Grrr – have just spent an entire morning looking for Ann Froud born 1839 Loose Kent, daughter of George Henry & Harriet. She does not appear at all on the 1841 census, is on the 1851 census with her parents and is on the 1861 census working as a servant away from home. Then she disappears. I can find no further trace of her in censuses or in a marriage – there seems to be some confusion with her sister’s Hannah’s marriage in 1866, (there are 2 entries, one for Annie, one for Hannah) but later censuses show the marriage was Hannah’s. What I must do now is trawl through all the marriages of Anns born 1839 in Loose , in case her surname has been misspelled (the name of Froud often is). I’ll start with 1866, just in case someone forgot to include a husband’s name.
I’m glad to say that my recent attempt to make my working practices in family history more efficient has been very successful and my 9 point check-list is a great help in keeping me from meandering wherever the fancy takes me. Against this I have to say, the arrival of my new Ipad has thrown a spanner in the works – but it is largely the Latin studies that have suffered 🙂
Now that I have started my Latin classes again, I find I have less time to spend on family history research. However, I have realised that the time I do spend on it is not used very efficiently, so I have rethought the process of finding the information and then recording it in 4 different places i.e. Ancestry.com, Tribalpages, The Master Genealogist (my genealogy computer program) and paper copies for my files.
As this coincides with my clearing out a lot of unwanted stuff from cupboards etc, I think it must be cobweb-clearing time!!
Clara Guy was my grandfather’s mother and my father and aunt never spoke kindly of her. However, I am seeing her in a whole new light and I must say I am full of admiration for her.
She married Robert William Hooker at a very young age and proceeded to bear at least 12 children , 3 of whom died in infancy.My grandfather was the first of her children. (Details are on www.tribalpages.com/tribes/storial ).
Her husband died on Christmas Day 1901 at the age of 43, leaving her with 11 children and expecting her 12th, born in May 1902.
How she managed I don’t know – I don’t think my grandfather would have been much help as he left home before he was 18 to join the Royal Marines.
In the 1911 census, Clara is the head of a household which included her 3rd child Charles, his wife and their child, and 3 of her own children – so I think her main support must have been her son Charles. This connection seems to have lasted for the rest of her life.
Interestingly, Charles is the forbear of my contact Sam who has given me so much information – and she has personal memories/family stories of this side of the family. I think her family had a much better opinion of Clara and I can see why. It makes me wonder why Clara was not popular with my father and his siblings, I have a sneaking suspicion she might have been a bit strict for them, but I am just guessing.
Anyway, from this distance in time, my hat goes off to Clara.
Well, we’d all like to find a goldmine and I just did! That is to say, I came across the Kent Archaeology site www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research – and there found a transcription of the gravestones etc at All Saints Church Loose Kent – and there was, among others, Hannah Froud. Brilliant!
Well, I’m back to work on the Ancestry.com project. At the moment I am having trouble finding any information on Hannah Gilbert (married John Froud b.1772). No-one in the Ancestry community seems to have any further information on her. The only Hannah Gilbert birth I have been able to find which could fit the bill is one in 1761 in Essex – which would make her 11 years older than her husband (not impossible of course) and also not a native of Kent. I will pursue this further.
I have found a likely death for her – Hannah Froud buried 29th October 1827 in Loose Kent. Still trying to find some evidence to back this up.
I have been amusing myself over the last few weeks by continuing to post on the Tribalpages Facebook page, complaining about no chart and no response to my enquiries – and I was not the only one dissatisfied with the Tribalpages support. However, my sense of humour was obviously not shared by everyone, as I found myself “blacklisted” from the site, with all my comments deleted and no longer able to add comments to the site. On the same day I received an email from Tribalpages tersely informing me that my money had been refunded via Paypal and that they were no longer posting to Australia – oops, did I upset someone? 🙂
Sure enough, the refund has arrived and I have, in return, sent them a terse email saying what I think of their management of the matter. I doubt if I’ll get an answer though.
I am still plodding away at this project and finding it most useful in defining where the blanks are in the family history. It is a slow process, it takes me at least an hour to put on two people – usually husband and wife – and by then my mind is starting to boggle.
I am currently working backwards from myself in a direct paternal line, so this hour or so does not include any siblings.
I love it!
Further to my last post, I have to report limited success. I decided to put my complaint on Tribalpages’ own Facebook page and had some interesting feedback from various people. What it amounted to was that there seems to be very little support for anyone from Tribalpages, one woman said that in 4 years of paying membership , she had not had one reply from them. I will let that speak for itself.
Anyway, I finally had a communication, via their Facebook page, from Tribalpages saying that they would refund my money and that charts being sent to Australia had been going amiss or taking a long time to get here but that they had sent mine.
I suggested that, instead of a refund , they send me another chart and this time by airmail.
So far, there has been no response to that. Why do I get the feeling my daughter will never get her Ancestors chart?
Today I begin my anti-Tribalpages campaign. www.tribalpages.com is the site I use for my family tree and I have always found it satisfactory – until, that is, I ordered one of their Ancestors Charts for my daughter’s 40th birthday. A month afterwards I emailed them to say it had not arrived and received an answer saying they had shipped it out 10 days previously (about the end of August) and would check on its current status and get back to me within 24 hours. Since then, there has been no sign of the chart and not a word from the Tribalpages support team, despite my further enquiries.
Needless to say, I am not happy!
First of all, who sends small articles by sea anymore? I am amazed that this was done and have visions of the chart buried in some huge container – possibly foundering off the coast of New Zealand.
Secondly, how rude, unbusiness-like and inefficient is it to ignore a customer’s complaint? I cannot understand it. I am going to try nagging them into, at least, acknowledging my complaint!
Family matters. 