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Topics - genjen

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 ... 31
1
The Common Room / 19th Century Sailing Routes
« on: Saturday 15 October 22 11:59 BST (UK)  »
Hello,

Please can anyone with knowledge of nautical trading routes in the 1880s point me in the direction of an online map to show me the route which a sailing ship might have taken from London to Guyana. I am plainly not using the correct Google search terminology!  ::)

Also, just to show my total ignorance of sailing vessels, would that be a clipper, a schooner, or something entirely different? ??? ??? ???

Thanks, Jen

2
The Stay Safe Board / Symptoms Question
« on: Thursday 26 March 20 14:14 GMT (UK)  »
Hello,

I am one of those weird people who has completely lost all sense of taste and smell but, apart from being very tired for a day or two, have had no other symptoms.
My GP has advised me to treat this as if I have C19 and to isolate myself, which I have been doing anyway because of my chronic cough and asthma.
But, being a very mild case, if I do indeed have it, there is no testing available so I might never know.
I do know that a fairly high percentage of those who have been tested have also had this anosmia and hypogeusia and that it is being taken seriously by medical scientists but I don't know anyone else who has had it so am asking here if anyone has experienced this. If you have, how long did it last - has it fully recovered?
A large element of me remains sceptical about it being C-19 related but another part hopes that it is, so that I can say, in a week or two, that I am safe to do my own shopping etc and won't infect anyone else.

For what it's worth, it is quite horrible and while not even remotely comparable with the more serious symptoms, it is having quite an impact on my life.

Cheers,

Jen :)

3
United States of America / Death Registration Information
« on: Friday 21 February 20 13:18 GMT (UK)  »
Please can someone tell me what information was given on a death certificate in the U.S.A, in 1854.

Would it, for example give parents' names?

I am looking at the death of Alexander Smith, born 1784, Nairn Scotland, died 1854, Jacksonville Illinois. He isn't a direct ancestor of mine but I am desperately hoping he might be the brother of my elusive 3 x great-grandfather, William, who has done the best disappearing act ever!!

Many thanks,

Jen

4
Durham / What happened to Cooper?
« on: Monday 18 November 19 17:36 GMT (UK)  »
I have talked about Cooper Smith in an earlier thread but I think he now deserves one of his own. I have lost him, after 1861!

Cooper Smith, born July 1847, Sunderland ( Monkwearmouth), son of Thomas Smith and Sarah Cooper.
He is with his family in 1861 but after that he disappears without trace. I can find no marriage or death record for him, nor does he appear on any later censuses. I wonder if he emigrated - there is a record of a Cooper Smith on a crossing to Australia but I don't have that level of subscription to Ancestry so can't check it out!!

Cooper is the only one of his siblings, including my 2 x great-grandmother, Mary-Ann, to have an uncommon given name - I can't face the prospect of trying to track the progress of any more William/John/Thomas/Sarah Smiths so I have opted for Cooper but he has gone! I had a short-lived moment of hope when I found a Cooper Smith of roughly the right age, marrying and dying in Norfolk but sadly it's not my man!

If anyone can help me to find him, even if it's just to tell me that he died in 1862, I'd be more than grateful.

Many thanks,

Jen :)

5
Norfolk / Cooper Smith - died 1891
« on: Monday 18 November 19 13:57 GMT (UK)  »
Hello,

I am trying to track down a lost member of my Smith family. Cooper Smith, born 1847, Sunderland Co. Durham, parents Thomas Smith and Sarah Cooper.

In 1861 he is still with his parents in the north-east but after that he disappears off the radar. Looking at marriages and deaths, there is a marriage for a Cooper Smith, in Docking, Norfolk, in ( Dec. 1889, Docking 4b 815)  and a death in Norwich, (Mar 1891  4B/131), with the age a few years out of line with mine but still just about possible.

I am wondering if there is anyone who could check these two records for me to see if there is any clue as to this man's origins. It's probably not my man but it would be good to get him out of the way!!

Many thanks,

Jen :)

6
Cheshire / Miss F Williams, Birkenhead
« on: Thursday 18 July 19 22:27 BST (UK)  »
I found this letter displayed in the Musée de la Résistance at Mont-Mouchet, in France and wondered if anyone could claim Miss Williams as a family member? :)

7
World War Two / Another Royal Navy Question
« on: Thursday 30 May 19 17:20 BST (UK)  »
According to dad's records, he was based on HMS Pembroke from June 1945 to June 1946. I believe this was a shore based "stone ship" at Chatham.

But we know that, during this time, he went to Australia - we believe to bring back some of the children were sent out as refugees. Is there any way of finding out more? Does anyone here know anything about these long-haul, post war trips?

Cheers,

Jen :)

8
World War One / My Grandfather During WW1
« on: Wednesday 29 May 19 17:18 BST (UK)  »
The man seated on the right is my grandfather, Tom Smith, from Middlesbrough, who served with the Northumberland Fusiliers during WW1. I believe the photograph might have been taken during his time in Gallipoli - is it possible to confirm ( or otherwise) by what they are wearing. The young man on the left, who looks too young to be smoking, or to have joined the army, seems to be wearing shorts.
I have no idea who the other two men are, nor can I make the shadowy person in the background any clearer.

Thanks,

Jen

9
World War Two / My father's mysterious war service in the Royal Navy
« on: Monday 20 May 19 15:55 BST (UK)  »
My father joined the Royal Navy in the early 1940s. He didn't have to join up at all as he had been offered a place at Edinburgh University and would have been allowed to carry on with his academic career had he chosen to do so. But his younger brother had joined the Merchant Navy at the age of fifteen and had subsequently been killed when his ship was blown up in the mouth of the Thames and dad felt too guilty to opt out of the war in favour of a university education.

We know that he trained in communications and that he turned down the chance of an officer's commission as he wanted to stay with what he would have called "the ordinary blokes". He rarely spoke of his war service and we know he had signed the Official Secrets Act ( do all service people do that?) He was fluent in German, which might have some bearing on my question.

One day, in the late 1970s as he and my mum were travelling on a holiday trip, he pointed vaguely out of the car window and said "I worked over there during the war" and then left it at that. "Over there" was Bletchley Park. But he was in the navy - what on earth was he doing at Bletchley, we all wondered.
In 1945, he was in the Netherlands. We know this because of the gift ( a pair of tiny wooden clogs) which he brought back for his mother, a Dutch dictionary which lived on our bookshelf all through my childhood and a mysterious German document, dated May 1945, which we had never seen until my sister unearthed it in dad's belongings, quite recently, some thirty-seven years after he died. We had it translated by a German friend this weekend and it turns out to be a transfer paper for a German serviceman, from a hospital in Den Haag to a hospital closer to where he lived in Germany.

So, the questions are - What on earth was my dad, a Royal Navy rating ( so we believe), doing at, or very close to, Bletchley Park; why would he have been in The Hague in 1945, before the end of the war and how did he come to be in possession of a German soldier's transfer document ( surely that ought to have gone to the new hospital with the patient?).

I am sending for his war service record but I know from my partner's father's documents that we will only be given the names and dates of the "ships" he was on, with no detail as to where, or why.

Are there any naval WW2 historians who might be able to help us to fathom this out? We do know that we will probably never answer the question fully but any ideas are welcome.

Many thanks,

Jen

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