Sunday Summary, 20 Nov 2011

These are my recent genealogy related activities

Research

I used Find A Grave’s cemetery search to find cemeteries in Newcastle upon Tyne, and then browsed through the names. I had used Find A Grave a long time ago, but had never tried the cemetery search – I got the idea from watching the Legacy Webinar Watch Geoff live: Cemeteries. I noticed that many were military people. They had been uploaded by the International Wargraves Photography Project (although there were no images for the people I looked at on Find A Grave).

Found two Gilroy names, John Soulsby GILROY and John Robertson GILROY. I recognized both middle names, checked my database, and sure enough they were mine. John Robertson was the brother of my great grandmother Elizabeth Robertson CROSBY (nee GILROY), and the other was the son of her cousin, also named John Soulsby GILROY.

Next stop was the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. I was aware of this site but had never used it, as I wasn’t sure I had ancestors who died in war. Both my grandfathers served in WWI, and both survived it. I was able to find both of these Gilroys there, as well as William GILROY, another of my Great Grandmother’s brothers.

Finally on to Ancestry taking advantage of the free access to WWI records. I did not find the service record for John Robertson GILROY, but did find one for John Soulsby GILROY, cousin of my great grandmother.

In remembrance of my Grandad Harold Harrison Berry who served in and survived WWI, I completed the transcription of his WWI service record that I started a while back. Reading every line as I transcribed, I was able to make much more sense of it. The next step will be to get a better understanding of what was going on in the places he served.

Through the military board at Rootschat, I found a link to the Long trail website, which has a great deal of information on lots of aspects of the First World War and the soldiers who fought.

Education

I watched 3 of the webinars at Legacy Family Tree.

Watch Geoff live: Cemeteries, by Geoff Rasmussen. It was his examples using Find a Grave of searching for a cemetery that led me to the discoveries of Gilroy ancestors.

Cracking the Case of Nathan Brown’s Parents, by Marian Pierre-Louis.

Marian demonstrated how she tracked down the parents of Nathan Brown using indirect evidence. I thought this was excellent, presented clearly and very interesting to follow. It felt like a detective on a case.

She followed up, beginning with this post at her blog Marian’s Roots and Rambles.

It Is Well With My Soul: Finding Ancestors Amid the Rubble of Disaster and Misfortune, by Thomas MacEntee. Thomas looked at the sort of records that are available for searching for people who were involved in disasters of various sorts.