Family history

Hello Jenny, my son and I went to the village where my great great grandfather had been the blacksmith, hoping just to find his name in the graveyard. By chance we came upon a house called The Old Smithy so we knocked on the door. An elderly lady invited us in, on hearing our story, and brought out an album of photos showing the original smithy at the very time our ancestor worked there. Although she didn't know us from Adam the lady lent us the photo to copy. It was a wonderful day!

MellowYellow, WOW! It must have been very exciting to be there and hear these stories!

Well, the only website about family trees I know is (ironically) Family Tree and they post a lot of guides about how to trace your surname down the memory lane, how to create a family tree or how to restore old photos. I'm not really into this topic, but sometimes I read their website, so yeah, that's it.

You could join 'Ancestry' where you can find census and other useful things to get you started. It was free for a few days some weeks ago and I was able to fill in lots of blanks in my tree. I have also recently downloaded my great grandfathers will (from a different website). The British Newspaper online archive is also useful. If you have any aged relatives they may be able to tell you quite a bit (but what they tell you may not turn out to be accurate.)

I’m so glad that a couple of years before he died, my father went through a mass of his family’s very old B&W photos, and put a selection in an album, with captions as to who and where - things we wouldn’t have had a clue about.

Often they were funny, too, e.g. ‘Granny A and Great-Aunt B, dressed in the fashion of staid ladies of their day.’

And, of a photo of himself as a child with his mother, ‘She doesn’t seem to be bringing up that little hooligan very well!’

He had an amazing memory for names and exact locations - even remembered the name of a farm horse in one of the photos. It all made a fairly recent visit to a great- and GG grandparents’ area - otherwise completely new to me and dh - so much more interesting.

I still haven’t got on with the family history research, though - maybe next winter, or (heaven forbid) during a second major lockdown

I've traced the family tree back to the late 1700's. I have photos of GGrandparents and one of GGGrandfather from Dads family.
Years back a rural life museum opened in Glastonbury and they were looking for people to tell about life in the early 1900s. Both my Dads parents gave interviews and they were recorded, we were given copies.
I also heard a lot from an elderly relative and she gave me photos and importantly told me who the people in them were. Now all noted and in a scrapbook.