Accentuate the Positive 2020 - A Family History Review

Jill Ball of Geniaus has again asked us to Accentuate the Positive in our review of our family history activities this past year.

Few people I am sure would say there was little positive above uut 2020, what with the news dominated by Covid -  the worst crisis that has faced the world since the Second World War.   On  a personal  note - halting holidays, local travel, social visits, community activities, delaying  medical procedures  - basically affecting our ability to enjoy an active, varied life.

Yet there were positives - not least with my family history, simply because I had so much more time spent at home. So along with my husband and daughter and family, all of us living in a relatively safe region of the rural Scottish Borders, my IPad, main computer, friends and relations at the end of the phone, plus  the fact I had such an absorbing hobby, all were a god send - life would otherwise have been so dull.  

So what have I done in response to the  Geniaus prompts ? 

An elusive ancestor I found was... To use Jill’s pithy phrase “All of my elusive ancestors are still in hiding”,  notably my grandmother’s early life – my major brick wall.  But my late venture in 2020 into DNA did reveal distant cousins who I contacted and shared information and photographs. So I have spent a lot of time following up my Common Ancestor contacts  and adding names to my Ancestry family trees.

 

A geneajourney I planned but didn't take was ...  A visit with my daughter and granddaughter to my birthplace and ancestral home of my mother’s family who I have traced back to 1736 in Poulton-le-Fylde, near Blackpool, Lancashire. This would have been granddaughter’s first visit to  the area. Hopefully in 2021?

1970's  - Seated on North Pier with the famous Blackpool Tower in the background, opened in 1894.

 

 

I located an important record ...  My uncle Charles Weston  had been a Japanese POW  and I was delighted to find on FindMyPast a document, partly in Japanese, recording his time in capture – and was pleased to pass that onto Charles’ daughter. 

I made a new geminate who... was largely responsible for persuading me to take my DNA. Somehow I always thought I needed another family member to do it with me and they are small in number only vaguely interested in my family history activities or are not on the Internet.  

I joined... Facebook Groups linked with my family history  e.g.History of Blackpool, Poulton-le-FyldePast, where I have enjoyed sharing memories and photographs; Wolverhampton Genealogy & Family Tree Help who provided me with    background information on my father's birthplace and South South Shields Family History (still to make full use of this site.   I was a late convert to Facebook, largely due to the frequent adverse comments about it in the press re trolls etc. But thanks to my blog colleagues, I soon realised I was missing out by not using Facebook opportunities, so now enjoy following many genealogy \nd local history groups.

 A photograph from my great aunt's collection - her father James Danson (my great grandfather)  is the merry bearded figure  sitting in the stocks in Poulton.  This posting received my best ever feedback with 201 Likes and 39 comments.

 

 

The major event of my genealogical year was….. joining the modern world of DNA.  I found the process with Ancestry easy to follow – ditto the presentation of results.  I was 73% English, (North West and West Midlands) which figures with my parents’ background.  which figures, but am puzzled by the 22% Scottish and 5%  Norwegian.  (My user name of Scotsue stems the fact I have lived in Scotland for 60 years and my working life has spanned Scottish tourism and archives. – so I would love to discover  some Scottish ancestry)

A new piece of technology or skill I mastered.....My husband suddenly expressed an interest in doing his DNA, so I bought him a kit for Christmas.  But then came the  challenge to my limited IT skills -   how was I going to link  my husband's guest account on Ancestry   to his family trees on my account.   I managed to do this, thanks to Ancestry Support clear step by step guidelines.

Other positives I would like to share are:

• Completing the narrative on my mother’s Danson family -  this has been on my “to do” list for a considerable length of time. But I finished it early on in 2020 and managed to get it spiral bound at a local printer just before the first lockdown.

• Researching and blogging about my father’s ancestry which had always been rather shadowy  with nothing much beyond names and dates interesting about it. So the challenge was to find out more to create interesting blog posts  e.g. finding out about where they lived and worked.  An ongoing task for 2021. 

• Completing the April  A-Z Challenge  - my theme “Family History Meets Local History.”

• Giving a presentation at my local Wednesday Club - (a social group for the over 60's predominately women)  An earlier talk had been on “First Steps in Family History” – but for this one I chose  to present a Vintage Fashion Show, with photographs from my extended family collection from the 1870s down to  mini skirt days, starting with children’s fashions  and ending traditionally with wedding dresses.

• A regular contributor to the blog Sepia Saturday, with its weekly  photographic prompts.

• Compiling a blog post  and later an offline journal account on “Life in Lockdown”  the past year, sparked initially by prompts from CassMob (Pauleen).

• I continue to manage the blog for my local heritage group Auld Earlston. Our planned annual exhibition and slide show unfortunately had to be cancelled.

So all in all I feel I have been busy Family History wise in 2020 and look back on my activities with enjoyment, satisfaction and thanks for the support of my blogging colleagues.   Onto 2021. 

 

**************