On 4 June 1731, fire tore through Blandford Forum in Dorset destroying 90% of the medieval market town. The only buildings that remained standing the following day were the few that had been rebuilt using brick and tile following an earlier fire in 1713. Sadly, the Parish records did not survive the blaze so I… Continue reading Fire
Author: Emma Maitland
Water
I have previously written about the surprising discovery that my great grandfather, Samuel Cullingford, was working as a maltster in Burton-on-Trent in 1891, 150 miles from his Suffolk home, but in 1881 he was actually even further away as he appears in the records listing vessels in Penzance harbour. Extract from the 1881 census for… Continue reading Water
Cemetery
It would be a rare genealogist who does not enjoy exploring a cemetery, and I have visited many over the years. There is always the hope that the inscription on a headstone will reveal some missing detail of an ancestor’s life, but mostly I just enjoy the feeling of being in a place that would… Continue reading Cemetery
Disappeared
Finding out what became of my paternal grandmother’s 11 siblings was the catalyst for my interest in family history and, after the best part of 20 years spent searching, I have been able to establish a timeline for most of them and to make contact with many of their descendants. The exception is the brother… Continue reading Disappeared
Animals
My Suffolk ancestors once worked with an animal that is now rarer than the Giant Panda – the Suffolk Punch horse. Bred as a heavy draught horse, in the 19th century there would have been several thousand at work on farms in East Anglia, but today there are fewer than 500 left in the UK with… Continue reading Animals
In the News
My great grandfather, Walter Henry Howe, and his father, John Howe, both feature regularly in newspaper reports of court hearings, but thankfully as witnesses rather than in the dock as they were both gamekeepers and the cases involve poachers. The gamekeeper’s role was to manage the wildlife on their employer’s estate to ensure that there… Continue reading In the News
Off to School
My father, Norman Albert Harry Maitland, was 15 years old when he won a coveted place at the Royal Naval Dockyard School in Portsmouth. The Dockyard Schools were established in 1843 to bolster the quality of Royal Navy ship design and construction, and provided high quality technical training for academically gifted apprentices. They offered an… Continue reading Off to School
Off to Work
When I started researching ancestors who lived in rural Suffolk in the late 19th century, I soon noticed that young men were quite often missing from census records for the places where I would expect them to be. For example, my great grandparents, Samuel Cullingford and Esther Page, were married in Wantisden on 29 July 1890… Continue reading Off to Work
Playtime
In addition to the master tree that records my direct ancestors and their descendants, I have a number of research trees which I use to explore the unlinked family clusters of DNA matches that every genealogist will eventually end up with. These clusters are formed of numerous DNA matches who all descend from the same… Continue reading Playtime
Wide Open Spaces
I’ve already told the stories of three family members who were amongst the many thousands emigrating from Scotland to Canada [see Reunion , Brick Wall and Migration] and now it is the turn of my great grandfather’s younger brother, William Clark, who left for Ontario in 1871. William was born at Longhill, Lonmay in Aberdeenshire… Continue reading Wide Open Spaces
Sleuthing Notes 