August 2008

elcome to the first anniversary issue of FTF Magazine. We have had a fantastic first year and have featured many fascinating articles by Family Tree Forum members. We would like to thank every single one of them as they have contributed towards the continuing success of the magazine.

You will notice a few changes this month. Beginning the second volume of the magazine coincided with a major upgrade to the software which runs the magazine and gave us the opportunity to incorporate some new features and a new look. The first volume can still be found through the menu at the top of the page.

This month we felt it appropriate that we look at the printing and publishing industry and members share the stories of their ancestors who worked in this field. We also take a look at the invaluable resource of newspapers in our research and members share stories which they have found about their ancestors, which are sometimes shocking, but in other cases have solved a family mystery, which in turn has demolished a personal brick wall.

We continue the My Town and Family Treasures features. This month Gwen@Coggiecorner tells us about her home town of Coggeshall and bev&kev recalls the story of her amazing find connected to her seafaring ancestor. Also in this issue Mavis by the Moor shares her research, inspired by a folk song, into the Cornish miners who went to work on Sark in the 1830s and 1840s. We would be most interested in hearing whether one of your ancestors was among them.

Margaret in Burton tells us about her Granny, who in the 1960s, was the the oldest licensee in Staffordshire. Margaret will be writing about the Burton brewing industry for the October issue of the magazine. If you too have ancestors who worked in the brewing industry and would like to share your story, then please contact Velma Dinkley via the contact button above.

The Editors

Printing and Allied Trades

The History of Printing

or the Occupations Section this month we look at the printing industry and its development from woodblock to computers together with a look at its associated trades and occupations. All the illustrations are from "The Penny Magazine", contributed by Roger in Sussex.

Publishing forebears

In the genes?

lthough nobody in my immediate family is involved in printing or publishing directly, I discovered early on in my research that three of my direct ancestors, two on the maternal side and one on the paternal side and all called George, were printers and/or publishers.

In the family

The Richardson family of Greenwich

y paternal grandmother’s line was a printing and publishing family.The line certainly goes back to my great x2 grandfather, Henry Samuel Richardson (1811–1905). It is quite probable that the profession goes back further.

A Family Mystery Solved

Family Mystery Solved

ecently The Times offered a free two week trial of their archive search facility. I thought it unlikely that any of my Lowestoft ancestors would have merited a mention in The Times, but tried searches combining their surnames and 'Lowestoft' on the off chance.

He did fight Indians

William Ennis

ver since I can remember I have known the story of my grandmother’s uncle, William Ennis, who left Ireland for America, founded the town of Ennis Montana, and was shot and killed.

Newspaper Research

A Paper Chase

hile searching the digital newspapers, looking for information about John de Fraine, several entries for a certain G.H. de Fraine kept popping up in the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle.

Infanticide

The Death of Baby Gordon

had been researching my Chandler and Inman ancestors for about two years, and to all appearances they seemed to be perfectly respectable people. However, an unexpected find in a local newspaper told a rather different story.

Lithographic Printer

Thomas Bluett

aul wrote about Mary Bluett's nightmarish return voyage to England in 1845, for the April issue of FTF Magazine. Mary, her husband Thomas and family had left England, emigrating to New Zealand, five years previously, where Thomas became a successful lithographic printer.

Extraordinary Suicide in Hoxton

A Tragic Story

have five Joshua Websters in my tree and a couple more waiting in the wings for some kind of proof or otherwise. The name is quite common in Yorkshire, but in East London in the 19th century my ones were pretty much the only ones.

Oldest licensee
Granny M y granny, Alice Jane Mortlock, was born in Burton on Trent in 1880. She would often visit her aunts, Jane and Kate Mortlock, in London, and told us once that during one of her visits, when she was small, she could remember the newsboys shouting the headline "ANOTHER MURDER IN WHITECHAPEL". Of course, this was about Jack the Ripper. ... Read More >>

Family Treasure
The John Mewse Mug J ohn 'Croney' Mewse was my husband’s great x2 uncle, he was one of the crew of the Lowestoft Lifeboat for 55 years, until his retirement in 1911. So you can imagine our delight when we spotted a mug, commemorating his heroic work, in Lowestoft Maritime Museum, so much so that my husband decided that he had to have it. ... Read More >>

The Silverlode of Sark
Cornish Miners on Sark W hen I heard the song ‘The Silverlode of Sark’ by Tom Bliss_[1], it intrigued me. Tom admits that he wrote it only from the stories he’d heard on Sark about the mine, so I decided to do some research, although the story of the mine itself is already documented_[2]. ... Read More >>

My Kind of Town
Coggeshall C oggeshall is a small historic market town and is regarded as one of the prettiest in Essex. It is uncertain from where the word Coggeshall derives, but it is mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086, as well as on a grant of the same period. ... Read More >>