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Feb. 10th, 2009 04:16 pmAt the Family History course the ladies gave us a talk on Parish Registers, the best source of birth, marriage and death information for times before 1837 when national records began. Most of the parish registers are held at county records offices today, but there's a handy short cut : for a small fee the Mormon church's Family History Centre in Portsmouth will arrange to borrow a copy of any register in Britain from their central record office and you can then make an appointment to come back and peruse it at the Portsmouth centre. Apparently they do Irish registers as well, which will come in handy for that branch of my family.
Spent the rest of the session checking out the links to other users on ancestry.co.uk - I'm now back to one pair of my 8-greats-grandparents, who were born in 1705 and 1710. The ladies got us all to log on to the International Genealogical Index, again hosted by the Mormons. We in Hampshire are fortunate that the Anglican clergy didn't mind the LDS church accessing their records; in other areas like Dorset and Kent they were allowed hardly any. Whatever you think of the LDS church's take on Christianity, we should appreciate the valuable service their devotion to family history provides for all of us who want to trace our ancestors. Thanks to the IGI, I've found the name of someone who might be another 8-greats-grandfather.
Driving lesson this afternoon. Open road driving mostly OK. Messed up my parallel park by starting to turn right too early, and would have done a perfect bay park if I'd put a full left lock on straight away instead of steering right by mistake for a moment at the very beginning. Turn in the road fine except for touching the kerb at the very end. Was doing fine reversing round a corner until I thought I was about to mount the kerb (in fact I was doing just fine) so put some right steering on and went round hopelessly wide. Still, Peter reckons my progress is satisfactory, and that two months ago he hadn't thought I'd be reaching my present standard any time soon. He also said I might be ready to do my test in late April or May.
Spent the rest of the session checking out the links to other users on ancestry.co.uk - I'm now back to one pair of my 8-greats-grandparents, who were born in 1705 and 1710. The ladies got us all to log on to the International Genealogical Index, again hosted by the Mormons. We in Hampshire are fortunate that the Anglican clergy didn't mind the LDS church accessing their records; in other areas like Dorset and Kent they were allowed hardly any. Whatever you think of the LDS church's take on Christianity, we should appreciate the valuable service their devotion to family history provides for all of us who want to trace our ancestors. Thanks to the IGI, I've found the name of someone who might be another 8-greats-grandfather.
Driving lesson this afternoon. Open road driving mostly OK. Messed up my parallel park by starting to turn right too early, and would have done a perfect bay park if I'd put a full left lock on straight away instead of steering right by mistake for a moment at the very beginning. Turn in the road fine except for touching the kerb at the very end. Was doing fine reversing round a corner until I thought I was about to mount the kerb (in fact I was doing just fine) so put some right steering on and went round hopelessly wide. Still, Peter reckons my progress is satisfactory, and that two months ago he hadn't thought I'd be reaching my present standard any time soon. He also said I might be ready to do my test in late April or May.
