The Best Laid Plans...

We'd been planning to test out the wheelchair this afternoon...it poured with rain. So plan b was put into action...

Himself counted out all the one and two cent coins we've been saving 'cos they're going to be withdrawn from circulation...there was €10 worth...better than a smack in the jaw.

And I went to the Ancestry page, determined to print off reams of records for two of my very patient ladies...now Ancestry are in the process of changing from their old format to a brand new shiny one with all the bells and whistles anyone could desire...so it's full of glitches.

The most important one for me is the fact they'll tell you the relationship to the 'home' person...so you add your record and as if by magic you'll know that John Smith is a third cousin twice removed...except that isn't working. So you've no idea, unless it's a really obvious connection, whether John Smith really is a third cousin twice removed or whether you've made a total cats dinner and he isn't a relative at all.

Something else which infuriates me is when I can't find the answer...one chap wasn't on the 1871 census...his wife had told the enumerator he was in Russia. I want to know why...he was a journeyman joiner...not a soldier or a sailor...he reappeared for the 1881 census. So whatever was he doing going off to Russia...

Marrying well certainly paid off for some...one man I found married a girl from a wealthy family and was able to refer to himself from then on as 'a gentleman', his brothers were still working away at their looms...he was probably out hunting or fishing for salmon...

And I would love to have more time to delve deeper...one tree has a Reverend. Now it'd be lovely to find which University he went to...the church where he was the incumbent...but I'm overly conscious that what fascinates me might not be of interest to the person whose tree it is and searching records for just one person can easily take up an entire afternoon...

Not to worry...