Hello and welcome to this week's podcast, our favourite little oasis of family history sanity in this crazy world.

And my name is Helen Tovey and with me is...

Nathan Ward, hello there.

Hello.

So, Nathan, how have you been getting on with your family history or can I butt in there and tell you what I've been doing?

You can butt in because obviously I'm still doing my David Hearn thing.

I'm in the process of, I say I'm in the process of, I am thinking about writing him up.

So I'm actually, like you said in our last podcast, I quite like the idea of doing this summary of my year of family history.

Nice.

Maybe I'm not there yet.

But it ties in loosely to the David Hearn stuff because that's obviously me starting to write a narrative.

So I'm intrigued by that side of it, but I haven't really pushed on that much from what we spoke about last time.

So that's kind of where I'm at, really.

I'm very keen to get to this World War I guy, but I'm trying to control myself and get a nice little stopping point with David Hearn first.

That's it for me, really.

Tell me what you've been up to.

Well, I will do.

But I mean, just when you said like your year in family history, that was something we touched on last time.

And I think maybe that's something we should all do, like do a little bit of a summary.

Like what have you been doing over the last year?

Yeah, that'd be cool.

Where you were at the start of the year and where you are now.

And obviously it's a massive shift for me because it was from nothing to where I am now.

Your whole identity has changed, hasn't it?

You've widely took an ancestry DNA.

And you haven't looked at it since.

But you've just figured out all about the family history.

Yeah.

No.

I'm still scared of DNA.

Oh, that doesn't matter.

Maybe I'm just sulking with it because I'm not a Viking, but whatever.

No.

It's going to stay there and you'll be able to, whenever you decide you want to pick it up, you can do.

And in the meantime, you've got lots of interesting things to do.

I want to say more interesting things to do, but lots of interesting things to do.

Well, that's the thing.

It's like...

I feel like I am being lazy by ignoring the DNA side of it, but it's not like I don't have 101 things to do with DNA, well not DNA, with family tree and family history.

There's so much for me to explore that I feel I can get to without touching DNA.

And I know probably people are screaming and shouting at me now saying, well, it would cement it all and make it all concrete, find this and that out.

But I don't know.

I want to sort of exhaust possibilities before I go to DNA.

which again I know probably isn't right and they should go hand in hand together but that's the way I'm doing it so no I don't I literally think with family history we all do it slightly differently and it just doesn't matter and it's it's supposed to be enjoyable you know unless you've got a you know there's very few people aren't there or not very few but there's some people who um trying to solve a family mystery is something more than a pastime it's a crucial to your identity let's say if you discovered one of your parents wasn't your parents or if you're adopted it's really really crucial but then for the rest of us we can take it at a slower pace because you haven't got that immediate need that you're trying to uncover a kind of a key bit about your heritage or your identity but even so it still changes our identity loads doesn't it how as we piece together more and more of our ancestors we change our perspective on ourselves it does yeah and like i obviously keep joking about the viking thing but i pre -dna test i had preconceptions and that would you know actively run around with an axe pretending i'm a viking that didn't really happen But knowing that I'm not now a Viking and then I'm learning all these things about these guys who've gone off to India and this and that and the other, it changes your story, doesn't it?

It's your heritage, literally.

So it's cool to see how it sort of changes and progresses.

Does that make any sense?

I don't know.

No, it does.

I think I'd be surprised if there's anybody who's done family history and hasn't had moments of reflection.

seen themselves or their own mini kind of nuclear family or their broader sense you just get a more nuanced idea you get different windows to look through the past at instead of just being able to say oh we're the bakers and we come from Berkshire's go well that's one of my lines and they were in Berkshire for 200 years but actually before that they were in Kent and then you know you haven't just got one line it's not just you've got loads of lines haven't you Yeah, definitely.

And like, obviously for me, I thought I was local, Mr.

Pudsey.

And now I am actually, well, I'm in India at the moment, aren't I?

So it's cool.

Just expanding the horizons of it and making me aware of the world a bit more.

So I've been battling on with my list.

You know, I thought I had roughly 100 documents I hadn't filed up.

And I was wading through them and got down to 80 something.

And then I found two other folders, one of which had 176 documents in.

So I was like, oh, bang my head on the desk.

I've got way more documents I haven't filed up than what I thought.

So I'm just slowly going through those.

And then, so last night, there were some really kind of recent in time ones.

They were my husband's granny and grandpa, people I knew.

You know, well, obviously I met my husband in adult life, so I didn't know them for a really long time, but I knew them for a number of years.

I'm very fond of them.

I found them both in the 1921 census when the 1921 census came out in early 22.

I hadn't filed them up yet.

So I went to file them up, then realised to my shame that I couldn't read the Welsh place names very easily.

And so then I was rattling around with a map trying to identify them.

Defeated.

Couldn't do it.

Then I thought, I know, I'll steal a leaf out of Nathan's book because you said your mum was really helpful, unsuspectingly helpful, when she'd already discovered all those military records that you found.

She'd already found them.

I thought, this is silly because my mum -in -law is alive and well and knows all about her parents.

So I'm just going to ask her where her parents were born and then I'll be able to decipher the Welsh place names.

But what I found, there's so many interesting things.

There's always interesting things.

So these are people I know.

I knew their names.

I knew their middle names.

I knew their birth years.

So this is all the sort of stuff you get off the census.

But what I didn't know, looking over on the far right -hand side, had the column about languages spoken, which obviously for a census in Wales is whether they speak Welsh or not.

And so my husband's maternal grandfather.

He didn't speak Welsh, but my husband's great -grandparents on that line did speak Welsh.

But then my husband's granny, his maternal granny, did speak Welsh.

And she did have a little slight Welsh accent, but she actually spoke Welsh.

And I was like, that's a bit lost on me.

You know, I wish I'd asked her to kind of show me.

Yeah.

And they would use throwaway Welsh phrases, but I guess they never spoke Welsh in front of me because, you know, her husband didn't speak Welsh.

It was just her who spoke Welsh, but she had no one to speak Welsh to.

So that was just a little secret part of her that I never had.

Wow.

That is really cool, isn't it?

Yes.

All these little details of people's lives that you just don't know about, but are absolutely fascinating.

Yes.

And her, so the young Welsh girl, so she's...

And my husband's granny, she was four years old on the 1921 census.

And her dad was the local doctor and he works from home.

And we've been back and we've seen the house.

Not inside it, but just like from the street.

But his wife...

Yes, this is...

It was very rainy.

And then his...

wife is there.

Her job is home duties.

But then in the column where it says place of employment, she's written ditto.

And I'm like, so this is one of the, another of those stories, a bit like my farmer's wife, who isn't described as a farmer's wife.

So we have the farmer, we have the wife of the farmer with nothing in our occupation column.

And then we have the servant who was assistant to the farmer's wife, but nowhere does it actually say farmer's wife on that census for my family.

So here we have the doctor and we have her, the doctor's wife.

who happens to be the wife of the doctor, but nowhere is she described as being employed in the surgery.

But she's listed as home duties, but then her place of work is Ditto, where his place of work is.

And this kind of gives me a little window that perhaps she was a lot more hands -on and helpful in the surgery than just doing her house kind of keeping role.

Right, proper medical team.

Yes, all these kind of...

Just tantalizing things.

Again, it's fine.

I can ask my mother -in -law.

She'll know the answers.

So I just need to not get in the studio about the lack of documentation.

I can just ask her.

So I've been doing that anyway.

And then I have also been...

starting to write up my family history.

So I'm so envious of you.

I'm keeping so envious of you because every turn you're doing what I wish I'd done.

So you nearly racked up a year of doing family history.

You're going to be writing your first individual ancestor account.

It doesn't matter if it's like one paragraph, one side of A4, multiple sides of A4.

It just doesn't matter.

Probably end up being multiple sides of A4 because I'd suggest you include the documents in there because in time to come, that's much more interesting for someone else so they can see the documents woven through it.

like a magazine article don't you think yeah yeah so you're already doing that and you're going to do kind of a summary of what you found so far so i have been feeling a little bit overwhelmed about how to tackle writing up my family history and i thought right i'm going to start um with the tree analogy with the root and i'm going to do like you know who are we where do we come from and just do an overview and it is quite hard because so many of my ancestors have been in the military, so there isn't a neat little answer of where we come from.

We keep moving.

All over the place, yeah.

But that's its story, isn't it?

That is the story, yeah.

Come from a military family.

Nomadic.

Yeah, nomadic.

Yeah, rootless.

But your root is your family, isn't it?

Well, it sounds cheesy, but that's what made me realise that.

It's been very...

very interesting reflecting on it all and and just little even words even vocabulary from my old childhood when i started writing it up i've had to kind of dredge up these words like oh yeah that's what you called it so even um just like the guard room so sometimes you'd live on an army patch you know all the houses where the shoe families are.

That's the patch.

And then you might have to go past the guard room if you're living, if your patch was within the barracks perimeter.

So I was like, what do you call that thing?

Is it the century house?

What's it called?

What's it called?

So I had to dredge up all these words.

This is my own life.

I can't remember the words.

Anyway, so I would, yeah, I would be interested how other people find writing up their own life story because it's...

I'm not particularly writing up my own life story, but there's close at hand generations.

I think they're much harder than you think.

You've got all the details, but you've almost got too many details.

Yes, it's hard to be objective, isn't it?

It's like going back to my David Hearn.

I've made his story about his war exploits or a world of making.

That's the story.

It's not war, but when he was in the army.

For me, that categorises him.

But that's not day -to -day life, is it?

That's only a small section of his life, but that's the one that I've got the documentation to create the story from.

Whereas my parents and myself and maybe my grandparents, I've got so much information that, which bits do you pick?

It's like what we've discussed before, where if you're going to choose a photograph to put on an ancestry, do you choose them as a child or as an adult?

We're not just over a little bit of time.

We've got a span, haven't we?

Yeah.

I think, so with our family history research, obviously sky's the limit.

We want to gather as much information as we possibly can.

But then trying to kind of have the output, the end result that you want to be shareable with other people, even if it's in a blog format, so you're not restricted by print costs or a number of pages, but you are restricted by people's attention span.

It needs to be...

not just a waterfall of constant streams of unintelligible information.

Sharp and punchy.

Yes.

That's what we need.

It's actually making me a little bit sweaty, this conversation.

Sorry, sorry.

Like, everything's from a perspective, isn't it?

Like, you could literally categorise someone on one small detail, one small document that we find.

And then that becomes them.

That's who they are.

Like, again, with Tank Man, it became all about the war where he died.

Tank, that's his story.

He might have hated war.

He might not have liked tanks.

He might have, you know, he might have had more things that he was proud of before then that I don't know about.

But I've made this guy into this character.

I've, well, it's not a falsehood, but the narrative is from the perspective of what I've found.

Just a bit scary, isn't it?

It is.

It is.

There's a really interesting genealogist and she's called Hiana Helfstein.

And we've worked with her a little bit.

She's done some things with family tree.

And she's all about us each.

taking the opportunity to tell our own life story and so obviously at the moment that's just us but what what her view is like in 100 years time in 200 years time the more of us who do it because it is easier and easier to record information our own lives now because we've all got um you know computers or mobile phones or we do have pen and paper you can write things down so precisely to combat that so that we don't just leave somebody a cv saying what jobs we did we actually say that Yeah, you love running and all the other things that we...

Yeah, the things that make you your character.

Yeah.

Run like your job sort of thing.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

It is.

But with history, it's always like that.

It's always trying to...

It's definitely not a waste of time, but there's that cliche, isn't it, that there's famous words, it's like history's told by the victors or whatever.

And so we're not the victors, but family historians dictate what sort of family history a family has, don't they?

Depending on what captures your imagination.

But we're limited by what we can find or not find.

I'm reading this amazing book at the moment, and it's about Henry VIII.

Two sisters and his mum.

And to my shame, I was like, I didn't know he had any sisters.

But one of them was Queen of France.

One of them was Queen of Scotland, I think.

And I'd never put them together as a family unit.

I knew he had his brother.

His brother died of whatever he died of, sweating sickness or something like that.

A few months after he got married.

And so he was only a young teenager.

So when his big brother died, then suddenly Henry was in the kind of the fast stream.

He's going to be.

King, yeah?

Yeah.

When his own dad died.

So I knew about his brother because you always hear about that because that's how Henry got Catherine of Aragon.

The sisters, I hadn't really pieced them together.

Anyway, even for Henry VIII, they're not quite sure where he got baptised.

There is a date and he either got baptised here or there.

I can't remember the two places.

But you think, for Henry VIII, something has been forgotten from history precisely where he got baptised.

So that shows why we can all get stuck with not having enough information.

Yeah, or too much information on one particular bit.

I hadn't even considered him having brothers or sisters.

I don't know the brother story there.

I know it's probably not shocking to anyone, but in my basic knowledge of history, it's Henry VIII and his wives.

There's a song about it, isn't there?

So that's society pushing.

Our media pushing those aspects on us that you forget about.

Over and again.

Yeah.

I'm going to read out the title of this book because it is amazing and it's so exciting.

It makes you reflect from a family history point of view.

So she's a historian, but she's definitely a family historian at heart, the way she pieces together tiny details from history.

And so, for instance, one of Henry's sisters who became Margaret of Scotland.

This historian has found details of all the beautiful clothes and things that she wore on her wedding day.

So her husband had a white damask suit to wear.

This is in the early 1500s.

She had a white damask dress.

dress cut from the same cloth and when they were walking up to the altar her husband put his arm around her waist and led her up to the altar like she's found these details in documents we don't even have these details about our own cousins whose weddings we've been to do we written down like that so she just is all about the unexpected detail so the book is called henry's roses um the lives of elizabeth of york margaret of scotland and mary of france and The author is Amanda Harvey Purse and it is published by Amberley and it's excellent.

So inspiring.

You don't want to rush it.

You have to just read it really carefully.

Right.

And is it a story or is it actual?

No, it's actual history.

She just turns it over from every which way.

It's like how we try and do it.

She does it really, really excellently.

So instead of, you know, we hear about Henry VIII's father.

Henry VII and how he was very financially astute.

And we know these few little bite -sized things.

And he took over after the Battle of Bosworth from Richard III, the one who is said to have killed the two princes in the tower.

Remember that one?

Yes, I do know that.

So we know that about Henry VII.

But then here, because we're learning about Henry VIII's mother, we're learning about Henry VII's wife.

Right, of course, yeah.

So she doesn't cover any of that stuff.

She covers the fact when their son, Henry's big brother, dies, she covers the fact that Henry's mother says to Henry VII, Husband, let's try again.

Let's have another baby.

Hopefully it will be a son because they know they've now down to one son, I think.

I think that's right.

They've got one son.

So obviously you need to have more sons because they're trying to...

pass on a strong male royal lineage or whatever so she does actually get pregnant and she's in her late 30s by then which for that age is quite tough to be pregnant and she has a baby it's a little girl and they both die really sadly yeah so it's tragic it's also fascinating because she this is bits of history I've never learned yeah no I don't know any of that again not quite But I think the point is why it struck a chord with me and hopefully it might strike a chord with other people who are family historians.

It's like not just going with the main event, not going with the main people.

Me thinking about writing up my family history or you thinking about writing up your David Hearn, not just thinking about writing up the soldier.

It's like writing up the life of what it's like to be a soldier's child or a soldier's wife.

All of it.

You said that last week and I hadn't considered it.

The documents that follow David Hearn also show where his children are and how they're living.

And they're like children being brought up in India as opposed to overseas.

It's dangerous because he had a worse survival rate, I think, even than terrible Victorian England, just because of the climate.

Yeah, it's just something I hadn't even thought about.

It's fleshing out one person's part of the tree, but actually it all goes...

well, not dialogues, get sent down to the other shoots of it, doesn't it?

Yeah.

So you can learn things about other people from other people.

That's not very well said.

No, it is.

You definitely do learn things about other people from other people.

Can I just nip in and ask a question that you've made me remember?

When you were talking about the doctor and his wife...

having the surgery thing.

It's just, it's reminding me of something that I discovered the other day and potential of silly questions coming up and something you're not going to know the answer to because how could you?

But on one of the censuses, and I think this might have been for David Hearn actually, on the last census he's on, it is David Hearn, on the last census he's on, it's the year before he died.

So he's in this house with his wife and a few of the kids.

But there's also a surgeon living there.

This is probably stupid, but because I know he dies quite soon after this census.

One, could the surgeon have been living with him because he was that ill?

Or two, could the surgeon have just been at the house that day where the census is that extreme?

Like he's out on call and he's actually at this house.

So, no.

Helen shook her head at me then.

And all three, could it actually just have been a family friend who was a surgeon who happened to live there?

Hmm.

You're not going to know the answers, are you?

No.

So in the column where it has the relationship to the head of the household, what does it say there?

Does it say lodger or visitor?

Because that will give you a few more little clues.

And then that would be interesting to see.

Okay, I will quickly have a look.

This is requiring me to remember which census it is.

It must be the 1861?

No, it can't, because he was at war then.

He wasn't at war.

He was a soldier.

Then other things you could do is you could search for the surgeon in the previous and the after census, subsequent census, to find out where he's living.

And sometimes it could be that the person was just a lodger, so that your family took in a lodger.

for a little bit of extra income, which if your David Hearn is near the end of his life, and so presumably he's not working at that point, he's only got a year to go, he's either very old or his health could have taken a nosedive or whatever, then having a lodger in the home to bring in a little bit of extra income is going to be helpful, isn't it?

It is.

I might have to come back to you on this because I can't 100 % be sure it was.

David Hearn.

I'm thinking it must have been him or someone around him because I was aware of the death date and the fact that it's a year after the census.

I'll do some research and come back to it.

It's just you reminded me of it and it gave me a few questions.

It's interesting to look at his death certificate as well.

Because sometimes they'll say, you know, whether there's anyone medical in attendance.

So one of the things I...

added to my family tree maker yesterday was by I can't remember how many great grannies Jessie Talma's death record and she died aged 46 and I had added it to um added it to my software anyway it said that it hadn't been any more medical in attendance and she'd been suffering from phthisis for about five years which is a long time isn't it all through her 40s yeah um anyway there's no one in attendance so If it was somebody in attendance, you might say somebody MD or whatever.

Right.

It just struck me as interesting because the name, this profession surgeon, it's very different from everybody else around him.

And how old was he as well?

That would be interesting.

He's a young doctor and he's...

I want to say...

This is a rabbit hole.

this is why i didn't mention it previously i was like right but i'm like oh who's he i always get excited when i see a lodger or somebody else appear on the tree oh this is a distant cousin who's been exiled for whatever reason so he's got to go but it's not it's not a silly thing though to um to keep bearing him in mind and maybe add his notes somewhere say for instance in your research log if you have a typed up research log because then you can go find his name can't you go control F and literally go and find his name at some point in the future.

So I, we, one of my, so it was my great, great aunt's middle name is, her name is Helen Smart at first.

And so Smart sounds really smart.

We were like, where's this name come from?

Whatever.

But, and no one ever knew.

And then just working back through the censuses, I just found in the 1861 census, they had a lodger living with them, just a random lodger, random man called Andrew Smart.

But they went on to name some of their children, gave.

their children the middle name of the lodger's surname um just because he obviously became a friend that's the family became part of the family by the sound of it yeah yeah so your surgeons particularly if he's there at a difficult time in their life when you know if you're nursing somebody in their last few months that's it's very kind of sounds awful but it's very bonding time isn't it you're going to have that shared experience of a very difficult time if he who's living there who knows yeah I guess there's loads of answers, isn't there?

It could be a partner of one of the daughters.

I haven't even considered that.

I will go back to it.

I will firstly work out how to find which document it is and then I'll see on this one.

Yeah.

But yeah, the relationship to the head of the household column, that would give you a few little clues.

And then I think it's on ancestry.

I think they do have some medical registers.

So you could look him up in there as well.

And it will say.

knew where he qualified from when he was first practising, those sort of dates.

This is more rabbit hole.

It's very rabbit hole.

I think maybe add it to your rabbit hole list for the moment.

I will do.

It's not necessary, is it?

No.

It's one of those things that we all come across the whole time.

We come across details in the records and sometimes they're not necessary and then other times...

If he's just a random lodger who happens to be living there in the 1871 or 1881 census or whatever it was, and he's just there for a few months and then he goes again, it's incidental, isn't it?

But if he went on to marry one of the daughters and then you can piece together the story and go, oh, he was a lodger at the time when her father was dying.

Obviously, it's quite a traumatic, you know, just it's clearly sad chapter of that family's life.

And then they went on to marry.

You're like, oh, that's interesting that he was there for that part of their life.

So suddenly it's not irrelevant.

It's suddenly a nice little nugget.

Yeah, deeper connections.

Yes.

Hmm.

I think we have to be very nosy as family historians, don't we?

It's just the way they are.

Part detective, part total curtain twitcher to the past.

Yeah.

I guess that it stands out, doesn't it?

When you see the basic, it sounds like basic facts, but when you see the list of the family members, they've all got the same surname, but suddenly someone else is at the bottom with a different surname, you instantly, well, I am, I'm instantly drawn to it because it's like, this is out of the norm.

And I want to research them, even though they're potentially not the actual family, but it pulls you in.

Well, it pulls me in anyway.

And this sounds silly maybe, but so.

Lots of my ancestors don't have servants.

Some of my ancestors are servants.

But there's a couple of lines which do have servants in their house.

And there's an art of those.

Then I've got photos of these houses because the families, they're like late Victorian, early Edwardian families with servants.

So I've got photos of these houses and I've got the servants' names.

And so I want to get a way to put these online because...

those servants will go on to be someone else's granny or great -granny, won't they?

They're going to grow up.

They're kind of 19 in my...

I see them on the census.

They're aged 19 and four months or whatever it is in the 1921 census.

And I've got a picture of a house where they're a servant.

They go on and lead a different life.

But that would be really cool if that person can find the picture of the house where they were a servant.

Isn't that nice?

Yeah, that'd be really good, yeah.

Yes, because I'd like to do that for my ancestors who were servants.

I didn't know what it was like where they lived.

So, anyway, somehow I need to piece that together.

Put the houses and the servants' names so they don't have to do some random Googling.

So, what would you do on Ancestry as, like, an event type thing?

I'd just shove it on my website.

But you could do it on Ancestry.

You could have an unrelated person.

So, you could add the person to your tree and then move the relationship so they're just floating around in your tree.

And then...

Um, you could do that, but I would just do it as a blog post and then it could just sit there for 10 years.

No one would ever find it.

And then suddenly someone will be researching their ancestor and they'll find the picture and they don't have to get in contact with me or they can be really fun if they did, but they didn't have to.

And then, um, they could just have a photo to add to their family history.

Be like, yeah, what are the chances?

Yeah, that's nice.

I like that.

I also, I mean, I don't like the idea of someone floating around in my tree that absolutely makes me feel a bit sweaty.

But if, like, because I know, like, again, David Hearn, he was a butler, wasn't he, when he came back?

And his daughter, she was a servant somewhere else, so sort of followed the family path a little bit.

But it would be cool if, like, if she was on somebody else's tree working as a servant, and then, like you say, you get this picture, but then you also get a feel for the family.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm going all Downton Abbey now, I feel.

It'd be nice to know, wouldn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

I think it'd be really cool.

Oh, God, I'm going to start watching Downton Abbey again, aren't I?

Yes, yes.

With a completely different eye.

Yes, yes.

I don't have an extreme interest in the butler.

I'm going to write down that servant thing because it's been mulling around in my head and you know when you're mean to get on with something.

Just got to do it.

It goes back to what we were saying earlier.

It's painting a bigger picture for somebody.

You know, you can read the word, yes, we're a servant, but if you get to see the house and all pictures of them, even all the clothes that we're wearing or.

Yeah.

You know, the degree of like, whether it's like a stately home or if it's just a house or.

Yeah.

It paints a different picture instantly and suddenly.

I've got, I've got photos of some of the servants, so I should definitely do this.

I actually have the people.

Yeah.

That'd be lovely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I keep on like, well, again, with the David Head, I'm like.

When I did the initial search for the battalion, I was like, well, maybe I will find a picture of him.

And I didn't.

Not yet.

Not yet, not yet.

But there is that sort of excitement, isn't there?

Like he could actually be on a squad picture and that would be really cool.

So yet again, we have our work cut out.

Also, Nathan, you've been really busy, haven't you?

I do love social media, but I am pretty rubbish at it.

And then recently you've decided to take the family tree social media under your wing and make it a bit more fun, haven't you?

Hopefully.

I'm trying at least, just to make it a bit more approachable and intriguing, I guess.

Just, yeah, random facts or asking people what they like or what they prefer.

I like that.

You know, like we discuss now, we're like, oh, do you prefer doing this?

Do you like doing that?

It's just interesting to know what other people are doing.

So, yeah, I've done a few like this and that.

Like, would you prefer to have a famous relative or a royal relative?

Things like that.

So would you?

Which would you prefer then?

I'd go famous, to be honest.

I'm not much of a royalist, so that side doesn't bother me.

Whereas, you know, I want to find out I'm related to Ian Fleming or someone like that.

That'd be cool.

I don't know why.

What about you?

You'd go royal straight away, wouldn't you?

But, you know, I'm not much of a royalist, but I would probably go royal.

But I have got a connection to the royal family.

Apparently, my dad says it's a family search, so I am a bit like, OK, we might need to have a few pictures of the salt, because I'm not quite sure what the evidence for it is.

But it's not actually, we're a servant to the royal family.

Right, OK, cool.

If only somebody would put pictures on a website, that could help.

I know, I know.

It was a long time ago, a very long time ago.

That's good.

Yeah.

It's pre -photography.

Cool.

But yeah, that's what I've been doing on the social media, just trying to spark conversations, get people interested.

And then equally for myself, I've started doing one called Fun Fact Friday, which is not necessarily family history, but it's looking at history.

So for me, it's finding contexts, like what's going on in the world at this particular time.

And then it's like, all right, my X, Y, and Z person was alive at this time, but this fun fact happened.

So I've done one recently about...

Greenwich Mean Time starting.

We all take these things for granted.

When did it start then?

Oh, don't ask me that question.

I think it was 1850, if I remember rightly.

They had a big summit and they all decided that they wanted to have one universal time.

Our international and universal time.

Apart from the French, who didn't want to be involved with it because they wanted Paris to be the central point for it.

So they didn't adopt it until...

That it would be called PMT.

Yes.

I think they actually did call it that.

I need to just double check my facts now because I know it wasn't that long.

It might have been 1885.

Oh, do you know what?

Nathan's going to check his facts.

1884 was when it became the prime meridian.

So recent really, isn't it?

I guess so, yeah.

Just an interesting little tidbit.

It means nothing really, but it's a fun fact for Friday, so there you go.

It's a very fun fact.

I mean, I guess if you're travelling by sea and you're waiting for the tide to be right before you can get going, then it doesn't really matter down to the nearest minute, does it?

No, no.

I think a lot of it, I mean, again...

I might be getting this very, very wrong because my history is rubbish, but I think a lot of it was to do with trains as well, with trains getting people around.

The timetables became very necessary and if the times weren't matching up, it didn't work, did it?

Yes.

No, it's no longer good enough to say, I'll be with you by nightfall.

That sounds good, though.

I like it.

Sounds so dramatic, doesn't it?

I might finish all my emails with that now.

I'll be with you by nightfall.

I love things like that.

And if you're late, they can be, forsooth, he wasn't here by nightfall.

We need to bring back all of these lovely words.

Definitely.

Okay, so should we go away and rattle on with everything that we're trying to do then?

Indeed.

Yes, so much family history.

So if people would like to follow us on the social media channels, you probably already do, but if you haven't looked at them for a while, I'd recommend you head over to them and then they are a much more fun and enjoyable...

stream of material to follow now that Nathan's got his genealogy hands on them and then if also if you'd like to sign up to the e -newsletter And it's the same link as normal.

It's www .family -tree .co .uk forward slash newsletter hyphen sign hyphen up.

And thank you, everybody, for listening.

And we look forward to next week's session.

And if you have any comments that you'd like to wing our way about the podcast, anything you'd like us to discuss or any views you'd like to share or.

anything that you the struck a chord or anything you disagree with and of course any facts you got wrong then um don't hesitate to email us okay and the email address is helen dot t at family hyphen tree dot co .uk okay bye then see you later