New Beginnings

This is my new family history blog.  A chance to share research that I am doing, interesting family history events and anything else to do with genealogy that I think at least one person may be interested in.
Today is Christmas Day and a celebration of family.  My favourite present to my parents was a copy of their family trees.  I have a habit of describing exciting discoveries about ancestors and they always want to know where they fit in - now they have no excuse of being confused.  The tree templates were a great find by my friend Emma from an American company FreshRetroGallery on Etsy.  We bought in bulk and had free shipping which was rather useful.

Very pleased with how they turned out and my parents seemed pleased with the end result.  I've now set them the dilemma about where to put them in their house.
The benefit as always of writing down the tree was spotting the missing records.  For two of my father's ancestors George Jones and Anne Jones (nee Davies), I was missing death certificates.  I worked out why - there are a lot of Anne and George Jones' dying in their year/quarter in North Wales (I luckily have their burials as they mention the house they lived in).  However thanks to the death indexes on the GRO website (www.gro.gov.uk) which now gives their age at death, I have been able to identify the correct certificate and they are now on order.  Real wishful thinking is that Anne's death will be informed by a member of her family (sister/brother/parent) to give me a vague chance of finding her family.
My personal genealogy Christmas present happened on Christmas Eve when I worked out the name of the manor house in Kent that one of my paternal ancestors (and what now appears many more) lived in back in the early 1600s.  More on that property and family in a future blog.
For now, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.