's point of view.

But it can be frustrating because you're like, no, you're wrong, you're wrong.

This is how it is.

And that's if you're like me.

So I have to temper that in myself and allow someone else to have a different opinion.

Yeah.

Definitely.

It's just that you have to take everything with a pinch of salt, even if it's a hard fact.

Like what the document, like you've just said about speaking Welsh.

And then...

Equally, maybe our mummy -law's wrong.

Maybe she just didn't know that.

It's the, yeah, it's balancing out the facts with the, I don't even, what would the word be for history that's handed down?

Word of mouth or?

I guess so, yeah.

Oral history?

Memories, what are wrong?

Family anecdotes, family folklore.

Family folklore, let's do that.

I think, thinking back on it more, so my mum -in -law's mum and my mum -in -law's aunt, I knew them both, not for very long, but I knew them for a few years.

So they were both alive, being very, very old ladies.

And they did see each other, and I was in their presence with them seeing each other.

And so on the 1921 census, they're both there.

I'm speaking.

allegedly speaking Welsh but they never did speak any Welsh in front of me but maybe it's because I was English or British and didn't speak any English so that would be evidence that my mother -in -law is correct because you think two old ladies if they really really spoke Welsh they would be speaking Welsh when they saw each other wouldn't they even if it was just a few phrases checked in like well they did check in a few phrases but they even had to speak it more maybe or maybe they just didn't want to be rude and like yes maybe yeah what they're saying about me now Can I speak Welsh?

Yeah.

But we can all get possessive.

Going back to what you were saying, we can get possessive about our family history.

That's why people get so cross when you find a tree online and someone's put one of your ancestors in the wrong place with the wrong relations.

And it makes people's blood boil.

And I get emails into Family Tree about it with people really stressed.

And I'm not laughing at anyone because it is really stressful when it happens.

You want your ancestors' memory, facts, story, honoured kind of correctly, don't you?

You want the details to be straight, whatever they are.

Even if it's that they were convicts or something, you're like, well, that's how it was.

And it's important to get the facts straight because they have an impact on subsequent generations and ultimately on us.

So we need to have it straight.

You can't just have wishful thinking.

Anyways, people do get very, very cross about...

details be wrong on online trees and you know particularly if you reach out to someone go hey i think maybe based on this evidence this might not be correct and there's like radio silence and it is deeply frustrating when someone won't even engage in a conversation about it which is that that does happen because it's pretty normal for people not to engage in a conversation let alone actually go and change it then on family search sometimes people contact me and go it's wrong on family search well let's change it because you can actually change the details on family search it's a collaborative tree and i've had people change things which i'm not very happy about but it's a collaborative tree that's the whole point of it is that we all you know two minds are better than one right okay that's interesting isn't it but i don't know if it is fun i'm not sure i'm one of the people that would agree um i wouldn't have just my I would say you don't want to have, that's your only place you keep your family history research because someone can't change it.

Wow.

Yeah.

No, that doesn't suit me.

You're more of a control freak than me.

I really am.

Well, as I've said before, I won't commit anything to my tree unless I'm 99 % sure it's right.

And even then when I press the yes, this is related, I sort of have a little bit of a sweat and be like, oh my God, this could be wrong.

Yeah, you can see how it could potentially make family history harder.

The more people get into it and the more people do it and they're a bit blasé or, oh, I'm just doing this for a weekend for fun and just plonk a tree together quickly based on hints.

Yeah, this is right, this is right, this is right.

It could quite easily confuse everybody, couldn't it?

If too many people do it, the real fact...

That is exactly what's happened.

So that is precisely what's happened.

People will go on, start a tree.

Not everyone, but there's enough people who've done this.

And it's a really natural human state of mind.

So you're doing your research, you're accepting hints.

You might be looking at other people's trees.

And if 17 other people all have the same details, well, 17 other people think this.

I must be the idiot for thinking it's something else.

And so you have to...

It's really hard to remain confident in your convictions if you're the one lone person thinking they should be called James and everyone else thinks they're called John.

So it is tricky and that has happened and it is a problem.

It is.

It creates a false history, doesn't it?

That's terrifying.

Oh boy.

I'm now going to have to go back and recheck every single person on my tree.

No, what you can do, what you can do is keep...

going what you're doing is you have you're not just accepting hints you're looking at records you're researching thoroughly you're doing checks to see whether there are other possible namesakes by the same name that you could be getting confused with um you're being very judicious and careful before accepting facts as definite facts and adding them to your tree.

So that's why you've got a good tree score because you are checking all of these things.

Yeah.

How much is that tree score anyway?

It's still at 9 .8, but I've added people, so I keep on expecting it to go down.

The more people you add, I feel it must be harder to maintain that score.

But then again, it's making me probably be a bit more meticulous because I am that geeky.

But yes, yeah.

It's just that creeping doubt, isn't it?

It's like, who is this guy?

How did I get to this bit?

I was going to say something then, but once again, I can't back up where I found it.

Go on then, just go for it.

I found a document.

I was researching someone's marriage in a family.

It was a...

It wasn't like direct line.

It was like one of the brothers.

And I found the marriage certificate.

And on this document, the marriage certificate had another marriage on it underneath.

You know, like it's not the marriage certificate.

It's the one where it shows you a few of them.

And the one underneath was actually the brother of the person above.

But the marriage was either months or even years apart.

And I just found it really weird that the two were on the same document at the same time.

It's rubbish to talk about because I can't actually show you which one it is and I can't find it, but I will now make a note to go do that.

I know what you mean.

So it's the marriage register entry.

So the ones for England and Wales, they'll have two marriages on the page.

And so it's identical.

That's just the way the pro forma page was typed up and then it will have all the handwritten details filled in.

And so imagine you're in a parish church.

and the priest or rector, he would be able to be, after 1837, he would be able to be the registrar.

So as well as being the priest, he'd also be able to act as the local registrar, be able to formally register the marriage.

So sometime, let's say this record's probably sometime from the 1800s or it might be even from the early 1900s.

It's got these two marriages on there.

You're in your parish church.

Let's say it's not a very big parish church.

Somebody gets married in June.

And then the village is going about its life.

And then the next marriage doesn't happen until March the next year.

Or what typically happens nowadays, there'll be a marriage every single Saturday between, say, March and June.

Because people like getting married in the summer and the spring and things, don't they?

And then nobody wants to get married in the colder months.

Yeah, I can see that.

I just found it quite...

Well, not amusing.

Curious that it was the same family.

That's like, surely someone else had got married in between this time.

I will dig out the document.

That's a lovely insight to that family.

Like, what a busy year.

They've got two of their kids getting married.

Yeah?

Definitely.

It was the parents.

You'd be so happy for two of your kids.

They found somebody they love.

They're setting themselves up in life.

It's cool.

Because initially when I saw the document, I didn't look at the dates.

I just literally saw all the names.

I'm like, oh my God, they've had like a double wedding on the same day, but it was months apart.

Oh, it's going to be a challenge for me to find it, isn't it?

But I will find it and I will share it with you.

I'd be interested.

And people do always say that.

So that's a big difference between how we search now and how we used to search.

And so how we search now is we have a search interface and you put in the name of the person that you want and their details and then...

You get your list of search results and you go, boom, straight to their page with their household on the census or boom, straight to their marriage register page with just them.

Whereas way back when, before there was a search system where you might just have digitised microfilms, like what you've said in the past about your mum going to the record office or the archives and scrolling through, then you would have much more.

inevitably you couldn't help but get that contextual information about your ancestors parish so your mum wading through the microphone will be find it very clear like oh this is a busy year for marriages i'm going past a lot of marriages to get or all white why didn't no one get married this year or yeah so she'll be able she'll get that sense of the ebb and flow her eye as she scans through looking for your ancestors will go oh there's lots of wards in this parish and you just inevitably wouldn't fail to be able to get all of this contextual information about your ancestors.

Whereas now, we slam in, grab our details.

We have no idea whether our ancestors' names are common or not in that community.

We have no idea the size of the community.

We have no idea whether it's a busy year for baptisms or not.

But we can, it's all possible.

Like we can just use the arrows paging forwards and backwards.

If there's browse options, we can browse the records.

It just takes time.

And we're such amazing people nowadays.

Yeah, I think it's my favourite record, you know.

Is it?

I think it is.

Oh, favourite record award?

I just had a sneaky look at one and it's not the one I'm trying to tell you about.

But I was like, I really like this record.

Oh, so tell me more about why you like it then.

I just, I just like, you know, you get the...

The wife's maiden name, which is always very useful.

You get the location of the wedding, which is nice to put in context.

Obviously, then you get the father's names and professions as well.

It's good.

It's just good.

And obviously where they live.

So there's a lot of easy information there and it actually helps you progress backwards, doesn't it?

Like having the maiden name, great.

You suddenly can trace that line.

Having the father's name, great.

You've got another generation back.

I just like the way it's laid out as well.

You know, all your lovely social media posts that you've been doing recently, making our social media channels, I'm giving them a plug because Nathan's made them so much more fun and interesting.

Have you done that as a question?

Like, what's your favourite family history record?

I haven't done it in that way.

We had a this or that where it was, do you prefer a birth certificate or a marriage certificate?

Similar, but yeah, we haven't had it.

You should do, I think you should do the favourite one.

Include your...

Fallout, yeah.

I will have to think long and hard what my favourite is.

I also like the 1939 as well.

Why do you like that one?

Because it's very factual, isn't it?

And it gives you exact dates of birth.

It just seems very useful.

When you're diving into the census and you're using that, it's great.

Obviously, each census is great, but the 1939, it's not the census.

But the facts feel more solid, don't they?

They're good.

Look at me.

Yes, just casually showing off.

Certificate geek.

Oh, boy.

I'm trying to think what my favourite one is.

For a while, the 1939 was my favourite because I found it really, really moving.

Like the motivation for the record having been taken in the first place.

And I really loved it for that reason.

I'm not sure what my favourite is.

I have a feeling it might be turning into being Will's.

Because I know I've been very bad at getting enough wills over the years.

And I am getting better at remembering to track down people's wills where they exist.

So it might be that.

But I have to say I was a little bit disappointed by wills as well.

And I've actually written my will, which is amazing.

Because I only did it a few years ago and I'm very old.

So it took me a long time to get around to it.

And I guess it's because for one of my ancestors in Scotland, As well as the will, I've actually got the inventory of his stuff, which I find very exciting.

So I always wish that all the wills would say, I give my best bucket to my second neighbour, Joseph.

I want to know exactly what they owned.

Oh, I'd like a story about the bucket then, though, wouldn't you?

I would, I would.

This really special bucket in the village that everybody wanted.

Yes, yes.

It was gold.

Yes.

So I wish there were more inventories.

It's very, very rare and you're not going to find them really in recent times.

Yeah, so I think that's what I would love to be able to find is inventories for each one of my ancestors.

What did they leave when they died?

Did they have a spinning wheel?

Like in stories.

Yeah?

Yeah, no, that does sound good.

It's very you, very you.

Completely pointless and totally me.

Anyway, so next, I think we've probably used up all our time.

What I would invite people to do, I always say, please sign up to our e -newsletter because it is so genuinely useful.

And please do do that.

And so you can sign up at www.

family -tree .co .uk forward slash newsletter hyphen sign hyphen app.

But also, if you love chipping into the conversation, as well as putting any comments below the podcast, we always love that, or emailing into us, then do go and check out our social media channels because how often do you do your fun social media posts, Nathan?

It's pretty often, isn't it?

There should be at least one every day.

Yeah.

There's lots of fun little conversations to join in with, so go for it.

Don't be shy.

As long as they're about family history, they count.

It's meant to be fun, isn't it?

That's the point.

Social as well.

Chatty.

So come along to do that.

And we haven't really talked about any of our homework.

We've been waffling and waffling.

So what are we going to talk about next time?

I don't know.

I feel a bit naughty.

I've not particularly done my homework.

It's still stewing in my head.

Basically, I'm actually, I've convinced myself that I want to be writing stories.

I'm trying to turn into you a little bit.

But it's stopping me because I've got an exciting little, as I've said before, I found a document about some guy who was in World War I.

So I've seen these documents and I want to get absorbed into those, but I'm trying not to let myself do that until I've done this write -up of David Hearn.

So I need to be a good boy, I need to do that, and then I will open those documents up and look at them.

So maybe I will, I don't think my write -up of David Hearns is particularly of interest to anyone else, but maybe I'll try and start to look at these new documents for the World War I chap, either before we speak next, or maybe live as we do it next time.

That would sound really fun.

Can I just give you one little tip, which isn't my tip.

Again, it's somebody else's tip.

So this is Hannah Hellstein.

And she was encouraging me to get on with writing stuff down.

And she says, literally, just get your phone, set a timer for 15 minutes and go, I'm just going to write for 15 minutes.

And honestly, it really works.

Because if you think, I'm going to write all about David Herm's life, you immediately get in a panic.

You think you don't know enough yet.

You think you can't.

Kind of write the story because you start feeling nervous about your writing skills.

Whereas if you go, I'm just going to write down what I know now for the next 15 minutes.

And then the beeper will go and you'll find yourself clicking off the beeper and you're like, I've just got to finish off what I'm writing.

You actually go over the 15 minutes and it gets you actually doing it.

That sounds really good.

It sounds like it actually just makes it really attainable as well.

Really attainable.

Really actually blooming works.

I'm probably sitting in fear and thinking, right, I do need to write this up, but I need to sit down.

I need to get my facts right.

But obviously, as we're talking now, I can sit and talk to you about David and tell you lots of stuff.

So I probably can just actually sit down and write enough.

Yes.

And you could say you could type it up or write it by hand.

I'd probably say type it up.

And every time when you're writing during the 15 minutes, every time you get to a fact that you don't, you're not quite sure about, either make it a colour or put question marks and brackets around it.

So, you know.

It's a memory to yourself.

This is not a fact yet.

It's a fact as good as I can do it off the top of my head.

And then subsequently you can go back to your records, smarten up all the facts to make sure it's properly accurate.

And you've done it.

Lovely.

Lovely.

Easy peasy.

I'll get that done.

Okay.

And maybe also we'll just see what we get up to between now and next time.

Yes.

And putting you on the spot now, what are you doing for your homework?

Oh, I've got my really fun project, which I haven't done yet, is to find out the records which have servants on, find the photos of the houses which go with those records.

There's not loads and loads, just a few late Victorian Edwardian ones from this one branch of my family who was comfortably off enough to have servants and take photos of the houses.

Put them online on the blog.

They'll sit there.

Nobody will find them for a million years.

But maybe one day a descendant of one of those servants will find it and go, wicked, I've got great -great -granny's house she was a servant in.

Cool.

That's my thing.

I've got to do it.

I've written it in my diary.

It's the thing.

You've mentioned it twice now, so you've got to do it.

Yes.

I'll be so embarrassed if I haven't done it next time.

Take care, everyone.

Adios.