Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

The web-Wednesday site for this week is:

The East Surrey Family History Society and their free, fabulous Virtual Family History Fair, on Saturday January 27th 2024.

A wide selection of family history societies will be attending, including the Guild.  The fair is on Zoom, with each society having a “room” you can visit where you can talk to Society members, and you can easily move from room to room.  You can ask for family history advice, or anything about the society, for instance. 

Copyright East Surrey FHS and, used with permission

For more information, please visit the East Surrey FHS website. There’s a morning session and an afternoon session and you will need to register for one or both if you would like to attend.

You can also see what other genealogical groups are attending the event. Also have a good look around the website for the Society, they have a number of interesting resources and an event scheduled for March 2024 for their AGM and three excellent speakers.
 

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

The web-Wednesday site for this week is:

Rare Book Society of India

This is a fascinating and very unusual site that is of use to genealogists and historians alike, with an interest in India.

The site is providing an online virtual presence embracing the material from digital libraries such as Google Books & the Internet Archive, articles and essays as well as various collections located at museums and alike from around the world. What this achieves, is a show case of Indian books, prints and arts that have been digitised and placed in an easy accessible manner for all to utilise. It is not just old and out of print material that is available. The site also collates various Facebook posts and links to books that are still in print and available on sites such as Amazon, although those book links automatically divert to Amazon India.

A simple search function is available, but the core substance of material essentially covers the following themes:

• Natural history in India,
• Kingdoms of India, various sections covering each of the following religions, Islam, Christianity, Sikhs & their religion & history, Hinduism and Buddhism in India.
• The India Independence movement
• History of Mysore
• Cartography in India, Dutch, French and Portuguese in India
• The Grand Mughals 1526 -1857
• Military history of India
• Indian cities through the ages
• India & its Royalty
• Ancient India up to 1200 CE
• Arts in India through either paintings, photography, sculptures, dance and treasures
• Travel literature of colonial India
• India as seen by foreign travellers,
• The Honourable East India Company.

I have researched my Honourable East India ancestors over the last twenty years or so and a quick search of the surname Bowring which is one of several names in this region I am researching revealed a book written by Lewin Bentham Bowring which I had been previously unaware of.

Image of the website Rare Book Society of India

This is overall a fascinating website that harnesses together all these different strands of life in India both before and after British rule and enables us to garnish our genealogy and family history bring it to life in some rather fascinating ways.

PLEASE NOTE:- The website does give a caution message on several anti-virus software, but it is perfectly safe, I checked the site on 8 Jan 2024.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

The web-Wednesday site for this week is:

The Men who Said No

This is a very interesting and thought-provoking website and one that is continuing to evolve. The site welcomes contributions to their database.

Between May 1916 and the end of the First World War some 20,000 men refused to be conscripted into the British military and the focus of this site is to honour those who were prepared to stand up for their principles and who objected to war based on religious grounds, political grounds or the belief that war was not the answer to a problem. The issue is not what we believe was right, but to respect the decisions taken by those men, at a time when it would have been easier to have followed the crowd.

From the genealogist stand point we seek to record the elements of our ancestor’s lives and that too includes the elements that we might not approve of or agree with. Whatever the reasoning of the men or our views, the site is seeking to be ambitious in what it is hoping to achieve and by way of context explains what a Conscientious Objector is and the process by which these men were granted an exemption, and how those men who were refused their exemption were handled.

The Military Service Act of 1916 broadly speaking deemed all men between the ages of 18-41 to be a soldier and available to the army and therefore they were bound to present themselves at military depots. Some believe less than 2% of cases heard by Tribunals were applications for exemption on grounds of conscience, others believe the figure was nearer 10%.

The men who objected or were unable to comply with the requirements of the Act applied for an exemption and underwent a Tribunal hearing and it is those men who are identified as Conscientious Objectors and it is those men who name will appear on this database. The Tribunals also heard from men who applied for exemption to military service because of domestic circumstances (those with ill-health, unsupported children or elderly relatives), or those who held important jobs within civilian life, such as doctors, teachers, industrial workers in key positions and farmers.

The site has a database organised alphabetically of those who are known to have presented themselves at a Tribunal with the database containing men and women separately. During the first World War women did not undertake military service, but women across all sections of society did contribute to the anti-war movement and they too should be remembered.

From the men who said no website

The database is created from a variety of source material and in some cases, material has not survived. Some of the names are hyperlinked to more details.

For those with One-Name Studies you might find some instances of the name recorded, or you might have individuals within your study, which you could donate to the project. To search the database CLICK HERE.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Our first web-Wednesday site is:

Tudor Revels

The site is part of the People Project 1485-1603 which sought to document the lives of forgotten individuals during the Tudor period in Southampton.

The website hoped to document at least 5,000 entries by the end of 2013. Currently there is just under 20,500 entries. The site was created with the assistance of funding of the Heritage fund. There is in addition to the database, a section around events, an about section, links, a glossary and bibliography. There is also a walking trail that can be explored.

The database can be searched by name, dates, nationality, occupation and parish. I did several quick searches:

1. Surname of BUTCHER – this search also produced results with the occupation of butcher. I was able to extract about forty two references with individuals using the Butcher surname. There is the possibility that one individual may appear twice in the database, and the additional issue that during this period surnames were not definitively used, or consistent. Each individual does bear source material and this can be extracted in more detail by viewing the bibliography.
2. Surname of ORLANDO – this produced nil results.
3. Nationality of Italian – this about 100 results of which the majority were seafarers or merchants.
4. Search of Guildford this produced two results, the first of which was an individual whose origins were from the Surrey town of Guildford.

There is one irritation, which is that once you have searched, found the results and then selected to look at one of those results, when you conclude your viewing and want to go back to the results, you need to search again.

There is relatively little material in this format relating to the Tudor period, and therefore this is certainly a welcomed addition. In terms of adding the individuals to my Butcher One-Name Study, I will do so with the source identified as the Tudor Revels and the source citation that has been given.