Research Diary Links

The purpose of this page is to provide fixed links to those of my blogs which develop and explain my researches.  I see it as a sort of research diary.


Sunday 14th Oct 2012 - completed transcription of list of WW1 POWs found in the Barnsley Chronicle 24th Aug 1918.  Evidence of the past/future lives of 14 POWs researched so far. 

Tuesday 16th Oct 2012 - started this blog.

Saturday 3rd Nov 2012 - noted suggestion from OH that I should write more than one version of my family history stories in order to appeal to a wider range of readers.

Tuesday 6th Nov 2012 - investigations into the Methodist Church at Worsborough Common.

Tuesday 13th Nov 2012 - boy soldier, William Henry Knight, enlisted aged 14 in 1917.

Wednesday 21st Nov 2012 - Wilson's Piece Methodist Chapel research.

Wednesday 28th Nov 2012 - The mystery of the Nelson Street pubs

Friday 30th Nov 2012 - Small world - OH's ancestors appear in Nelson Street

Saturday 1st Dec 2012 - researching in old newspapers pt 1

Monday 3rd Dec 2012 - some sudden deaths in old newspaper cuttings

Saturday 8th Dec 2012 - Uriah Brettoner's family in Barnsley 1815-1890

Monday 24th Dec 2012 - Christmas holiday statistics - marriages abound

Tuesday 25th Dec 2012 - Dyson Oldroyd - family connections

Sunday 30th Dec 2012  & Wednesday 2nd Jan 2013 - Merchant seamen's records

Friday 4th Jan 2013 - Locating multiple ancestors in Walker, Northumberland

4th to 24th Jan 2013 - Problems with Broadband usage reduces frequency of blog

Thursday 17th Jan 2013 - Poor newspaper search on Find My Past

Wednesday 23rd Jan 2013 - Found John Elstob Hutton in Bristol

Thursday 24th Jan 2013 - Grandad Hutton's Tin Box

Wednesday 30th Jan 2013 - Trouble with Comments - I want to leave some ...

Friday 1st Feb 2013 - Houses in Sunderland - William Satchell Hutton

Sunday 3rd Feb 2013 - Cliff Terrace and the Hartlepool Bombardment

Wednesday 6th Feb 2013 - Manchester Records and the Bailey family of Pendlebury
and a bit more about the Baileys later the same day.

For 3 weeks in Feb 2013 feeling rather ill so the only posts are reprises and comments.

Thursday 21st Feb 2013 - Final installment of William S Hutton, Master Mariner

Saturday 23rd Feb 2013 - Schoolmistress Project - FACHRS - Caroline Frudd

Wednesday 27th, Thursday 28th Feb and Friday 1st March 2013 - Recreating a walk around Crook, Howden and Witton le Wear

Saturday 2nd March 2013 - Final part of the walk around Crook, not a lot of family history

Sunday 3rd March 2013 - Castleford Non-Conformist records

Tuesday 5th March 2013 - Mariners in Castleford

Wednesday 13th March 2013 - the beginning of a series of blogs about the importance of proving your family history, checking evidence and corroborating information.

Friday 22nd March 2013 - examining the evidence for Charles Reuben Hutton

Tuesday 26th March 2013 - looking forward to the Archives reopening - pub inventories

Saturday 30th March 2013 - detective work on Family Search - Harle or Hall?

Wednesday 3rd April 2013 - first stab at Joseph Owram - America is a bit big isn't it?

Friday 5th April 2013 - Where is Kirkwhelpington?

Thursday 11th April 2013 - Wakefield Burial Registers and Castleford Cemetery

Wednesday 17th April 2013 - First WW1 soldier story - Frank Armitage

Thursday 18th April 2013 - Android apps for Genealogy investigated

Friday 19th April 2013 - widened my page and added a column, seems it will not fit older computer screens now - but I'm advised this is less than 10% of people.  Cross fingers.

Monday 22nd April 2013 - WW1 solider #2 - Alonzo Wilson Swallow - it's not as uncommon a name as I thought.

Monday 22nd April 2013 - two blogs today - this one is more about the Yorkshire Batemans.

Thursday 25th April 2013 - it's been a busy couple of weeks - WW1 soldier story #3 Bernard Dyson Oldroyd from Woolley near Darton

Monday 29th April 2013 - away for the weekend without my laptop so a big gap - joining the dots on Benjamin Bateman's children.

Tuesday 30th April 2013 - WW1 soldier #4 - Reginald Leslie Duncan

Wednesday 1st May and Thursday 2nd May - two posts blogging against disablism

Friday 3rd May 2013 - WW1 soldier #5 - Thomas Croft RNVR

Sunday 5th May 2013 - WW1 soldier #6 - Joseph Nutley - my own great uncle

Thursday 9th May 2013 - two posts about bobbins, Bobbin making in Barnsley and Benjamin Bateman, bobbin maker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Friday 10th May 2013 - back to the Huttons  - shipowners in Hartlepool

Holiday in Durham, including Beamish, Crook and Howden le Wear for a week

Worries about my Open Uni fees and the result

Monday 27th May 2013 - Thomas Elstob - Master Mariner using resources from the disk I bought at Yesterday belongs to you in Durham on my holiday

29th May 2013 and 31st May 2013 - Two posts telling the story of John Elstob's rise from yeoman to owner of a brewing empire in Sunderland.

2nd June 2013 - One final World War One Soldier's story before my exam revision kicks in and it's the story of a whole family

13th June 2013 - well that's the exam over and now back to Family History with Grandad Hutton and his service in the Home Guard in World War Two

15th June 2013 - talking to my mum about Grandad brought out lots of memories about Page Bank, where they used to live.  The village has gone now, the ground's all flat ...

16th June 2013 - a bit of a grump about not being useful anymore

17th June 2013 - WW1 soldier's story about Riley Smith, not related (well not very much), instead one of the POWs I was researching last autumn

20th June 2013 - a review of the Billion Graves app for Android which was followed by several posts on recording gravestones and war memorials on 23rd June, 30th June

A visit to Cudworth church with the OH and LL of Cudworth Local History Group was recounted in the early hours of 27th June 2013 while impatiently awaiting the next

27th June 2013 - Barnsley Experience incorporating Barnsley Archives reopened

30th June 2013 - An investigation of various online War Memorial sites

8th July 2013 - More about Barnsley POWs  - using the Absent Voters register

11th July 2013 - First intimation of the delay in the appearance of the Digitised Barnsley Chronicle and some notes on hopes for its accuracy

17th July 2013 - Finished the Absent Voters Register search

Tired and worn out and worried 22nd July 2013 and 24th July 2013

25th July 2013 - scanning in my Grandfather Hall's papers with a view to sending for his Army records (well that was a long drawn out process ... submitted once, phone call from Glasgow and had to get a form filled in by my Aunt as next of kin) - this was a piece about Funeral arrangements over the last 50 year or so.

2 August 2013 - Feeling better and restarting useful transcriptions at the Archives with the Cudworth Non-Conformist Registers

Also a piece about Backing up History and other docs on the Cloud - 2nd August 2013 - which has turned out quite prescient as I have now (end of August) deleted the BT Cloud from my computers.

Started to write articles to save for delayed publication whilst away at GBBF

5 Aug 2013 - but first another article resulting from my Grandad's papers, this about my Aunt Marion, who died whilst in the ATS

Released on 12th August 2013 - investigating Day's Croft - home of John Thomas Johnson MM and Richard Loveland Jobling  followed by a couple of family related posts, one started on my tablet whilst away but I was really far too busy to do much Family History except ...

25th August 2013 - Cotton Trade occupations in the census - a piece resulting from researching my colleague in the GBBF office's family tree on the last two days in London.

29th August 2013 - Back to the Archives after a long break - and GB starts to get a handle on the cataloguing system - it's paper based and very, very complicated.

Also on the 29th August 2013 as it had arrived in the post that day a write up about my new Flip Pal Scanner - which becomes a very successful post in a very short time due to being shared on the Flip Pal Facebook page.

The Book of Me project commences with the first post on 31st August 2013

5th September 2013 - found the fiche for the Worsborough Common baptisms I had been looking for last year - in a drawer marked Non-Conformist records - so how come we didn't find them then?

Another bad couple of days with disturbed sleep including an 18 hour sleep marathon which gave me back some zing - wrote a blog page and accompanying leaflet about my History Talks project.

An exciting week - the launch of the digitised Barnsley Chronicle at long last 10th September 2013, Prince Edward visits Barnsley and I see the oldest document held by Barnsley Archives 14th September 2013

16th September 2013 - It took a long time, but I finally finished the post about my Grandad Hall.  I was feeling a bit wordy so I also wrote a catch up blog about my Sunderland Mariners.

Began using Pinterest ... I put an embedded board of WW1 soldiers' stories on my dedicated page.  It looks nice.  I might attract a few more people to read the posts as they can easily see what they are about  ... and there's pictures!

19th September 2013 - My first blog using the inventories of Barnsley publicans, I really enjoyed my virtual walk through the two pubs in 1843/44.  Must get the OH to link it on the CAMRA site, my last pub blog post was very successful due to his link.

21st September 2013 - the first in a series of blog posts about War Memorials

25th September 2013 - Another Barnsley pub post, not as successful as some of the others, about the Freedom Inn on Wilson Street.  This is the one where 'Old Pictures of Barnsley' on Facebook 'borrowed' images without credit and misquoted me ... not happy.

30th September 2013 - Attended an Oral History Day at Barnsley Town Hall and blogged about trying to get all the different kinds of history to work together.

8th October 2013 - two more pub related posts, these ones are getting huge numbers of hits.  The Star Inn and John Leadman.

16th October 2013 and  24 October 2013 - I visited a couple of churches with Jane Ainsworth to photograph the war memorials.  Not very well for a couple of weeks, Archive visits and attending Cudworth meetings a bit hit and miss. Plus expecting the ATOS appointment any day.

26th October 2013 - two posts, one about a fascinating find in the Archives the day before and one about my difficult trip to buy a book from the Royston Local History Group.  Followed by several very miserable, sorry for myself posts as I got more and more ill and isolated. 

11th November 2013 - a Remembrance Day post about Cudworth soldiers.  It's a bit of a plug for the talk in February 2014 as well.

A whole week elapses before the next post - I was catching up on Open University study and then on 17 November 2013 the OH took me out for an 'airing' to photograph some more war memorials.

20th November 2013 - following an interesting discussion at the Cudworth group, a post on the population of Cudworth through time - I hate table formatting in Blogger!

21st/22nd November 2013 - Launched the Barnsley War Memorials Project blog

From the end of November until 13 December 2012 - more posts about seeking out war memorials and finding 'lost' memorials in the Archives.  I do need to get back to writing more general posts.

13 December 2013 - The story of Alice Lancaster - First World War Nurse.

More War Memorial posts up to going to my mum's for Christmas - and then I fell ill and didn't get the laptop out of its bag for over a week.

1 January 2014 - West Yorkshire Electoral Rolls - something new to cheer me up 

The Story of the Priestley family, sixteen children and four sons/sons in law marched off to war on the same day in 1915.   

5 January 2013 - Feeling a bit better so the OH took me out to photograph War Memorials 

Which gave me another lot of photos to process and puzzles to muse over.  Why are some men remembered on more than one memorial?

January to April 2014 - posted a lot of content on the Barnsley War Memorials Project and and Barnsley Soldiers Remembered didn't find time to write very many of my own blog posts at all.  Except when I wanted a bit of a complain about stuff.



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