Google Street View

The other day Google updated Street View to include virtually the entire country. The picture at the top of this blog is of my grandfather stood outside The Old George in Ickleford. He hated having his picture taken and it's one of only two photos that I have of him. The picture above is the same pub today. My Aunt had said previously that she remembered there being a door where the bay window is now. She was very pleased when I sent her the photo and she was proved right!

Transcription Errors

Having found Joseph Angus' Police pension record the other day, I wanted to fill in some other gaps about his life. I had details of his marriage to Emma Earles and the censuses from 1851 to 1871, but no birth or death dates and no census entries from 1881 onwards. Joseph is shown as deceased on his son's marriage certificate from 1902. There is a Joseph Angus who dies in 1900 in London and is the right age, but to confirm it's him, I'll have to order the certificate - one for another day.

With a subscription to Ancestry and some credits on Find My Past, I reckoned I should be able to find him on the censuses. Searching 1881 on Ancestry he came up straight away. 1891 was a different matter. After some time putting in various searches, I came up empty handed. Switching to Find My Past a likely candidate came up first time. I downloaded the page and confirmed it. So why couldn't I find him on Ancestry? Now knowing the exact census reference, I found him under the name Joseph Agens with his birth place given as Seaberghan (should be Sebergham)

Looking at it I could see it said Angus, but I could also see why someone with no connection to the family could have read it differently. A timely reminder that, fantastic as it is to have all the censuses online, if they are poorly transcribed searching them can be very frustrating. I submitted the real names as changes to Ancestry and looked at the clock. Nearly midnight again, time for bed!

Joseph Angus

Mary from Canada emailed me yesterday. They still have 18 inches of snow and a 28 mile ice bridge across the lake to Michigan! On reading that, it made me feel that perhaps our winter wasn't that cold after all.

She wondered if there might be any military records relating to our ancestor Joseph Angus. Having previously found a record for one of my ancestors in the National Archives, I decided to have a look there for Joseph. No military records came up but I did find details of his Police Pension.

He served for 25 years in the Metropolitan Police between 1867 and 1892. One can only imagine how tough a job it must have been - no wonder he was able to draw his pension at the age of 49.

Starting Out

I called in on my parents today. We'd never spoken about family history before and I had no idea what to expect. Much to my surprise my Dad produces a family tree that had been given to him by one of his brothers! On it is my direct family line going back to 1750.

With a whole family tree to look at I then asked my Mum about her parents. Both had died long before I was born and I knew nothing about them. She told me that her father was Frederick Leo Angus. He was born in July 1893 and died in May 1946. She told me that she had no war medals, though he had talked about being in the army, he could build a bike from scratch and that he had worked in the building trade. She thought he had a sister called Mary.

He married Henrietta (known as Hetty) Frances Packham (nee Bird). Her first husband had been killed in WW1. She was born on 6 April 1890 or 1891 and died in January 1947 or 1948. From her first marriage there was one child, Ena. She had died in the last couple of years in her 90s. My Mum told me about her sister Frances and her brother Freddie, who had been killed in WW2.

She told me about some of her Mum's brothers and sisters. John was the youngest, and there were two sisters Alice and May who had both emigrated to Australia. Their father and my Mum's Grandfather was called John Bird.

With so much to take in, I headed home to work out what to do next.