My Pedigree Tree coloured by county of birth

 What a different way of viewing this and makes for something that might even interest those family members who aren't currently interested.

Dates UK censuses were taken

 

United Kingdom censuses are  held every 10 years. The census records relate to the persons whereabouts on the date given below:

 1801 - 10th March Tuesday

1811 - 27th May Monday

1821 - 28th May Monday

1831 - 30th May Monday

1841 - 6th June Sunday

1851 - 30th March Sunday

1861 - 7th April Sunday

1871 - 2nd April Sunday

1881 - 3rd April Sunday

1891 - 5th April Sunday

1901 - 31st March Sunday

1911 - 2nd April Sunday

1921 - 19th June Sunday (publication date 1st January 2022)

1931 - 26th April Sunday (publication date 1st January 2032)

1939 - 29th September World War II National Registration (publication date 1st January 2040)

1941 - no census taken due to World War II.

1951 - 8th April (publication date 1st January 2052)

1961 - 23rd April (publication date 1st January 2062)

1971 - 25th April (publication date 1st January 2072)

1981 - 5th April (publication date 1st January 2082)

1991 - 21st April (publication date 1st January 2092)

2001 - 29th April (publication date 1st January 2102)

2011 - 27th March Sunday

2021 - 21st March Sunday

Lewes Avalanche 1836

 I don't have many ancestors that come from the Lewes area but I worked there for 15 years and this disaster is part of the heritage of the town.

The deadliest avalanche in British history took place, not in the mountains of Scotland or Wales as you may expect, but in 1836 in the town of Lewes, Sussex, just a few miles from the south coast of England.
During the winter of 1836/7 Britain suffered some of its worst weather ever recorded, with freezing temperatures, heavy snow and gale force winds.
On Christmas Eve 1836 a huge storm blew up over southern England. Heavy snowfall and gale force winds combined to produce blizzards and massive snow drifts.
The town of Lewes is situated on the River Ouse, surrounded by the hills of the South Downs. By Christmas night 1836 the north-easterly blizzard had built up a deep layer of snow on the sheer edge of one of these hills, Cliffe Hill. The great overhanging mass of snow was reportedly around 20 feet deep.
Boulder Row, a row of seven workers’ cottages on South Street, stood at the foot of Cliffe Hill. These houses were ‘poor houses’ and were owned by South Malling Parish.
It soon became obvious to passers-by that the cottages were in danger from this huge overhang of snow. They alerted the residents and advised them to move out until the snow had melted. The residents refused, even when on 26th December, a large fall of snow from the clifftop fell onto a nearby timber yard, destroying it and sweeping it into the River Ouse.
The following day at 10.15am the inevitable happened; the huge weight of snow fell, swamping the cottages of Boulder Row below.
How many people were in the cottages at the time is unknown, but contemporary reports indicate that fifteen people were inside when the avalanche struck.
According to witnesses, the cottages were physically swept into the road by a huge wave of snow, leaving nothing to be seen except an enormous white heap. A mammoth rescue effort lasting seven hours managed to save seven people, but eight others perished from suffocation under the weight of snow.
The fatalities included people with the family names Barnden, Bridgman and Geer, while survivors included a young labourer Jeremiah Rooke, a middle-aged woman named Fanny Sherlock (or Sharlock) and a two-year-old child, Fanny Boakes, believed to be Sherlock's granddaughter (the 1841 census records two people matching these names and ages living at the same address in South Street) The white dress Fanny Boakes was wearing when she was rescued is on display in the Anne of Cleves House museum in Lewes, along with a contemporary painting of the tragedy.
Their names are recorded on a commemorative tablet, funded by public subscription, on the inside wall of South Malling parish church, one mile away, where the funeral and burial took place. A fund was set up to provide financial aid to the survivors and bereaved families.
Today a pub called the Snowdop Inn stands on the site of Boulder Row. The inn was built in 1840 and named in commemoration of the disaster.

Zacharias Weston 1857-1933

 Zacharias was my great great uncle. He was born 1 March1857 in Etchingham and died in 1933.   His parents were Samuel Weston (1806-1894) and Sarah Newick (1818-1897)  He married Emily Jane Kemp in 1887  Zacharias and Emily Jane had 9 children of which 7 were still living in 1911.  He died a widower, aged 76, in 1933 and left behind 5 daughters and 2 sons.  He had been a railwayman for 45 years.

He was a railway platelayer in 1881 and lived with his parents in Garners Cottages, Etchingham.  In 1891 he was living with his wife and family at Church House Cottages, Etchingham and was still a platelayer.  In 1901 he was living at Hammerden Cottage, Stonegate, Ticehurst and was still a platelayer.  In 1911 he was a railway labourer but that could still have been a platelayer.  He was a Sapper in the Royal Engineers during World War 1..  

Plate layers were trackmen. Some early railway lines were of wood, capped with metal plates to protect the wood from wear. The men who laid the track were therefore called "platelayers". The name stuck, even though that form of construction soon went out of favour.

The upkeep of the rails, sleepers, plates and permanent way are vital to the safe running of trains A plate layer would be responsible for all aspects of track maintenance such as replacing worn out rails or rotten sleepers, packing to ensure a level track, weeding and clearance of the drains etc. There was little available to them in the way of mechanical assistance in those days and it often involving arduous and uncomfortable work. They were usually assigned to each mile or two miles of track, with a platelayers' hut as shelter and working base. These were generally a single room, immediately adjacent to the running lines, equipped with a table, chairs, and a simple heating stove.

The status and pay of a platelayer, fixing and maintaining the track day in day out, was far lower that the engineman driving the train passed him.

Etchingham station building dates from 1851, when both the station and the first section of the Hastings line opened.

Cuckfield Compendium

 

Another hobby of mine has been the creation and updating of a website about Cuckfield, a village in the heart of Mid Sussex.  I created it to challenge my website skills but mainly as a "passing it forward" act to thank everyone that has helped me around the country for their local knowledge of where  my ancestors came from.  So was born "Cuckfield Compendium".

Last month I registered the site on the One Place Studies Directory which is such a useful site to use during genealogy research.

I am going to be continuing to develop the site, adding more baptism, marriage and burial transcriptions and new pages as the opportunity arises.  Tonight I have added more baptisms for 1892 and more burials for 1891.  I am currently researching education in Cuckfield ready for a new page, so watch this space!!

A new beginning

I have moved my family history blogging to this new site to better focus on this side of my hobbies. 

Back in the mid 1990s I started my family history research by visiting the East Sussex County Records Office in Lewes; drawing on the knowledge and help on Rootsweb mailing lists and using the oh so helpful set of discs of the 1881 census produced by Family Search.  Internet searching was limited to free resources and over a dial up connection.

I recorded my research on sheets of paper for each ancestor and stored them alphabetically in four coloured folders, one for each of my great grandparents.  As time moved on I recorded the information on Family Group sheets downloaded from Ancestry.

In the early years of 2000 I started recording my ancestors in the popular PAF programme and progressed to Family Tree Maker in 2011.  So much easier to quickly find ancestors, run reports etc but I still kept paper copies (belt and braces!!).

In 2015 I found a blog that was encouraging people to do a "Go Over" with different topics for each of 13 weeks.  It sounded a good plan at the time as I had notebooks of notes, stray bits of paper, emails, copies of online trees, old postcards and maps.

It seemed sensible to start a new tree in a new programme, Family Historian, and research each ancestor and at the same time carefully file all bits of information in the right file and then check back in the old programme to make sure the research was complete.  Thus "Go-Over" became "Do-Over".

Here we are in 2020 and I am finishing the last of the transfers but along the way I have acquired many people on different branches and twigs.  My folders are now organised from me back through my direct line ancestors, right back into the 1600s but the odd folders of notes and jotting are still there!!  One day.........

At the end of last year I did an Ancestry DNA test and now I am busy learning all the tools for researching shared matches and how they link into my tree.