Our first story this quarter is about coming
up against dead ends in the history of a family. It is a situation which
will be familiar to everyone who ever does this kind of research and it
can be incredibly difficult to deal with on a personal level - it's not
simply that facts have been lost in time, the facts relate to you -
indeed, it is personal. My GG Grandmother is almost as elusive
today as she was when others first looked for her in 1955 - and several
of her descendents have been looking hard for her ever since with not
much success. Even now, I can only present a version of what I think
might have been her history and hope that one day, more evidence will
turn up - I shall continue to search!
If you haven't yet visited Leicester University's wonderful Directory
site at
www.historicaldirectories.org
then you surely will. It has Directory entries for
England and Wales from 1750 to 1919 which means you can follow family
members as they moved around the country. Be sure to follow Stentifords
etc in the Commercial entries - as my own Kelly's 1939 Directory shows,
even at that time, only a tiny handful of
Stentifords/Stuttafords/Stedifords etc owned their own house and so
qualified for a Private entry.
Finally, we hope you enjoy reading about the way
Doreen Norton chose to create links between the present and the
past in two villages she is closely connected with.
We shall be back in June with Issue 50.
