Shalford Circa 1900

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Julie Goucher
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Tea Cup Tuesday – Commemorative for the Future

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Julie Goucher

During the lead up to Christmas I took part in the Virtual Advent Tour hosted by Marg of Intrepid Reader. I loved taking part and am still reading the posts others submitted – with all these great blogs and posts it is a wonder we have time for books or anything else! Anyway, I wrote for two events 18th December, which was selected because it would have been my Grandmother’s 99th Birthday. I chose to make the remembrance different using Kiva. I plan to commorate other specific family events using Kiva during 2012. The other post was on 21st December and was written to commemorate my husband’s special birthday. As part of his special present I purchased this personalised mug for him from Emma Bridgewater

A lovely commemorative for the future.

Taking part in Tea Cup Tuesday hosted by Artful Affirmations & Martha’s Favourites

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Shalford circa 1909

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Julie Goucher
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Shalford Church circa 1910

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Julie Goucher
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52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy – Week 1 – Blogs

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Julie Goucher
Week 1 – Blogs: Blogging is a great way for genealogists to share information with family members, potential cousins and each other. For which blog are you most thankful? Is it one of the earliest blogs you read, or a current one? What is special about the blog and why should others read it?

Challenge from Sunday 1st January 2012 – Saturday 7th January 2012 


I can’t remember the first genealogy blog I read. I started this blog in a very naive form in 2002, which makes me in the blog world nearly 10 years old!

Blogging is so very easy to start, find a platform, and start writing, connecting with others and making comments. Of course, because there are so many blogs and so many great blogs, it really is hard to choose a particular blog. There are so many personal genealogies to read, genealogical processes and thoughts read that can be used as a springboard for others to use. With there being so many blogs it is easy to miss a great one – Twitter helps with that for me. That said, the biggest blog resource I use is Geneabloggers.

Just look through the Geneabloggers site. Thomas produces a daily post every day of every week. All free of charge. The site is a spring board of positivity, contemplation and blog prompts. If ever you wanted to write a blog post and didn’t know what to write stop by Geneabloggers to read a list of prompts. It is also an information gateway, a host to other bloggers. If it is possible to have a Genealogical Blogging Encyclopedia then Geneabloggers is it!

Turning now to my own blog. What I am most grateful for is the facility to be able to write and share with a whole host of people over a host of things. The focus of my blog is quite simply me and everything that makes up me – my hobbies and obsessions, my ancestry, holidays, thoughts, photographs and much more. What there is rarely a mention of is the day job and I guess that says it all! 

I take part in various meme’s across the week – Tea Cup Tuesday which means that I get to share tea cups and alike that I inherited. I also post fairly regularly to Postcard Friendly Friday and share my postcard collection. I am planning a more focused post for Sunday Stamps using my childhood collection of stamps before they travel across the Pacific in the Autumn to the next generation of my extended family. I also like to take part in Sepia Saturday which enables me to share my photographs of past generations and occasionally I include a more recent one. I tend to follow my other obsession of books with a bookish post at the Sunday Salon, although I have been slack of late. Almost finally, I often post about Weekend Cooking, where I perhaps share a book review of a cook book or program or in the past a smart phone cookery app and perhaps a recipe or two!

In addition to these I take part in various prompts provided by Geneabloggers and have just almost completed the 52 weeks of personal genealogy. I usually take part in the Carnival of Genealogy hosted by Jasia.

I host a blog called Grave Encounters as part of the Graveyard Rabbits and have been invited to write in their international slot during 2012. 

During the latter part of 2011, I started a year long project of sharing my Guildford and District Collection of postcards, again I decided to post these to a separate blog. 

I also have a blog called George’s War, which has been quiet over the last few years which is about my Grandfather’s time in the Army during the Second World War. 

The plan during 2012 is to share my One Place Study on Puttenham, a rural village in Surrey England using a separate blog.

The absolute beauty of a blog is that, whilst perhaps isolated writing in our homes or other venues we can share our research, thoughts and much more with a mixture of known and unknown world wide web population. The search engines tend to record posts for prosperity and I am always aware that once a thought or comment is committed to the blogosphere it can be read by ALL, so I use the rule of thumb, if I wouldn’t tell someone a specific at a bus stop then I won’t share via my blog! 

A blog can grow and develop with you. This blog has. It has grown as I have become more confident, taken part in more posting activity and received more comments from others. What I am grateful for is the on line friendships that it brings. The people that we “meet” along the way as we read other blogs, post to our own blogs and leave and receive comments. There is a real sense of community, both within the blogging world and the genealogical world.

What is quite remarkable is that the world has a landmass of 13,056 million hectares, yet the world wide web has reduced it in a virtual way to the size of a matchbox! We live in a remarkable world and have an enormous amount of technology and information at our disposal, the blogging world helps to make that possible.

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Happy New Year 2012

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Julie Goucher

Yesterday while I was sitting having my lunch I turned on the news at 1pm UK time and watched the tremendous firework display that occurred over Sydney as Australia saw in the New Year. My thoughts turning to my family who are down under!

Here are the tremendous fireworks – the fireworks start at around 2 minutes in! which makes the film just under 15 minutes. According to Sky News the cost was around 4 million pounds.

Eleven hours later, I watched the news again, as we saw the New Year in, here in the UK. In my hand a small glass of something fizzy! Fireworks to the sounds Big Ben striking, over the Houses of Parliament, River Thames and the Millennium Wheel. 2012 looks to be a promising and busy year in the UK, as we host the Olympics and celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.

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Christmas Day!

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Julie Goucher

Before we head into 2012 I had best quickly post about our Christmas. Alf’s is HERE.

We had a quiet one, with hubby working over Christmas. Not sure if it was lucky or not, but he worked nights so spent most of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day in bed.

We had a hearty breakfast about 9.30 on Christmas morning, which gave hubby a few hours sleep before eating. We then opened the presents – here is a quick photo of mine!

Hubby headed off back to bed until 4pm when I woke him for lunch. We usually eat about 1.30pm on Christmas Day, so the whole day felt a bit odd to me. Hubby had of course snoozed the majority of the day away which was a shame, but I did get to operate the remote control for the television, it is simply a shame that I can not get the sound through the Blu Ray player system. Whatever happened to just using the television  speakers?….

I did watch The Queen’s Speech, which was broadcast for the first year on Sky News, my favourite news channel.

One of my wonderful packages contained a Kindle and I see from Amazon that the manuscripts of the Queen’s Christmas Message for 1952-2010 and 2011 has been released, free of charge, by The Monarchy.
There was some wonderful books in the other packages, courtesy of my Mum, as hubby I think gets pretty fed up with my head in a book, of course by buying a Kindle he has simply swapped one reading medium for another! Perhaps there are some fishing books for Kindle I can tempt him with?
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Sunday Salon – 2011 into 2012

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Julie Goucher

I started writing this on Christmas Eve here in the UK and am completing it on New Years Eve, where did that week go?

Over the course of the last couple of months I have been laid up with sciatica and feeling pretty miserable about being unable to continue with my normal routine. During that time I have read a few books, not as many as you might think, written a few blog posts and watched a few programmes on the television. I also seriously considered getting a Kindle.

I set about reading posts of those who had blogged about their Kindle, and in the end decided upon the Kindle Keyboard as this allows free 3G access and we are planning a trip to Australia in 2012, this sounded just the ticket. All being well, there is one wrapped and under the tree, or at least there looks to be a Kindle shaped box under the tree. Sadly, I can not bend down to pick up it and have a prod and shake! – update, there was one under the tree and I am delighted with it! Thanks Santa, sorry, I mean hubby!

While I was researching I discovered a few web pages and alike that give access to Kindle books including those that are free, or free for a limited amount of time.

There are just so many wonderful books out there, OK, there are some dreadful ones too, but….the ebook and the free ebook at that, does allow the reader to explore perhaps unknown authors, or for authors to test the water. I truly didn’t think that I would become so interested in e-books. I love the feel of books, the smell of old books and looking at bookshelves. E-books can bring us reading at a different level and with ease. It was the obvious solution to the question of how was I going to choose books for a month in Australia? I would have to take books with me that perhaps I could leave there. This is the perfect solution and my Kindle model has the 3G capacity at no extra charge, so I might be able to explore email too!
I have a few book review to post, a few is actually about 10 – two of them are e-books, one is a review book for an organisation and another two are reviews for authors. The rest are my reading over the last few months.  
The 2011 Book Blogger's Cookbook (The Book Blogger's Cookbook) A recent, enjoyable and easy read, via e-book, which I read via iPad, was the Book Bloggers Cook Book for 2011. You can read my review HERE
The plan for 2012 is to get the reviews caught up. Plan my trip to Oz and make a serious dent in the mountain of books that I still need to read. I have signed up for a selection of reading challenges. About 6 of them, in the main I have opted for the smallest contribution for each challenge, which is easily manageable and will allow for extra reading and overlap.
I am also planning to complete the 30 day book meme that I started in November, but with my back and Christmas I fell behind, so aim to complete that during January. For those interested the list of prompts is HERE.
For Christmas I did receive some books. Mum is pretty much the only person to buy me books – so this was wonderful. More on that in a later post. 
During the lead up to Christmas I took part in the Virtual Advent Tour hosted by Marg of Intrepid Reader. I loved taking part and am still reading the posts others submitted – with all these great blogs and posts it is a wonder we have time for books! Anyway, I wanted to share with you in particular one of the two posts that I wrote for the event 18th December. The 18th December was selected because it would have been my Grandmother’s 99th Birthday. I chose to make the remembrance different using Kiva. I plan to commorate other specific family events using Kiva during 2012.The other post was on 21st December and was written to commemorate my husband’s special birthday. 
Well that is is, all that is left to say on this final Sunday Salon for 2011 is Happy New Year! and to share with you a New Year Postcard sent from the Battle Fields of the First World War. This card was sent in 1916. If you are interested in the people behind the card click HERE
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Happy New Year From the Front 1916

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Julie Goucher

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Sepia Saturday 106 – Happy New Year from the Front – 1916

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Julie Goucher

 

 

Purchased for my Guildford & District Collection

So, Who was Fred?…..

A search of the Marriages for a B Turner in Guildford 1916+ to a Fred revealed one such entry. The marriage of Bertha A Turner to Frederick W Wait in the September Quarter of 1917 at Guildford. (Ref 2a, 201).

Working backwards to the 1911 Census. Did that reveal more of Bertha? The index revealed one entry for a Bertha E Turner. I took a chance and looked at the data. It didn’t pay off, and revealed a Bertha Elizabeth Turner residing at 144 Walnut Tree Close Guildford, a stones through of my Grandmother at 114. Isn’t research curious?.

Anyway, A quick look through the First World War records didn’t prove obviously helpful, neither did the Commonwealth War Graves website.  So I still didn’t know who Fred was. A quick search of the 1911 Census for him and I was surprised. It revealed one entry; just one.

Frederick William Wait, Single and Aged 20 years born 1891 Guildford. On overseas military duty and recorded as in the 7th Dragoon Guards and stationed at Hislop Barracks, Trimulgherry, Duccan, India.

That I had not expected. This is still not conclusive that the Fred in India is the Fred in France. Were regiments pulled from various bits of the Empire in order to fight in Europe. Quite possibly.
Taking part in Sepia Saturday
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