By now you should have an impressive pedigree of your ancestors and will have probably added other ancestors taken from the Census. You will:

• Know when they were born, married and died
• Have addresses taken from the Census and Certificates
• Have details of occupations
• Have details about cause of death, providing medical histories of your ancestors
• Have details of surrounding neighbourhoods etc.

What you won’t have is detailed information about their lives. But you can learn what their lives were like by researching further. Here are some questions to consider:

• What was happening in the country at the time of their birth, marriage or death? How might these events have affected their lives and those of their extended families?
• What were their occupations and what did those occupations involve?
• Did they spend time as a family in a workhouse? If they did, what circumstances beyond their control put them there? Perhaps they were workers on the land but it was a bad year for crops. Perhaps the death of a breadwinner shattered their lives.
• What caused their death? If it was a fever such as typhus, was there an epidemic locally? Did such occurrences affect their status in life?

Widespread deaths, as awful as it seems, can provide opportunities for those left behind as well as misfortune.

• Did they live in lodgings? Did they have a house to themselves? Did they have lodgers? Did they move around the country? What caused them to move – was it work, death or to be with family? Perhaps they had a military background. You can chart the progress of a family by tracking their occupations and types of lodgings through researching old maps or studying the Census and certificates to find out if they improved their lot through time, or if they declined.
• Are there any books about a town, village or city in which they lived?
• Do other family members have any memorabilia such as photographs, postcards or letters?
• Did religion play a big part in their lives? If a family was of a certain religious denomination until a point in time then changed to another religion, what could have been the cause of this?
• Many Victorian districts survive today; do some of the homes of your ancestors still exist?
• Do graves where your ancestors were buried survive today? Do churches where they were christened or married exist today?

The list could go on and on.

By putting certificates and Census information into chronological order by family and researching history surrounding key events, their occupations, illnesses, causes of death, where they lived, their religious beliefs, by collecting old photographs and reading about the towns or villages in which your ancestors lived, you can build a picture of their lives and get to understand them, if not know them personally.

There are so many avenues available to you to learn more about the lives of your forebears that it impossible for me to record them all, but I hope the following will guide you further into finding out who your ancestors were.

Newspaper

In my first book Meet Your Ancestors, I discovered newspaper articles concerning two of my ancestors, my five times great aunt and uncle, Henry and Emily Pudwine on the Newspaper Detectives website (www.newspaperdetectives.co.uk).

The Newspaper Detectives is transcribing an index of articles printed in the Surrey Advertiser during the 19th century and to date have transcribed 1864–1867 and 1872. You can search alphabetically for your subject or surname and you will be given an exact date, names of persons involved, if applicable, and the story’s headline.

This information enables you to go straight to the newspaper source, at the Surrey History Centre in Woking where back copies of the Surrey Advertiser can be viewed on microfilm, and print a copy of the relevant stories.

Although I haven’t yet scanned every article in the last two additions, I did search in 1866 records for family names and found the information below.

These stories are very entertaining to my family but what is also of great interest is reading a local newspaper written at the time that my ancestors were living. Although it is important to remember that, just as today, newspaper reporters of yesterday used their creative skills to create reader interest and also had their own views, beliefs and prejudices. However, I have no reason to doubt that the above is true, although the reporter definitely had a sense of humour. Both of these articles most certainly built a picture in my mind of an attractive young couple full of life and fun. I visualised Emily as trim, in a pretty, although not expensive, calico dress, with sparkling eyes and a mischievous grin – how wrong could I be! More a little later.

Another great newspaper resource is the British Library Online: www.uk.olivesoftware.com. By accessing newspaper archives of the same period, you can find local, national and world history during the time your forebears were living.

The British Library

THE BRITISH LIBRARY

Welcome to the British Library Online Newspaper Archive

Please note presently, the Online Archive browser minimum requirements are: Internet Explorer 5. Netscape 4.79 or 6 2.Ths minimum screen resolution is 80O × 6O0

When using Internet Explorer for windows, make sure that the secunty setting “Run ActiveX contols and Plugins” is enabled in the browser

For questions related the British Library or the Online Newspaper Archive content, please click here.

For technical support regarding the operation of the Online Newspaper Archive, please click here.

Besides hoping to find interesting news about your ancestors, you could also find information that will help you understand particular environments in which they were sometimes forced to live, such as I did with my grandmother. She was placed in a workhouse aged just 10 weeks until she was 16 years of age. The articles below helped my mother understand why my grandmother was the way she was.

The National Archies

Whilst looking at the new entries on the National Archives website, I came across a live archive called Victorian prisoners. On the right-hand side of this screen under ‘popular content’, out of nothing more than curiosity, I decided to search through some of the pictures. Imagine my surprise when I came across this page, in particular the bottom listing shown below:

Emily Redwine (Pudwine) née Noller (Voller) had to be my ancestor. From previous experience I knew to expect many transcription errors or variations in the spelling of both surnames. I clicked on ‘See details’.

The place of conviction is Guildford, where Emily Pudwine, née Voller was living at this time. I decided to purchase a copy of the image and was able to download it immediately.

My goodness, what a sour puss! But she was in prison and obviously not thrilled by her predicament and I’m glad to say she bears no family resemblance.

The above lists a previous crime for being a disorderly pauper when she was aged just 17. So what with the above image and the previous newspaper cutting, it was obvious that my five times great aunt Emily Pudwine was no saint.

I never thought I would wish this, but I searched through the other 619 records of Victorian prisoners hoping to find more family members, but sadly Emily was it! I’m not really disappointed because what are the odds that I would even find one ancestor? What a wonderful resource!

Out of curiosity, I searched Wills and was amazed to find the Will of John Charitee Plummer, my husband’s four times great grandfather.

Documents above are reproduced by kind permission of the National Archives.

Again, for £3.50, I was able to purchase a copy of the above document. It is the likes of sites such as the Newspaper Detectives that I have to thank for leading me to the newspaper cutting that led me to this wonderful historical source.

The Old Bailey

Another great resource of the many waiting to be discovered on the Internet is the one below for The Proceedings of The Old Bailey, London 1674 to 1834

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission

By searching under the name of my half-brother I found the following information:

I keyed ‘HMS Rawlpindi’ on the address line of my Internet Page and found many sites providing information about this ship, including this one, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Rawalpindi.

Family history forums

Genforum

Genforum is an information site and also a wonderful resource to post questions asking for help or advice about your family research. You can search by country and surname.

By selecting ‘Countries’ you can see the extent of possibilities available to you.

Genes Reunited

Most of us by now have heard of Friends Reunited, but there is also Genes Reunited, which is becoming a fast favourite with researchers looking for both living relatives and ancestors. The home page below will give you an idea of how easy it is to use for searching, reading and replying to messages etc. (messages will be forwarded to you!).

I have posted several queries on this site and never failed to get a response such as this one:

Genealogy Quest

This is another information site that has provided me with various bits and pieces including old medical terms.

The Hall Genealogy Website

This site directed me to various military and marine links besides offering information about the Hall family and a list of old occupations.

I selected marine and military and up came a huge list of military links, and occupations shown below:

The Victorian Dictionary

When I want to learn anything about Victorian social history, this site is my first choice. It provides detailed information about 19th century life.

I came across this site trying to find out information about the trade of an ice man and fishmonger but more than that, I wanted to know how they managed to store and cultivate ice before the invention of the refrigerator.

Victorian professions and trades

By selecting professions and trades I found the following:

Selecting food and drink brings up another extensive list.

After narrowing down to fish-curers, up pops a long article about the fish industry.

The Canal Museum

Another fabulous site is the Canal Museum providing me with everything I needed to know about ice and ice men during the 19th century. It gave me more insight into the life of Martino Marelli. The point of this exercise is to show you how surfing the net can help put flesh on the bones of your ancestors; bringing the names and dates to life. Always search for information about trades; you might be lucky enough to find detailed information like I did.

You may wonder if The Canal Museum or ice and ice merchants related to your family history. If your ancestors worked in London with fresh food, such as fish and meat, or perhaps you have Italian ancestors who sold cream or ice cream, or ancestors that worked on the canals of London or in the docks, then this site will help you start to build a picture of their lives. My husband remembers an ice wagon coming around his locality when he was a child before his parents owned a fridge, so in some way ice men did play a part in the lives of your ancestors.

The London Canal Museum also provides information about the history of London’s canals, the cargoes carried, the people who lived and worked on the waterways, and the horses that pulled their boats. The museum is located in a former ice warehouse built in about 1862–63 for Carlo Gatti, the famous ice cream maker, and features the history of the ice trade and ice cream as well as the canals.