Kathrina Perry - Local Historian

As you may or may not know I am currently studying towards my Masters degree in History with the Open University.  I am researching The social impact of bus operations in Northamptonshire between 1920 to 1950 I am looking for people who may have some stories about going to work and school and also how they spent their leisure time between 1920 to 1950.  If you are someone who could help, who know someone who would be happy to be interviewed, please contact me Kind regards

Hi Everyone It's been a while since I wrote a blog post on here.  A lot has happened since the last.... I've had a baby for a start.  Meet Chloe. She was born in July and she's a little character.  She's always giggling and smiling and obviously, at 9 months, definitely keeping me on my toes.  I've also completed the first part of my Masters degree in Local History.  I've really enjoyed it so far and I'm looking forward to writing my dissertation.  Anyway, enough about that.  I have done my Ancestry DNA test.  I was quite surprised (well I guess not really knowing how we're all immigrants really) that according to Ancestry I'm not as English as I thought I was.   As I said, when you consider the United Kingdom, and particularly Great Britain was invaded so many times, it makes sense that I am not solely English.  However, I would be intrigued as to how they come to these percentages. I have 142 matches apparently.  However, mos...

This woman represents how I feel about my tree at the moment.  It's a mess.  Basically I have a new laptop and my version of Family Tree Maker no longer works on the new laptop.  I've downloaded Rootsmagic which is ok but I don't like it as much as FTM.  I've also been doing a bit of a tidy up during which I have found a massive mistake where a few people seem to have been merged together and I can't split them or work out how to unsplit them so despite saying in my last post (which was quite a while ago!! I'm sorry.. I've been busy with work) that I was going to get tidied up without having to start from scratch it looks like that's exactly what I'm going to have to do.  So from today I am doing a complete do over..... well I say complete, although I have just added myself and my parents obviously I won't be researching them because I know all about them. I have made a database of all the people from my original tree (all 3916 of them.... and no...

I'm currently at a bit of a lull in my research.  This can happen. You find that nothing grabs your attention long enough to pursue it.  So what do I do when this happens?  I always find this is a good time to review my research.  There's many ways of approaching this but this is about how I approach it.  This is a working progress.  Every time I begin one of these reviews I also assess how I review things.  This blog post is about how I am currently working.   I prefer to have physical files.  I love paperwork.  I do have a tree in a digital format on Ancestry.Co.Uk (This is private but that is another story) but that is more for ease of access when researching rather than actually storing information.  I also have an old copy of the recently defunct Family Tree Maker but again this is for functionality of splitting gedcoms rather than an actual research tool.  This is not to say that this is the most effective way.  For ...

Apologies for not updating my blog for a while.  I've been working full time (ish) since May so haven't had as much time to focus on my research.  That doesn't mean I haven't done any, just that I haven't been as active with it as I once was.  Hopefully I'll start to have a bit more time again soon and will be able to continue with my profiles for my various ancestors. Anyway, here is what I have been doing since I last posted. On my previous post I said that I was awaiting a birth certificate for George H Major.  I received the birth certificate and found out that George was in fact George Henry Major.  He was born on 22nd March 1913 in Crowfield, Syresham.  His mother was Charlotte Elizabeth Major as I was already aware.  There was no father listed so this was yet another illegitimate child of Charlotte's.  This takes the total up to 5. Further research on George has uncovered his death record.  He died in May 1987 and his death was registe...

It's been a while since I've blogged about my family tree.  Unfortunately modern life has been getting in the way of searching for unknown relatives from the past. I have been doing the odd search which has given me a few things to look into.  I found someone on Ancestry who had  a marriage certificate for one ancestor, Mabel Annie Major, who had the elusive Timothy Major (see the previous blogs about the Major/Ayres conundrum) as their father.  I messaged the person who said that they had married their father's brother.  They also said that they knew of her sisters Eveline and Connie (who are listed on the 1911 census) and a brother called George!!.  Not another illegitimate child in the family.   I have ordered the birth certificate of George and hopefully that will finally sort out which of the sisters these children belong to (assuming that they are all related).  It's always interesting to look at middle names in cases like these as sometimes...

I've had a few days away with the family so have been able to reflect on what I have been doing in terms of my family research (it's always good to take a step back for a while). I've been updating this blog with director ancestors.  However, is that the best approach to take when researching your family. Family history research is very personal.  As mentioned previously, some people just want to see how far back they can get, others might want to see whether they're related to royalty.  Whatever the motivation I believe (and I'm sure people will give their opinions) that family history research should branch out.  This is why we say we are researching our family tree.  Trees have more than one branch and so should family history research. That said, one name studies can be quite interesting, especially when looking at how a particular name travels around the country. The point I'm making is that after a few days reflection I'm not sure that just writing abo...