We can get information to "flesh out" what we know about our ancestors from so many sources!!!
In a notebook belonging to an aunt (now, alas, far gone in dementia), I found that she had jotted down what she knew about the family. Inter alia, she had said that my ggrandmother and her sister attended the North London Collegiate School for girls.
I emailed the school, who were able to confirm that the girls had been enrolled in 1851. The library assistant said that further information from that era was scarce, but that if I liked, she could check the prize lists to see if they appeared there.
She did eventually manage to do this (it would have taken some time, checking through those old volumes) and was kind enough to photocopy the relevant pages and send them to me in Australia.
You can imagine my delight in reading through these very legible mid-Victorian documents and seeing the names of ggrandmother and her sister! It has further helped to pinpoint the year when some currently unknown calamity befell their father, as the girls no longer appear in the prize lists after 1855, so seem to have been withdrawn from the school. Maybe one day I will break through that brick wall (and maybe not!)
We family researchers must be detectives, following up every tiny clue - you never know where it will lead!!!!
MarieC
