Meetings 2014
Meeting 8th June 2014
Meeting 11th May 2014
There were 10 of us in the Chapel Schoolroom to hear from Mary Randles talk about her search for the truth about Albert Bayles. It was a fascinating presentation and made us all realise just how difficult, but addictive, tracing ancestors can be. Mary has agreed to let Carol put a copy of her research on the website very soon, so if you weren’t able to join us today, you can read it later. As with all stories like this, there are many questions still to be answered, and many of them will never be answered.
Sheila had her copy of the school registers with her so Mary was able to get dates for the time the children of John Bayles spent at Dallowgill School, helping her to fill one gap! Every little helps.
Many thanks to Mary for coming across from Lancashire to be with us – she has promised to come back and see us again.
Meeting: 9th February 2014 in Dallowgill Chapel Schoolroom – 7 attended
• Howard and Sheila are getting through the work of checking the Census spreadsheets against the original documents and then doing a summary for each census. Howard has noticed a drop in population between 1871 and 1881 so we discussed reasons for this – Carol said a lot of people left for Leeds to work, then maybe people had smaller families, or children died from childhood illnesses. When all the summaries are done, the plan is to put them into a spreadsheet and compare numbers of people, their ages and occupations to notice any trends and changes.
• Geoff brought some old photos from the boxes that he is gradually going through which were very interesting – we need to take pictures from the same place today to look for changes. One showed a school group from 1955, which Sheila does not have in her school file, so she will scan it and print it out so that names can be added.
• Sheila had more references to documents relating to Dallowgill from the Masham Archive she is helping with. She also offered to start putting the Electoral Register information into a spreadsheet for easier searching. I have so far downloaded the Laverton and Dallowgill ones from 1840 for most years until 1859, then from 1889 to 1925, plus a few for Carlesmoor on the Grewelthorpe pages.
• We have decided to attend the Family History Day at the Pavilions in Harrogate on Saturday 15th March. Sheila has offered to help, so if there is anyone else who could come along, even for part of the day, I would be very pleased to hear from them! It is supposed to be a really good day, and it would be nice to be able to wander around the stalls rather than be tied to the stand all day.