Turnstone Genealogy

27/01/2025

From today's Guardian: 'Announced on , the Wiener Holocaust Library’s new online platform includes more than 150,000 items collected over nine decades. Users can view letters, pamphlets and photographs that record the rise of fascism in Britain and Europe.'
Access the collection here: https://www.whlcollections.org/index/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/27/holocaust-archive-online-wiener-library

Exclusive: Wiener Holocaust Library has digitised more than 150,000 items including letters, pamphlets and photos

26/01/2025

What treasure... a little glass window into the past!
By coincidence, on Friday I was researching a family that lived at 62 Argyll Street in the 1890s. The story of this little bottle adds a bit of colour to the picture of their life there at that time.

30/11/2024

I love these 'message in a bottle' stories!
Have you ever found a time capsule of some sort in a house you're renovating? Maybe something written under the layers of wallpaper or left behind in the loft or the cupboard under the stairs? Wondered about the people that once lived there?

Experts poring over censuses and newspaper archives have built up a rich picture of their lives.

26/11/2024

Some wonderful photos of working life in Glasgow's factories in the 1950s here. It's relatively rare to have photos of our ancestors at work, but photojournalism from the period can give us some valuable insight into what their working lives might have looked like. Photos can also be good conversation starters with older relatives... put the kettle on, get your voice recording app ready and get chatting!

The post-war lives of Glasgow factory workers were documented by a renowned war correspondent.

09/11/2024

Echoes from the trenches

A postcard in a trench diary gives a family the answer they have waited more than 100 years for.

07/11/2024

This weekend everything ~~INCLUDING THE 1921 CENSUS~~ is free to access on findmypast.co.uk. The offer starts today and runs until the end of the day on Monday 11th November.
Whose story will you uncover?

05/11/2024

Just putting the finishing touches to my talk for the Society of Genealogists on using CWGC resources for family and local history research. The talk will be delivered live via zoom on Saturday morning, with a recording available afterwards for those who can't attend on the day. Booking via the SoG website:
https://members.sog.org.uk/events/66056a2e1fce3800088c69fa/description?ticket=66056a2e1fce3800088c69fd

01/11/2024

The 1939 Register provides a snapshot of the civilian population of England and Wales just after the outbreak of the Second World War. As the 1931 census for England and Wales was destroyed by fire during the Second World War and no census was taken in 1941, the Register provides the most complete survey of the population of England and Wales between 1921 and 1951, making it an invaluable resource for family, social and local historians.

It's FREE to search on Findmypast this weekend. Can you find your grandparents?

Find your family's WW2 story

29/10/2024

Fabulous new addition to Scotland's People!

Two thousand images and 180,000 prison records from the Victorian era have been unveiled by the Scotland’s People website.

26/10/2024

Over the next four weekends, Findmypast are making some of their subscription-based collections available for FREE. First up, it's their newspaper collection.
Who will you search for? What will you find?

Find your ancestor's wartime story

23/10/2024

If you have miners among your ancestors, mark your calendar and book your ticket. Kay is an excellent speaker and this will be a well researched and informative talk.

Do you have miners in your family tree? Have you looked at the census entries, wondered what these places were like and what living in a two-roomed house meant?

Unlike most other industrial workers, a miner’s employer was also likely to have been the landlord. The location of coal mining was determined by a combination of geology and technology and miners’ homes needed to be near their place of work. Many mining communities were isolated villages of basic rows of houses with few amenities, but this is not the whole story.

“In all the coalfields there is a well-marked difference between the oldest houses and the newest, between the worst and the best. But there are also great differences between the different coalfields.” Ballantyne Royal Commission on Housing (1917) [Cd 8731] Chapter XIV, para. 870, p 126.

This talk will be a trip through time and space from west to east, from Ardeer on the Ayrshire coast in the mid-nineteenth century across the industrial heartlands of Lanarkshire in the central belt to mining villages in the Lothians in the 1920s. Along the way we will look at time slices for selected census years and explore the differences.

20/10/2024

In yesterday's Guardian newspaper, an article about a library book... and a young man called Leonard Ewbank who was killed at Ypres:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/19/book-returned-to-cumbria-school-library-113-years-overdue

By coincidence, yesterday I paid a visit to All Saints Church, Boltongate, where Leonard's father was Rector. Both Leonard and his brother Walter are commemorated on the War Memorial in the churchyard, and his parents are buried there.

08/10/2024

Starts next Thursday 17th Oct at 9pm on BBC2. And while we're waiting, series four of A House Through Time is available on iPlayer at the moment.

I love researching house history, it's such a satisfying process and never fails to turn up all manner of interesting stories. Have you looked into the history of your own house?

Exciting news - BBC Two's popular house history series is returning after three years absence! And this time, there's a twist to the format... 📺

https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tv-series/when-is-the-new-series-of-a-house-through-time-on-tv-where-is-it-set-and-what-it-is-about

02/10/2024

Day 6 of is all about innovation. My talk on the challenges of bringing sanitation and safe water to a rural village in Cumbria goes live at 10am. Make sure you've eaten breakfast well in advance... the subject matter is rather stomach turning in places!

29/09/2024

Useful entry level course for those with an interest in family and local history in the Highlands of Scotland.

We are pleased to announce that our Archives for Beginners classes will be starting again in November. This is a set of four classes looking at the records at the Highland Archive Service and how they can help your research. They will run on Friday mornings, 10am-12pm (in-person at the Highland Archive Centre in Inverness) from 1st November and on Wednesday afternoons, 2pm-4pm (online) from 6th November.

For further information or to book a place on either set, please email [email protected]

29/09/2024

The former Glasgow Registry Office in Park Circus is up for sale. The photos are stunning, but the comments are just as interesting, lots of wedding memories, lots of occupational links, and some lovely stories of the building's earlier history as the Italian consulate, which hosted tea dances and other social events for Glasgow's Italian community.

29/09/2024

So many interesting talks on the theme of Health & Medicine for yesterday's All About That Place. Today's theme is Military and War - my talk on Commemorating the Fallen of the Great War goes live at 5pm. All talks are available on catch up via the FB page and YouTube channel during the event and for at least two weeks afterwards.
https://www.sog.org.uk/all-about-that-place-2024/

23/09/2024

Really looking forward to this. Last year's event was excellent and this one is shaping up to be even better!