Sarah Williams Editor sarah.williams@ourmedia.co.uk
One of the most common queries emailed to our ‘Q&A’ inbox (wdytyaquestions@ourmedia. co.uk) is from readers struggling to locate a birth record for an ancestor. It can be the missing link that cuts off a whole branch of your family tree. Turn to page 14 if you want to understand why you may not be able to find a baptism record, and pick up some handy tracing tips that you may not have considered before.
I really enjoyed talking to Ruth Goodman this month about her latest podcast series The Curious History of Your Home (page 20). She’s passionate about understanding and exploring the past that ordinary people experienced, and that’s something that resonates with me as a family historian. Of course, many of the ‘ordinary people’ in our family trees did extraordinary things, such as the pioneers who set off to forge new lives on the Canadian Prairies (page 29) or those, like reader David Hough’s grandfather, who survived the horrors of the trenches during the First World War (page 24).
Thankfully, life wasn’t all hardship for our forebears, and we reveal the history of beach huts on page 52. My grandparents had a friend with a beautiful blue hut in Southwold which we used to use on our summer holidays. I can almost smell it now with its sandy buckets and salty damp towels hanging up to dry. Here’s to the summer!
CONTRIBUTORS
CHRIS PATON
Chris is a genealogy educator who also offers a research service (see scotlandsgreateststory. wordpress.com). He shares his expert advice for finding baptism records on page 14.
DEBBIE KENNETT
Nick Peers, who usually writes our ‘Tech Tips’ articles, is taking a month off, so Debbie has stepped in to explain how to create a BMD database with free websites (page 50).
PAUL BLAKE
Paul is the author of numerous books and articles on family history, and on page 38 demonstrates the use of death-duty records that are often overlooked by family historians.
SARAH’S TOP TIP
