Nikki-ann

Long suffering regular visitors will have already experienced one blog move from me just a few months ago. I’m hoping not to make a habit of it, but once again this blog is on the move, this time to an entirely new domain.

You can now find me at Notes of Life.

This domain will still be here for a while and in time will probably point to the new domain, so don’t worry if you forget to note the new address!

Happy Easter!

My arms are aching!

After much debating (and checking my finances) I decided to treat myself to a Nintendo Wii. I got mine from Argos yesterday as they’ve currently got a promotion on - spend over £100 and get a £10 gift voucher (which I used to get £10 off the 2 games for £30 promotion!).

So far, I’ve just been playing on Wii Sports and it’s certainly energetic (if you’re not a sporty person). My favourites are the tennis and boxing, although I’m not so good at baseball (but then I was never any good at hitting the ball in rounders at school!).

Even Dad has had a go (he’s in his 70s!). He chose boxing. He kept getting closer to the TV and I was getting worried he’d punch the TV if he got much closer! He certainly got into it.

I may invest in a Wii Fit when my birthday comes around in June. We’ll see…

We have a couple of boxes of old family photos. We don’t know who some of the people are in the photos, but others provide small windows in to the lives of ancestors.

The photo on the right is one I scanned in on Sunday afternoon. It shows my Great Grandparents stood outside their home on the Shropshire/Cheshire border. It helps show how my Grandparents lived. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that the house has long gone so I can’t see what it looks like today. However, the cottage they moved into in their later years still stands and looks a lot like it did back in their day.

The photo needed a bit of a tidy-up. It was under-exposed and torn around the edges. So I cropped it down and use a couple of different adjustments (in Photoshop CS3) including Brightness/Contrast and Exposure.

Other items I scanned on Sunday included a couple of family wedding photos, my Great Great Grandmother Mary Jane’s obituary and a wedding notice for a Great Great Aunt.

I really need to set aside more time to sit and scan more photos. Something which might help with this is the Spring Break Scan-a-Thon (29th March - 6th April) and the next Scanfest on 30th March (as mentioned by Miriam at Ancestories). I think I should mark those dates in my diary and maybe I’ll get through some of those photos.

Following on from my research on Henry Purslow and his family, I now can confirm that he and Jane did have a daughter called Elizabeth. She was born in 1841 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. This still leaves a 10 year gap between Elizabeth and Henry junior… Something to work on.

On another side of my family… Yesterday I received the death certificate of my Great Great Great Grandfather John Middleton. In 1899 he accidently fell from his cart while driving and subsiquently died. Sadly, the death certificate doesn’t give any details as to any injuries sustained in the fall or the exact cause of death. I guess only the coroner’s report at the inquest can give me those details and that’s only if it still exists. A trip to the Shropshire Archives may be in order!

I’m still alive and kicking, but no results from the hospital yet. Not that I expect to hear anything for another couple of weeks yet and I full expect the results to come back negative… They always do with me! It’s good in a way, but also anoying because it means there’s still no proper answer. We shall see.

On Friday I experienced a totally different camera to those that I use in my daily life. This camera was long & thin and……. (excuse me while I pause to gag!)… slid down my throat and all the way down to my duodenum. Yes, I had an endoscopy. I’ve still got a bit of a dry throat and I’m still tired. I don’t know if the tiredness has anything to do with the sedation, because I’m sure I wasn’t this tired when I was previously sedated.

I gag at the meer thought of having a camera down my throat, so I asked the nurse if being totally knocked out would be a possibility. No, sedation would be enough, apparently. After signing a form or two and being asked if I was nervous (who wouldn’t be?!), I was led to a waiting area where I quietly began to panic. I just knew I would gag, why wouldn’t they knock me out?!

Another nurse came to take me to the treatment room (or whatever they call it). I climbed onto the trolley and they hooked me up with some oxygen and the clip on my finger to check my pulse. They then put the sedation line in, at which point I remember telling them not to hold back on that stuff (I hope I didn’t come across as a druggy - I was just panicking that I was going to gag). Next up was the “banana spray” (it tastes like banana cordial that hasn’t been diluted) which numbed my throat (quite an odd sensation!).

Then came the mouth-guard… They’d hardly put it in and I was gagging! I don’t know whether the sedation was starting to kick in or what, but they managed to get the mouth-guard in and then start with the camera. My memory is a little hazy from then on in. I do remember the Doctor saying where the camera had reached at certain points, but I don’t remember swallowing it or it coming out (thankfully!).

The next thing I knew I was being wheeled into the recovery room, still hooked up to oxygen, the pulse monitor and a blood pressure monitor. Sometime later I was discharged into my Dad’s care where I gulped down water and went in search of food!

All in all, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Still, it’s not something I’ll be having again in a hurry.

This evening I’m trying to date a family photography. Sadly, the photo isn’t in great condition; it’s overexposed and scratched. It’s also warped slightly, so I had to take a photo of it rather than use the scanner. The photo is sepia and is mounted onto thick card. I turned it into greyscale and fiddled about with a few settings to try and get a bit more detail.

Is this a wedding photo? The male members of the family are wearing flowers. Alfred & Mary (the couple sat down) were married on October 1897, so that is certainly the earliest date for the photo. I’m confident that the people standing behind Alfred & Mary are Alfred’s children (Mary was Alfred’s second wife).

Alfred’s children from his first marriage were Margaret (born 1871), Mary (1873), Thomas (1875), Henry (1877), Martha (1882), Francis (1884), Maud (1886), May (1889) and Mabel (1893).

At the time of their marriage Mary had one daugher, Sarah (born 1895).

Once married, Alfred & Mary had 2 more children, John (born 1898) and Muriel (1903).

I am sure the 2 men stood are Henry and Thomas. I don’t think Francis was in the photo as he ended his short life in an asylum. If the photo is Alfred & Mary’s wedding photo then one of the infants would almost certainly have been Mary’s daughter Sarah. Dad thinks the 3rd woman on the left is Alfred’s daughter Mary.

I believe the photo was taken in Alfred & Mary’s garden as we have a couple of other photos situated in the same place.

The rain finally held off today, so I took the opportunity to go for a drive and take some photos. I ended up at Borth & Ynyslas (about an hour away from home).

It was cold and windy, but that didn’t stop some people enjoying the beach. One family braved putting their feet in the old Irish Sea water, while others were flying kites (perfect weather for it!).

(Click to enlarge)

Look who I bumped into today! OK, maybe not bumped in to… more like queued for over 2 hours on a cold & windy high street in Birmingham. I looked extremely windswept and the lovely John Barrowman looked perfect!

JB was only supposed to be signing books for an hour, but I’m guessing he stayed a bit longer (depending on his schedule) as the queue stretched right down the High Street.

I took this photo (click to enlarge) while I was in the queue. A couple of police officers had come in and he asked if he was in trouble. It turns out the male police officer just wanted to take JB’s photo!

When it was my turn I had my photo taken with JB (which turned out awful - I was windswept and the Waterstone’s staff member who took the photo had obviously never used a digital camera before), my book personally signed and a smile, then I was off. Happy as Larry.

JB’s autobiography Anything Goes has jumped the queue and is now next on my pile of books to read. I’m currently half-way through Gary Barlow’s autobiography My Take (the updated paperback version), which is very interesting so far. I’ve also got Richard Hammond’s account of his life before & after his terrifying high-speed car crash while filming for Top Gear - On The Edge - waiting to be read, as well as one or two other books.

After doing a little more research in the England and Wales census records last night I think I discovered a 3rd child for Henry Purslow.

I still can’t find anything in the 1851 census records, however later census records brought some light to the situation. In 1871 Henry’s widow Jane and son Henry are noted as living with John & Elizabeth Pryce, although “Purslow” has been wrongly transcribed as “Purdon”. Jane Purslow is listed as Mother-in-Law to John Pryce, so that would make Elizabeth her daughter.

I then used Free BMD to find an Elizabeth Purslow born c1842 in Shrewsbury. Bingo! There was a birth registered in 1841, so I have ordered the birth certificate to confirm (or not) if Henry & Jane Purslow were indeed her parents (assuming I have the right certificate). So now it’s just a matter or waiting.

This still leaves a 10 year age gap between Elizabeth (born 1841 - assuming she is Henry & Jane’s daughter) and Henry (junior - born 1851), so maybe there were other children too.

Henry Purslow is my Great Great Great Grandfather. I don’t know much about Henry (and even less about his wife, my Great Great Great Grandmother), but below is what I do know.

Henry was born circa 1801 in Shropshire, England (most likely in the town of Shrewsbury).

The earliest record I have of Henry is in the Shropshire County Quarter Sessions. On 13th day of August 1835 Henry appeared before the Justices of the Peace for the county and gave a statement. One Timothy Jones and another youth had stolen a quantity of iron and tried to sell it to Gittins & Cartwright Foundry (Henry’s place of work). As well as a copy of the statement, I have a copy of a document which states that Henry must appear at the next sessions in the county to give evidence against Timothy Jones, if he doesn’t he will owe £30 (a great deal of money in those days!). The evidence resulted in Timothy Jones being sentenced to 12 months imprisonment and hard labour for his crime. (Thanks to Shropshire Archives for the copies of those documents).

Ten months later, on 20th June 1836 Henry married Jane Younger (or “Young”) at St. Julian’s in Shrewsbury. Their daughter Sarah (my Great Great Grandmother) was born on 21st April 1837 and baptised at Saint Alkmund, Shrewsbury on 14th May of that year.

We next see Henry and his family in the 1841 England Census living in Castle Foregate, Shrewsbury. He was working as a moulder.

I have been unable to find Henry and the family in either the 1851 England census or the Wales census, but they may have moved to Montgomeryshire, Wales (which borders with Shropshire, England) by then. Later that year, a son is born to Henry & Jane in Puzzle Square, Welshpool and is named after his father.

Henry Purslow died on 20th March 1857 at Puzzle Square, Welshpool aged 56 years of asthma (not certified). He was an ironmoulder (journeyman) at the time.

Henry’s daughter Sarah married Thomas Williams in May 1861 and died in December 1871.

His wife Jane and son Henry can be found in the 1881 Wales census living together in Welshpool. Henry (junior) is listed as working as a nailor. I believe Jane died in 1885, but I’m awaiting the death certificate.

Ah well… A family historian’s work is never done!