By now you should have an impressive pedigree of your ancestors and will have probably added other ancestors taken from the Census. You will: What you won’t have is detailed information about their lives. But you can learn what their lives were like by researching further. Here are some questions to consider: Widespread deaths, as awful as it seems, can provide opportunities for those left behind as well as misfortune.

The list could go on and on. By putting certificates and Census information into chronological order by family and researching history surrounding key events, their occupations, illnesses, causes of death, where they lived, their religious beliefs, by collecting old photographs and reading about the towns or villages in which your ancestors lived, you can build a picture of their lives and get to understand them, if not know them personally. There are so many avenues available to you to learn more about the lives of your forebears that it impossible for me to record them all, but I hope the following will guide you further into finding out who your ancestors were.

Newspaper

In my first book Meet Your Ancestors, I discovered newspaper articles concerning two of my ancestors, my five times great aunt and uncle, Henry and Emily Pudwine on the Newspaper Detectives website ( www.newspaperdetectives.co.uk ).

The Newspaper Detectives is transcribing an index of articles printed in the Surrey Advertiser during the 19th century and to date have transcribed 1864–1867 and 1872. You can search alphabetically for your subject or surname and you will be given an exact date, names of persons involved, if applicable, and the story’s headline.

This information enables you to go straight to the newspaper source, at the Surrey History Centre in Woking where back copies of the Surrey Advertiser can be viewed on microfilm, and print a copy of the relevant stories.



Although I haven’t yet scanned every article in the last two additions, I did search in 1866 records for family names and found the information below.



These stories are very entertaining to my family but what is also of great interest is reading a local newspaper written at the time that my ancestors were living. Although it is important to remember that, just as today, newspaper reporters of yesterday used their creative skills to create reader interest and also had their own views, beliefs and prejudices. However, I have no reason to doubt that the above is true, although the reporter definitely had a sense of humour. Both of these articles most certainly built a picture in my mind of an attractive young couple full of life and fun. I visualised Emily as trim, in a pretty, although not expensive, calico dress, with sparkling eyes and a mischievous grin – how wrong could I be! More a little later.

Another great newspaper resource is the British Library Online: www.uk.olivesoftware.com . By accessing newspaper archives of the same period, you can find local, national and world history during the time your forebears were living.

The British Library

THE BRITISH LIBRARY

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Besides hoping to find interesting news about your ancestors, you could also find information that will help you understand particular environments in which they were sometimes forced to live, such as I did with my grandmother. She was placed in a workhouse aged just 10 weeks until she was 16 years of age. The articles below helped my mother understand why my grandmother was the way she was.