Great News!

This week I've been contacted, through this site (!) by someone whose great grandmother was sister to my great grandma!!  
This was Eliza Morey (1857 - 1934), who married my paternal great grandfather.  From what I've heard of her, she was a really nice person, my grandmother used to look forward to her visits.

It's very exciting to be able to add to the family tree so this info has been put onto my genes reunited page.

Findings

Today found some interesting stuff - my mother's 

Nursing qualification from 1946:

General Nursing Council Registration for Dorothy May Askham, 1946

2012

One of my resolutions for this year is to get the family history papers into some sort of order.  
This has been an aim for several years - each year some more gets sorted - but as many people will know . . . . the more family history is sorted . . .  the more questions arise, so it's a permanent hobby.


March: HELP I've lost all my files off the computer - MORAL have hard drive back ups - AND keep them updated.


July:  Have spent the past few months getting the house clean and tidy and finishing off odd jobs in order to put it on the market.  Then, having sold really quickly, we have been weeks and weeks sorting and packing - and it still isn't finished!  We've given away stuff, took lots of stuff to charity shops, sold some things and still we have sooo much stuff!  


Suffice to say that I haven't had much time for family history but luckily one relative has.  He found my grandmother's mother, someone who I'd given up hope of finding.  She was one of the reasons why I started the family research in the beginning. So I'm really thrilled.  He also found what happened to that part of the family after they emigrated to Australia some time between 1920 and 1924.  Now I'm going to try and find out where he got the info, and how I can fill in any gaps.  The sad thing is that my grandmother's half brother doesn't seem to have married and had any children. I'd love to have found them and to have perhaps got into contact .....

Highway Inn, Dobwalls, 1963

I've just found these articles from the local papers re gaining a licence for The Highway Inn Dobwalls, from about 1962/63:

Rotary Club of Saltash

Jack Smale was a member of the Rotary Clubs, I think it was in Callington and Saltash. Including being President:

He also enjoyed being Secretary and held that post for many years.
His one disappointment was that when we all moved up to Derby they would not accept him due to his age.

Callington Probus Club

Jack Smale was the first President of Callington Probus Club when it was formed in the early 1980s.  He was subsequently made Life President:

Old Family Photos

Lots of old family photos are stuck in boxes in the loft or storeroom and no-one ever looks at them. Many are  tiny, grainy and faded.

With Picasa (which can be downloaded, free from the internet) I've been able to bring many of these old photos to life and in the process been able to pass them on to other family members.  
There are several ways of improving photographs.

One way is to use the cropping facility to look at the part of the picture which you're interested in, whilst still keeping the original photo on the computer.

Here's a good example - a photo of my grandmother (Bunty) staying at a friend's caravan back in the 1960s.  It's such a long time ago that no-one knows who the friend is so, apart from the retro caravan, the important part of the photo is  Bunty herself.

So it's been cropped and now we see Bunty and in greater detail:

When I become more adept  I'll learn how to delete the friend's shirt and tie - but that's for another day!

Another advantage is shown by next photo (taken about 1929) which was so faded that no-one could see what it was.  The photo was imported into Picasa and then I pressed the button 'I'm feeling lucky' and lo and behold my mother's parents appeared in their motorbike and sidecar:

Before (above) and after (below) 

Not as clear as today's photos but what an improvement!


Another very useful feature of Picasa is being able to straighten pictures. Take this photo from our living room window:

A great pic but the sea somehow doesn't look right. After applying straighten, the photo is a great improvement:

and it's less likely to make me feel seasick. As you can see, when a picture is 'straightened' it does lose part of the sides, so this can't be done with every picture.


Web Albums - coming ...