Unearth the Past: A family history & genealogy podcast

Ep 14: From Court Reports to Gossip Columns: A Genealogist's Guide to the British Newspaper Archive

• Dr Michala Hulme • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Prepare to be captivated as Michala embarks on a journey into the often-overlooked world of newspapers in genealogy research. She's joined by the brilliant Rose Staveley-Wadham from the British Newspaper Archive, who shares her wealth of knowledge on how to unlock the secrets hidden in old newspapers and breathe life into your family tree. From court reports to gossip columns, every page is a treasure trove of information just waiting to be unearthed.

Intriguing stories from the past land right at our doorstep as Michala explains how newspapers unveiled the Hollywood career of a family member in the 1920s. Embrace the wisdom imparted by Rose as she shares invaluable tips on maximising newspaper research. No stone is left unturned - from niche publications to broadsheets, every piece of newsprint is a potential key to your family's past.

Personal stories intertwine with practical tips as Rose candidly shares her own genealogy research journey. Discover the challenges she faced while tracing her family tree, her experience with 'Find My Past' and the British Newspaper Archive, and the unexpected surprises she uncovered along the way. Plus, find out who from Rose's family tree would be her chosen dinner guest and what she'd whip up for them. This episode is a must-listen for anyone striving to add depth and color to their family history research.

To contact Michala please visit www.michalahulme.com
If you would like some hits and tips on how to search the British Newspaper Archive, check out their excellent blogs https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/category/hints-tips/

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to Unearthed Past, a genealogy and family history podcast brought to you by me, dr Michaela Hume. So you, if you've listened to the podcast, you're going to know that me and Paul love a newspaper. If you have read any of my books, you are going to know that I use a lot of newspapers in my research, even in my academic research, when I'm writing about public history or I'm writing about the Victorians. I love a newspaper. I love the sensationalized stories that you read that we all get really invested in. I just love them. So can you imagine how excited I am when I reached out to Rose Stavely-Wodden and she agreed to come on my podcast from the British newspaper archive to talk to us about newspapers. Rose, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast today.

Speaker 2:

Oh absolutely my pleasure, michaela, thank you so much for having me. I've been loving the podcast so far.

Speaker 1:

Lovely. You know what it's so nice. And can I just say on that note, I know a few people have written to me. Emma Barrett has just started her family tree. I know she's getting on with that. Somebody else has written to me talking to me about strange deaths that have occurred in their family. I'm going to reply to you today and we'll talk about that on the next podcast. But yeah, please, please. If you are listening to the podcast and you want to get in touch, please do so. You can do so by my website, wwwmichaelohunecom. If you have a question for either me or Rose after this, I'm sure Rose will answer them. If you want to get in touch with me and I'll pass them on and I'll make sure that they get answered Right. Newspapers let's just get into it To start with. How can we use newspapers in our research? What are the benefits of using them, rose, and what are the things that you think you might just err on the side of caution with?

Speaker 2:

So newspapers just add so much colour to your family history research. It's the colour, it's the context and it's the stories. So I mean, for me, when diving into newspaper research, I always say stop broad. You know, put that name into the newspaper search. You can do that on the British newspaper archive. There's the search bar. Just pop in that name and see what comes up, because you will be so surprised of what kind of stories that come up. You got your criminal ancestors, you've got court reports, but it's everything in between. You know, because newspapers really and I like to sort of compare them to sort of the social media of the day, historic newspapers, because you would have everything in the newspaper. It was entertainment, it was you know what was going on in local communities. There's just so much to explore in newspapers.

Speaker 1:

I must admit I love them. So when I was doing the research for the last TV show which people would have seen me on in this country, which was the Great British Dig, and we were looking at society in the 18th century and the newspapers told you who was coming, you know, who was arriving for the season, what balls were on. Honestly, I was so rigid and forward slash, pride and prejudice, it was just brilliant. You know, the newspaper really was the gossip column of the seaside towns. I loved it.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, definitely. And the thing with newspapers in the Victorian area sort of onwards you get visitors lists, so that's a great sort of census substitute as well. So you know, if you're struggling to track someone down in the census, you'll find these visitors lists and it will literally list out everybody who's in that town, at the hotel that they were staying at, at the guest house, and it will tell you the facilities that the guest house had, so whether they had facilities for a carriage. But you know, the level of detail in newspapers is just incredible and they're so namerich as well. You have those, you have the reports, but you also get these lists and directories as well.

Speaker 1:

I was doing some research yesterday and I thought I thought this tree is not boring. But we all know we have like a boring strand, don't we to our tree? We're not really a lot happens and all of what is censuses and nothing exciting, you know, really went on. Anyway, I just thought yesterday, I thought you know what, I'll just whack their name into the newspaper and I use the British newspaper archive through by my past, so I thought I'll just whack it in and I'll just see what comes up. And then I had a really interesting, only little story about this person that was researching in the mid-Victorian period, stole a piece of cloth and originally denied it and then decided that he was going to plead guilty and then obviously served his time.

Speaker 1:

But it was just a little nugget of a story like that that I thought you know what that's interesting? Because then I want to I'm not interested in because per se is a criminal but then I want to understand well, why did he feel the need to take it? What was going on, you know, at home at the time that he felt he needed to steal, basically. So then that leads me down other sort of paths and then I start asking other questions. So yeah, as I say, I just thought right, I'll whack his name in. Now you have changed, if I'm right, the front end of it on FimerPast recently compared to what it used to look like. So, in terms of us doing our research, does has that made any difference?

Speaker 2:

So I mean, the front end has changed and it's looking very slick, it's looking very beautiful, but we've also been doing a lot of work on the back end to enhance results. So actually things have improved. Like the search is, you know, so accurate with. We can search on names. We have a very powerful name search and you can search multiple names now, so you can put in a name and you can put in a comma, which will then enable you to find articles that mention both of those people. So we've been doing so much work in improving our OCR text as well.

Speaker 2:

So OCR text what was that? So OCR I shouldn't throw in abbreviations OCR is Optical Character Recognition. So this is what happens in the digitization process. So we'll scan a newspaper, so we've got the digital image and then we'll send it off to undergo Optical Character Recognition. So that's what brings out the text. So we are working on improving this all of the time and there's new tech coming in all of the time that we want to take advantage of. So that is really enhancing the accuracy of our search and I mean it's wonderful. Like recently, I do struggle with a double-barreled surname Stavely-Wodham to return results and our new name search. I put it in and straight away I was getting results for my father in the 1980s when he was a vicar. We've got these later on newspapers as well, so we have wonderful holdings from the 18th century, from the Victorian era. We've also got these modern newspapers too, so it was amazing to see a picture of my mum and dad in Warwickshire in the 1980s when he was a vicar.

Speaker 1:

Just talking about that then. So what is the timescale, Rosa? How far back do the newspapers go, and sort of how far into the present? I've used them very recently, so I know that they are pretty recent, but what is the timescale of them?

Speaker 2:

So it's five centuries. So we start in 1699. We have four pages from the Edinburgh set, so wonderfully old, and we go all the way up to 2009. So we have some Irish newspapers that we go up to. We've also got the wonderful stage newspaper that goes right into the 21st century.

Speaker 1:

I love that newspaper. You know, when I was a kid, right? Yeah? So I know listeners are going to be shocked to this I thought I was going to be an actress.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it didn't happen. I think it didn't happen because I'm you can't see, because I'm sat down, but I'm tall and even though I thought I was good at acting when I was a kid, I used to go for like auditions. They used to say I looked too old for the part and they kind of wanted somebody who was older but looked younger. Where I was, the other way around. It was great when I was trying to get into nightclubs I hope my mom's not listening but it wasn't great when I was acting.

Speaker 1:

But I went to my local news agents and I actually took out a subscription for the stage and used to add it onto my dad's newspaper bill and I loved that newspaper. So if you haven't, if you have an ancestor who was literally on the stage or was involved in the media, it's not necessarily just acting, it could be anything to do with it. It is worth checking out the stage. They have auditions in there, they have reviews, I think, of plays and stuff. From what I can remember rightly, it's been a while since I've looked at it 20 odd years more than that but yeah, it is a great newspaper, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's really fantastic, and as you move into the 50s and 60s, you get reviews of television programs as well, so it's with charts that move from the stage through into television as well. So it's a really fantastic title, and we've also got it in sparkling technicolor in those later years as well, which makes it a lovely thing to browse through.

Speaker 1:

What is your favourite newspaper? If we're stuck on a desert island of Rose, then I say, right, we've got to bring a newspaper with us to read. What are we bringing with us?

Speaker 2:

So I anticipated this question and I bet you did. I can't. How do I narrow this down? And I know my colleague Mary McEw was with you in one of your previous book hosts and I know the illustrated police news came up, which is, which is a wonderful title, so that I was going to say that. But I'm going to shout out the picture-goer, which is one we've had up quite recently.

Speaker 2:

So this is a film fan magazine. It has its origins in the early days of cinema, so sort of talking first world war, and we've got it from the early 1920s right through until the early 1960s. So what it is is this beautiful film magazine. So it's about cinema stars, the golden age of Hollywood, and it's just so visual. You've got these beautiful front covers again, we've got it in colour, so it's a pleasure to browse through. And you've got the gossip columns. I was leafing through it the other day and it was, you know, clark Gable's scandalous Hollywood lifestyle and I can just imagine our ancestors sort of sat there reading that. And you know, just, you know that's such a part of sort of pop culture and you know the fabric of their lifestyles. I just I think that just sums up the aspirational.

Speaker 1:

It's just lovely, you know, I am so going to check that out. So my ancestor in 1901 was a cabinet maker and by the 1920s, well, he left Manchester and he'd gone to America with Stan Laurel and he'd starred in I think it was something like 20 odd films with Laurel and Hardy. It was loads, and he was in their first film. I think it was called Lucky Dog. I only found out all this through newspapers, obviously American newspapers, because you know he was big in America, he lived in Hollywood. He died in 1933 on set and again I found this out from the newspaper Rose you're looking at me like I've got loads of famous people in my family, like we tell you, this was a real shock.

Speaker 1:

You know, this was a real shock. This was on my mum's side From Manchester. They are two up, two down terrace people. My granddad, when he was alive, remembered going to the local picture house to watch him and when his mum, who was the sister of the actor, was really struggling, he used to send money back from Hollywood back to Manchester. So you know, so she could like eat and and clothe the kids and stuff. So yeah, but I used newspapers to track him in the States. So that magazine. May he may be in it. I know what he looks like because, thank goodness, laurel and Hardy films are now on YouTube, so I've managed to see what he looks like and he looks very Hollywood. He looks very dashy and very Hollywood. I'm going to check it out. I didn't know about that and it's something that I didn't think of. I often, when I think of like the newspaper archive, I think of just, you know, your standard daily newspapers, so to have these, you know, more niche ones, is great for our research.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely we. You know we were building out these sort of special interest categories so we focused on cinemas. So that's the picture go. But then we've also got sort of more industry based cinema newspapers like the Bioscope, which we've also done in beautiful colour as well. So that traces the cinema as an industry. So it will have the lists of, for example, it's Bioscope the other day and it has the names of the, the cinema managers, and it'll be like oh so, and so he's moved into this cinema and he's really popular, he's doing well and so, and so he's moved on. So that's a great way of opening up that particular. You know, if you have ancestors in that field, it's a real wonderful window into that world.

Speaker 2:

But beyond the cinema we've got other sort of more sort of niche pockets of our collection. So we've got wonderful sporting titles. We've also got sort of specific work related titles. So we've got the cotton factory time, so that's in the northwest, chronicling factory life I think. I think that's just that's a real wonderful one. There we've got we've got everything from the temporary postal workers Gazette to the tailor and cutter. So we've got these, these strands that one's ancestors may worked in. So it's really they're really wonderful resources for, for browsing through, just to get that, that colour and context, and, who knows, their might be a name in there as well are there any hints and tips in terms of putting putting things in the search bar?

Speaker 1:

is it just a case of working it in? Because I don't know where I got this from right, but I used to. If I was trying to find two words together, I used to put them in speech marks. I don't know why I did that. I just felt that somewhere, some internet person once said to me if you're trying to find something and you want the words to stay together, you need to put them in speech marks. So do I need to keep putting kind of speech marks to keep things together, rose, or have I just wasted 15 years of my life?

Speaker 2:

No, not wasted. Yeah, we recommend that you do use your quote marks so to keep those phrases together in what we sort of call an exact search. And we've been developing a new experimental sort of capability on our newspaper search at Find my Past, so it's keeping those quote marks together. So if you're searching for a phrase or a name, you put those quote marks in and then you're going to add a tilt, which is one of that wavy little line Right, okay, a wavy line, folks, yeah, a wavy line. And then if you put a zero next to that, then that means that your search terms will be kept together. So you're searching for a phrase or a name and they're not going to be split up. So, for example, you might search in Askall and you haven't done that. And you're searching for a name Rose Staveley-Wodham, for example and Rose is at the beginning, staveley-wodham's at the end. So they're separate, they're not in the right place. You're putting the names in quote marks, then you're tilled and a zero. You're making sure that those words are together.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so put the name in as you would normal, with a space in between, so say, for example, mikaela's you know space you might be would normal. Then you put the little squiggly line and a zero and that will sort of keep it together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, this is a new feature that we've added to our search, and you can find advice on this in my wonderful colleague, mary McKee has authored a blog on 15 tips to get the most out of our newspapers, so head there, and then you'll find the detailed instructions on how to enhance it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just to say, I will put a link to that in the show description. So if you do want to read the article and I do suggest that you do read it, we've had Mary on, she's brilliant, she knows what she's talking about I'll link it below in the description and then you can have a good read and hopefully it should give you some some hints and tips on how to use the newspaper archive. So, in terms of records that you can share with us, we're all friends, heroes. Is there anything coming up that we need to be excited about? Any new releases? What's going on that maybe we don't know about?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean we are working hard in our scanning studio. So our scanning studio is at the British Libraries Facility in Boston, Spa and the team are working night and day to get through the scanning. So we've we've recently signed an exciting extension with National World Publishers. So they publish a lot of big regional titles. So we've recently released the Scotsman. But what I can say is that we are working on bringing lots more national world content to our newspapers. So this will be from the years 1963, right until 2002.

Speaker 2:

So some titles like the Yorkshire Evening Post, portsmouth Evening News. So these are. These are really big titles that we get a lot of requests for. We're also busy scanning some Scottish microfilm as well. At the moment our lovely partner is Yvex, and we've also got some Kent titles coming down the line again from our wonderful publishers iLIF. So that's all in the studio at the moment.

Speaker 1:

Now, I am such a newspaper fan you can't actually see it. But behind me on my bookshelf I have some old copies of the Manchester Evening News from the Victorian period. You actually have them on your site, but I have the originals. However, I'm so scared to open it. Honestly, the book is huge, folks, huge. If you watched the Great British Dig, not this series but last series, you will see me trying to carry them out the car. They are massive, but you just can't be an old newspaper. Now. All newspapers tend to come, especially in the Victorian period, in a specific format. Don't know. So can you talk us through, rose, how the sort of laid out if something hasn't seen one before?

Speaker 2:

Yes, absolutely, and they look a bit different from newspapers that we're used to today. First and foremost, the front page. You won't get your headlines on the front page. There's no, there's no such thing as a front page headline in the Victoria era, really. So what you're, what you're thirsty, when you're looking at a Victorian newspaper, usually rows and rows of adverts on your front page, because that's how they sustain themselves. There were so many hundreds of newspapers in the Victorian era that you know they couldn't just make a living from. You know circulation figures that they had to advertise.

Speaker 2:

So your front page will most likely be columns and columns of adverts. As you open up, you can have densely packed columns, maybe, maybe six columns, and it will be lots of text and you still be headings. There will be headings and that will vary from newspaper to newspaper. But yeah, you, there's a lot of text and it can be.

Speaker 2:

It can be quite daunting, I think, but the way that our newspaper search works that if you, if you, search our old newspapers, we will, when you click on, we will take you straight to that piece in within the page. So we will, it will take you straight in, zoom you into that article. It will be highlighted to to make navigating those old newspapers a bit easier. And in terms of length is sort of talking from anything from from port four pages that would be kind of usual for a weekly or daily newspaper, going up to eight pages, sometimes you even get up to sixteen. I'm one of our new papers this week is a Welsh language newspaper and that was producing sixteen pages a week which is quite hefty for that period of time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. I don't think I've ever come across anything that big actually in terms of in terms of a newspaper. So, thinking about the adverts then, what sort of things are people advertising what? What sort of adverts are we getting at the front there, rose?

Speaker 2:

So I see a lot is medical cures and that's, that's throughout, that's throughout the century. So from now, 18th century newspapers, a lot of these magic pills. You know they're gonna cure you of everything, it's gonna stop your tiredness, it's gonna, it's gonna make you beautiful. So I think I don't fit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'd, honestly. I'm subscribing now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they mean it's barmy, like the amount of medical stuff, the wonder cures. So yeah, that's, that's a big one for adverts. Jobs you get, don't you? Yeah, so you've got your sort of wanted column, I suppose, and and under that you'll have, yeah, adverts for jobs. And that's a wonderful way of actually finding out a little bit more about your ancestors life style. So, you know, if you had an ancestor who was working as a Farm servant in Buckinghamshire, search the newspapers farm servants, buckinghamshire, sort of see what they were earning, what, what you know, what was their job responsibilities laid out in an advert. That's such a good way of adding, you know, colour and context to your family tree.

Speaker 1:

So we've got our adverts at the front and then we're moving in and we have Articles from the courts. Yep, so if, if your ancestors committed a crime, often you can find it in the newspaper and it gives you all the the juicy Details that maybe you're not getting just from a standard Criminal register. Also, there's a section there isn't there, from news around the world. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, you quite often get sort of foreign news, imperial news, from from the, from the Empire. You'll have your parliamentary news and You'll find even in local newspapers you get the national news being reported Alongside the local news. Then you'll have a local summary and you might have Hedgings of all the local towns and villages, so the latest, so that could be sat cheek by jowl with news from from across the world. So it I always think it's such an eclectic mix, these early newspapers, because they're bringing you your news, they're serving you, your, your, your national news, you're they're serving you, your, your local news. But then also they want to entertain you as well.

Speaker 2:

So you'll find poetry, you'll find short stories as we get later on the Victorian era, you'll see the children's corner. So you, as you know, as literary rate, literacy rates improve, you start to see the wonderful children's corners which you know you have children writing in Entrying competitions. So that's just, that's just so much going on in these, in these newspapers it is. It is a whole world of news and entertainment.

Speaker 1:

We've spoken a lot about just whacking your name in and sort of seeing what comes up, haven't we you know, and how to search and keep your name together. But I think what people don't often associate newspapers with is actually searching by address. I Put all my addresses into the newspaper Because I want to know what was happening on the road, off street or wherever your ancestor lived.

Speaker 2:

It is. You know, I'm doing this more and more and actually the other day it solved a big brick wall for me in my my fiance's family. Yeah, so I'm researching his tree because that you know, that's the peril of being engaged to a family historian, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

You know, you have your tree done and I'm real brick wall and I put in the name of the street address and what it returned for me was his, his great-grandfather's name, and I only had his first and his last name. But putting in his address gave me his middle name. So that meant I was able to have a much better sense of who this chap was. And then it just turned out for years and years and years and this is in the 1920s and 1930s he's constantly in court for speeding fines which I don't think you necessarily associate quite with the 1930s and 1930s, and also driving without insurance. So that's why he was appearing in the newspapers, they were listing his address and I was able to break that report because now I had I had that middle name to work with.

Speaker 1:

Great. I mean, as I say, I put all my addresses in there Because I think it's important. You know something interesting is happening where your ancestors are living. I think you know. I think that's really important, and sometimes you even get a description of the house you know with, of the type of houses that were on that street. I suppose it's depending on how much you want to go into your family history. It also tells you about the weather, doesn't it? On a particular day, so you could even find out what the weather was like on the day your ancestor was born.

Speaker 2:

You know, you know there's nothing in those days. No event was too sort of small to report. So, yeah, every kind of thing would, would be in the newspapers.

Speaker 2:

So you know, you, you, we have the ability to narrow down your search to a particular day. So if you did want to look at what was happening in the news on the day that your ancestor was born, you can do that quite easily. So you know. You know, I do a bit of writing on the side and I write historical fiction, so it's so useful to be able to go into the Newspaper archive and take a look at see what that weather was, because I can be accurate then and say oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

That day was rainy on, you know, the 14th of February 1940, you know you can go into that, that level of detail and have that, that accuracy. So you know it informs, it can inform so much, I think it's worth mentioning that you can search.

Speaker 1:

You can narrow down your search, should I say by date? Can't you buy place, even by newspaper? So once you've got your search results, you may have thousands of results. It is possible to be more, to narrow it down, to make it more specific.

Speaker 2:

Yes, definitely. So that's why I always say stop, or because then you can always narrow down. So you know you're searching for a name like William Staveley and you've got, you've got a lot of results. So you can narrow down your results to that time that you know that person was alive. For example, you can narrow down to to County, or or again again, to newspaper. So you have that, that capability, and that's Especially helpful when you have maybe more of a common name that you're searching. So you can do that, you can search by County. Or then, if again, if you're searching common name, something is quite good is to include weather from. So you know, yeah, yeah, such a John Smith, darlington, or even with the street name again to make that, to make that more accurate.

Speaker 1:

Just a little. I suppose a hint or tip really is. When we talk about narrowing it down, be aware that Sometimes you will find the story in more detail being reported not in the area you think it's been reported in. So they did share news, didn't they? Quite a bit.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely so. So news news was syndicated and I always you know, a key phrase to me is news travels. So you will find, you know, something happens in Devon will end up in a newspaper in Edinburgh and it's so important to check those varying articles. So I was researching a lady called Ruby Greenwood who worked on the canals, the Liverpool Leeds Canal in the in the Second World War, and I found several articles about her and the other women that she worked with, but they were all slightly different. So I was able to sort of find Different snippets about her life. That was a and enabled me to to look a little deeper. And and builds, builds her family trees. So you know, we do have those variations within those, those repeated articles. So just, it's about sort of you know it's been quite forensic and having a look at everything.

Speaker 1:

What has been your most interesting story or a story that you know you found in the newspaper that you tell somebody.

Speaker 2:

So I think I always go back to you A story about my two times great-grandfather, a Frederick Pickford, and I've always known that he. He was a Baptist minister. He lived in Colville in Leicestershire and I was quite lucky with that name. Frederick Pickford is quite a nice one to be able to search and I found a lot of Newspaper reports about him. Generally you know he's taken a service, you know he's presided at a wedding or a funeral, but I found a really lovely piece about him in the Palma Gazette and it was a sort of investigative piece.

Speaker 2:

A journalist from London had gone up to the Midlands to to talk about the situation in in coal mining villages and towns and my great-great-grandfather is quoted in this piece and what I learned from this piece was he was a Baptist minister but prior to that he was actually a miner himself and I had I had no idea that he. He was a miner and what this article said is that he was so respected in the local community because he was a worker. He had, he had the respect of his congregation because you know he, you know himself was, he was down the mines like many of them were, and you know his perspective was was very much. You know he was very his praise as a really sort of trustworthy source for this article. So I think that that was lovely, because so often you know we, you know we might have sort of your criminal ancestors. I've got a few of those, so it was nice to have that. How?

Speaker 1:

did you get into this? So when did you start researching your family tree? How did you end up at the, the British?

Speaker 2:

newspaper archive. Yeah, so it all started with find my past. Quite appropriately, it must have been about ten years ago and I was. I was a couple of jobs, I was out of university and One day my mom just handed me an answer in the paper and it was for a find my past three weekend. And I was like, oh, this is interesting, like I've always had an interest my mom has always been interested in family history and I started that day and I just didn't stop.

Speaker 2:

You know, you've got the bug and you know I enjoy building a tree and going back was a backwards and Because I, you know, I had sort of hadn't got my career job at that time, I actually Message find my past and asked if they had a job. And they came back to me a couple of months later and I I worked for a while on the 1939 register so I was quality checking that and then that grew into a job project managing digitization at find my past and that grew into writing content for the British newspaper archive, which then grew into my current role, which is newspaper licensing For find my past in the British newspaper archive. So I am so lucky because I get. I get to work my passion.

Speaker 1:

And how long have you? So I know you said like your mum was into doing a family tree. How far have you got them with your own family tree? I don't know it's so funny. I tend to do everybody else's and really I should go back and revisit mine, but it's a nightmare because I'm so busy doing everyone else that mine has definitely been neglected.

Speaker 2:

So with that Pickboard name I've been really lucky to sort of push into the early 1700s in South Yorkshire. But the earliest I've got back to, and that's on my mother's side through this line, the Parkers, and they go back into the 1600s, and the Matriarch who has the wonderful name of Aethalia in rural Buckinghamshire, aethalia Gooden. So I've been really lucky to get back that far and I just think that's a wonderful name.

Speaker 1:

The more unusual the name is, I do find it easier to go back. I mean there can be transcription areas if you have an unusual name. I think probably it's more common than if your surname is Smith, for example. So you have to think a bit outside the box into how it may have been spelt. But it is so much. You can get back a lot quicker If you can hang on to an unusual name and follow it back, even on the census. You know you do tend to go back a bit quicker than if your name is John Smith. How have you found your research, Rose? Have you hit any brick walls?

Speaker 2:

Oh, yes, yes, absolutely my main one, and viewers of our Friday's live sessions will know about my particular. I like to call her my nemesis. So this is on my fiancee's family tree there's a lady. It's her, it's my fiancee's great-great-grandmother, mary Vaughan dress, and she was born in London 1873. You search that name and only one result comes up, which is her marriage record. So this is my absolute bug. First, I've, you know, tried every which way going about it, all the name variations you can think of newspapers. So that is my pet project at the moment, also my biggest struggle.

Speaker 1:

Is it just the fact that her name, do you think, has been spelt wrong? Or are you just literally at a brick wall and you're like I've got no thoughts?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean she pretty consistently spells the name is spelt. You know the way that she spells it. It doesn't appear anywhere else. So you know on her marriage certificate that's how it's spelled. You know when she goes to register at the children's birth, that's how the name spelt. So I'm just wondering, you know, for me it does. It does hang on that name and there's the father's name on the marriage certificate and I managed to find a birth certificate where the name is spelt slightly differently. It's definitely her. So for me I think it does hang on that name.

Speaker 1:

Isn't it just annoying, isn't it? Don't you just hate them? I've got one in Ireland who is either a smith or a smith it just depends what day the week it is and I cannot find her birth certificate and I'm desperate to try and find it. And it's not even that old, you know. It's not like early Victorian or anything like that. Yeah, and it's just, she is playing a game of hide and seek with me, rose, and it is not fun.

Speaker 2:

For my end, let me tell you, I know, yeah, you get to the point where you're like I actually feel like I'm banging my head against this brick wall, but I can't. It is an addiction. I'm coming back to it. I can't let it go. I need to unravel that mystery. Yeah, and I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I just. I mean, the problem is the next obviously, my surname. The surname that I'm looking for is Smith, right? So there's quite a few, and it's difficult to narrow down exactly which one it is, even though I know who her father is. I mean, I'm sure she was a lovely woman, but from a genealogical perspective I hate her. So, rose, thank you so much for coming out. We always end the podcast as I'm sure you do because you've listened to it by asking you if you were going to cook dinner tonight for anybody in your family tree, who would it be, and why and what would you cook them?

Speaker 2:

Oh gosh. Ok, there are so many that I'd like to, I'd like to invite, I think I would go. My initial instinct, and this is probably what got me into the family history in the first place, is my grandfather, William Stavely. He was a Canadian soldier. He came over in World War Two, married my grandmother, had my dad and then he went back to Canada. So we don't really know. You know, we didn't know him as a family and he died before I was born. So I love to sit down with him and also my grandmother whom he married, because she also died before I was born. And I'm a hearty cook, I think you know I like to do good kind of comfort food. So I think I do good sort of sausage and mash, you know, nothing too pretentious.

Speaker 1:

I love a good sausage and mash. Honestly, yeah, my favourite dishes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So yeah, I think I'd sit down with them and spend some time with my grandparents. I'm not sure what, where I'd start and what I'd ask them, but I think, yeah, those would be my picks.

Speaker 1:

Rose, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast today. You've really offered some solid advice for people out there who are researching and how we can use newspapers in our research and offer some really useful hints and tips as well about what we should be putting in that search bar, and I'm going to try that. I'm going to try it out when I next go on your website, which is probably in about five minutes time, by the way. So thank you so much for jumping on today. If you have any questions about newspapers, about researching and looking at the BNA, or it might be that you have a question about family history more general, please get in contact. So by my website, just wwwwik onlycom, and if you've got any questions for Rose, I'll make sure that I pass them on. Thank you so much for listening. I know I say this every week and I'm not going to keep harping on, but I really, really appreciate it. Have a great week researching and we shall be back next week. Thank you, folks.