Church of England Records Centre, Bermondsey, London

Copyright: Clare McMurtrie, 2015

New Year, New You? | 2015 on Days With The Dead

Hello to you and I hope that 2015 is treating you well. Lets not mention the unacceptable gap between my last post and this one, which leads me onto my main point. I've never been much of New Years Resolutions person and 2015 isn't much different. Generally we make too many ambitious resolutions and give up the gym, teetotalism or museum date nights after January. However, I've decided to put finger to keyboard and set in stone some historical goals for the year ahead. 

As I mentioned before, I have been atrociously bad at keeping up with this blog over the past year and that has partly due to not having time and not making time for genealogy. I hope my goals for 2015 will change this!

1) Start researching more of my family tree again.

2) Blog my progress here on Days With The Dead.

3) Volunteer in a museum/archive/library.

4) Read at least 1 non-fiction history book.

What are your historical goals this year?

The Suffolk Connection: A Family History Holiday

Through an odd turn of events I ended up staying in the village where my 5th great grand aunt Mary Freeman is buried. We uncovered her memorial stone under the altar at the village church, which describes her unusually as having died after 'a life of purity, piety and benevolence, and after having borne a long and painfull illnefs with truely Christian resignation and fortitude'. She had a brother John and sister Sarah and, confusingly, her parents were also John and Mary Freeman.

The link to my paternal grandparents is through Mary's sister Sarah, who married Edmund Lincoln, governor of the South Caribbean and St Vincent 1783-87. The mystery continues!

Moving On: Amateur Archaeology and Victorian Rubbish

Who says moving on, moving house or growing up has to be difficult? So it turns out the Victorians had a thing for turning the ends of their gardens into their own personal landfills, which is remarkably convenient for amateur archaeologists. Before I moved out of my Victorian house I had the opportunity to dig up this fascinating assortment of pottery and glasswear, which provides a great snapshot of the lives of the early residents of the house. My finds included a souvenir Eiffel Tower lemonade bottle from 1909! Now, packed up in plastic storage in my new house, the results of my expedition into amateur archaeology serves as a perfect souvenir of my old house.

Old rubbish really can be an untapped historical resource!