A comment on my last post from my niece prompted me describe how our family history search was carried out, predominantly by our parents.
Firstly it was started in the days before internet searches.
Research on Alderney
Dad wrote down all he knew of his Grandmother Harriet Jane, alongside lots of questions and we headed on a family holiday to Alderney and then on to Guernsey. Here are a couple of key questions:
Who were Harriet’s parents? (my Great Grandmother)
Where did she live?
What happened to them? Dad knew that they had died but how?
There were three ways we could find out information:
- Visiting a dear lady on Alderney who was in her 80’s, but worked with families who were researching their family trees. All she asked was a donation for the museum and for us to send her any information we gleaned.
- Visiting the museum where the potter Peter Arnold (and curator I believe) allowed us to search all the old acetates of any records the island possessed on a machine where you carefully turned the handle and looked into a viewer.
- Looking around the graveyard for possible relatives.
As I have said in a previous post, records on Alderney are not complete due to the evacuation and occupation in WW2.
Most which are available, of course, can now be accessed on-line.
(Meanwhile I researched life on Alderney in the Victorian Age for my novel)
Research on Guernsey
Here there is a Records Office and the Priaulx Library, both mines of information, not to mention Trinity Church where my Great Grandmother Harriet was married. Our parents went back to work on their searches. Family History is absorbing but time consuming.
After our trip together
Subsequently …
A few days was not enough, although we had an enjoyable time together. After that Mum and Dad made another trip to both islands on their own and I too visited Guernsey on my own for my research, which was now diverging from the truth into fiction. I travelled to Guernsey, in the opposite of the journey made by Harriet and her young family, on the slow ferry from Portsmouth, when you are still passing The Isle of Wight after an hour at sea!
As Mum and Dad went on to do more detailed research, uncovering much of what I have described in the previous few posts, they also went on to access records on the internet too, as soon as it was available.
It was a wonderful topic of discussion when we met and they distributed much of it to all the family, although it was poignant but also a delight to find all the original documentation and notes in their things when they had passed away.
Next post …
Diana Jackson 