Ball Bounty

Although Mr GeniAus (my husband Robert) is not particularly fond of research he loves making connections with distant cousins and sharing stories and photographs with them. He will and has travelled to the ends of the earth to meet up with them. We have travelled to Rochdale Lancs., the town of his Ball line on several occasions and visited local archives, churches, cemeteries and homes of the Balls. The British Newspaper Archive has recently enabled us to add to the Ball story.

In the early 1800s the Balls lived at Wolstenholme Fold near Rochdale

Way back, when DNA was the new research tool on the block Mr GeniAus took a Y-DNA test which hasn't really helped us make any connections. Then in 2015 we added an autosomal test from FTDNA followed by an Ancestry test. Through these we have identified several matches and connected with a few on his Ball line but to date haven't added to our knowledge of the family until this week. 

I recently received an Ancestry  message from Alli in the UK relating to three kits that I manage so I promptly messaged her back to confirm that the relationship she asked about was indeed correct. Alli who is Mr GeniAus' third cousin was as excited as Robert and I were to make this connection. It was easy to work out the connection because both Alli and Robert have trees attached to their DNA accounts.

Ancestry message from Alli

 

Alli kindly responded with a copy of a document recording notes on family members written by her grandmother whose grandparents James Ball and Betty Clegg are also Robert's 2xGreatGrandparents. 

James Ball and Betty Clegg's grave in Rochdale Cemetery 

The information in the document filled in many gaps for us and provided some clues for further research. The icing on the cake was being sent a copy of a photo of James Ball held by Alli's branch of the family. It was the first image we have ever seen of Robert's ancestor. 

I wrote to Alli "We have just sat and read through your grandmother's account. Even though I am not related to the Balls it brought tears to my eyes as I read James' story, having researched them for eons I am quite fond of them.

This is the best and most valuable geneasurprise I have had in years, thank you for taking a DNA test."

As we are visiting the UK in June 2022 we are making arrangements to meet up with Alli and her family. Alli has also agreed to upload her results to Gedmatch so I can examine her chromosome matches with Robert, James and Norma.

It's been an exciting geneaweek for two distant Ball families. Isn't DNA just grand!

A Day at the Microfilm Reader

I was delighted earlier this year when I  found an online index listing the daily contents of the Haddingtonshire Courier (now the East Lothian Courier) from October 1859 up to December 1902. The newspaper collection on microfilm  is housed in the Local History area of the John Gray Centre in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland.

Now it just so happens that Mr GeniAus has Gowans and Sibbald ancestors who were in the Haddington area during that period so I checked the index and found more than 30 reference to family members. I saved these on a spreadsheet. As we were planning a trip to the UK I added Haddington to our itinerary. Once I had a date I emailed the John Gray Centre and booked a microfilm reader for the day.

I was most impressed when Mr GeniAus dropped me off at the Centre and went to find a parking spot. When we visited a number of years ago the local studies collection was stored in an inadequate area in a loft. The new  John Gray Centre houses the local library and archives in a lovely light filled environment.

When I marched up to the reception I was given a right, royal welcome. Bill Wilson, Local History Officer,  and his staff settled me at a microfilm reader and organised  retrieval of the films I needed. Robert joined me and we bunkered down for a morning of research.

GeniAus at work

Local studies collection

 While I played with the microfilms and downloaded the newspaper articles onto a thumb drive  Mr GeniAus browsed the book collection looking for references to his ancestors.  Bill offered us a behind the scenes tour of the archives but I declined as I wanted to complete my task. Mr GeniAus accepted Bill's offer and found the tour very interesting.

Behind the scenes in the John Gray Centre 

An innovative display highlighting local identities

 When I announced on Facebook that I was headed to Edinburgh and Haddington my fellow geneablogger, John Laws, who lives in the neighbourhood suggested we meet up. Knowing that we would need a lunch break we made a date to meet John at a local cafe, The Loft. 

It was lovely to meet John in the flesh, through blogging and genealogy we had been online friends for several years.  John is kept busy with a surname study for the Laws (and variants) name. He blogs about it here at The Laws Family Register.

Meeting up with genimate, John Laws

 After our break we returned to the John Gray Centre so I could complete my task. My head was swimming after spending several hours at the microfilm reader so I was pleased to set off towards our next stop at Galashiels.

I was not so pleased when, that evening, I discovered that I had left my thumb drive containing all my saved images in the microfilm reader. Mr GeniAus displayed great restraint the next morning when we had to trace our steps to  collect my thumb drive.

I cannot thank enough Bill Wilson and the staff at John Gray Centre  who made us so welcome. I owe a debt of gratitude to the team of volunteers who have created such a valuable resource in the newspaper index.

Great-Granny in the Minutes

Liverpool Regional Museum Research Facility

Last week Mr GeniAus and I travelled out to Liverpool in search of information on his Great-Grandmother, Emily Ball (nee Royds). We had found many articles about her activities in Trove and expected that we might find some maps, photographs or mentions in the collections at The Liverpool Regional Museum or at Liverpool 's Heritage Library.

The people who assisted us were very helpful and showed a lot of interest but we found very little to add to our knowledge of Emily. While at The Museum we did discover from an index to the Rates Books that Emily owned several properties in the area but we were not able to access the Rates Books to seek further information. Apparently they are suffering from "Red Rot".

While there we also had a chat with Jennifer from The Liverpool Genealogy Society which shares the building with the Museum. I was impressed by their tidy, well organised and wekk resourced premises.

Mr GeniAus with Rate Book Index 

Our next stop was the library, a huge building in Liverpool's main street. I had visited the library when it first opened in the late 90s and remember saying that it reminded me of an RSL club on steroids, the gaudy decor has faded over the years but is still gross.

The staff we encountered were helpful but they had not been able to find any relevant photographs for us and, as the maps that might have been useful are uncatalogued and in map drawers somewhere, we were not able to access them. As we were preparing to leave a staff member who had been on the periphery of our conversation asked did we know that the old Council Meeting Minute Books had been digitised, were online and were searchable. She showed us how to access them and did a preliminary search for Ball.

When we hit home Mr GeniAus fired up his laptop and went through the minute books. He hit gold. Searches of each of the files showed that Emily, who lived in the area for over 30 years, had many dealings with Liverpool Council, each of these instances added a little more detail to her story.

The lesson here is to ask if the Minute Books from your ancestors' Local Government areas have been digitised. You never know what you might find.

The Tables have Turned

I can confirm that with constant exposure to a family historian and family history research one can catch the Geneabug. 

After traipsing around various ancestral towns and cemeteries and spending quite a deal of time as my Geneassistant over the past fifteen years or so Mr GeniAus has caught the bug. He's got it bad. When we were on our recent cruise and he had some time on our hands he decided that he would use my research to write up his family history.

I gave him a narrative report from my Family Historian software, put a swag of documents on a Hard Drive for him and with access to our family website  he was off and running. Since Christmas I have spent quite a deal of time helping him flesh out his document with images and further information. His document is now up to 71 pages and that's all my fault because I keep making suggestions on extra things to add.

I have to admit that I am not the most patient of people. In a former life Mr GeniAus was CEO of a large organisation and had a large team of people at this beck and call. Sadly this is not the case in retirement and I am spread rather thin answering questions and providing details.

There are some positives. This has forced me to look back at some research that was done many moons ago. It has sent me scurrying to find copies of documents and references and to correct errors Mr GeniAus has found, I have updated the gedcom on our family site each day this week.  Mr GeniAus appreciates my efforts over many years and he has become enthusiastic about his family history. I will be able to use some of his stories as posts for this blog. These are some pretty good outcomes.

One can teach an old dog new tricks.