‘Getting Started’: a guide for use by volunteers with patients

(Extracts from a power point presentation used in talks for various patient-

and support- groups in our hospice.... Derek)

Other useful sites for photographs and information include:

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This site covers mining in the Northern part of England i.e. County

Durham (DUR), Northumberland (NBL), Cumberland(CUL), Westmorland (WES) and the Ironstone mines of North Yorkshire (NRY). For information on mining in other areas of the country there may be a site listed in the site’s Links section.

OnLine Parish Clerks for the County of

-- Lancashire --

Welcome to the Home Page for the OnLine Parish Clerks project for the County of Lancashire. This site aims to extract and preserve the records from the various parishes and to provide online access to that data, FREE of charge, along with other data of value to family and local historians conducting research in the County of Lancashire.

FURTHER INFORMATION

There are some excellent web sites that will provide information and history on Wigan, and the following are recommended: Wigan World Lots of links to history, copies of directories and old pictures

Wigan History Shop The best source for family history information in Wigan

Point to note: the majority of the patients do not have access to a computer at home and for this reason I made the decision to produce family trees as hard copies. This gives me the flexibility to add photos, maps, census data in suitable places between the lines of descent. In addition, fold-over leaves enable me to save space and to reduce the spread of the tree.

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Getting down to the ‘nitty-gritty’ by working through the development of Rebecca’s family tree.

Sometimes patients say they cannot remember much about their parents, grandparents or aunts and uncles and I talk through this sheet with them trying to jog their memories. On occasions I fill it in for them but most take it home with them and fill it in with the help of other family members. In the informal chats that ensue, you often can glean info. that you can utilise at a later date. It can be surprising what they can remember when their minds are focussed in this way and I always jot down these points to act as reminders. As an aside, it a pleasure to see patients become more animated and spurred on to interact with others in the group: ‘ Eeh, can you remember so and so?’

If I discover any dark secrets or skeletons in the closet as I do the research, I report these back privately to the patient, who more often than not shares them with the rest of the group. This can trigger a great deal of laughter; the more juicy and salacious the tale, the better they like it. ‘Eeh, wait until I tell our so and so, about it’

If a patient brings in family photos or certificates, I ask them if I can scan them into the pc and using the free google-picasa program, I enhance them as best I can and with the help of the patient I append them with dates and names etc. I print out copies according to the size of the available spaces on the chart as it develops.

Getting back to Rebecca’s tree:

Using the raw material on page 4, I transferred it to this chart

This enables you to update the descent chart

The next stage would perhaps be to look at look for the great-grandparents in the most recent census (1911 Census) using ‘Find my past’ or ‘Ancestry.co.uk’.

To illustrate this I have chosen to follow the ‘Nunney’ family ancestry

You can now begin to build up your chart for the Nunney family

Sections of the finished tree to give you an idea of how you can embellish it

The photographs and crests incorporated are one-off copies and are for private use. As there is no charge

for the finished family tree there is no commercial gain from the reproduction of images.

I include on the finished chart a time line to enable patients put events in their family history into context with select events in British history since Tudor times.

Our hospice covers a huge area of North Yorkshire with three day hospices as shown by my sketch above.

I volunteer in the Scarborough Day Hospice.

... and so finally to the end of this guide:

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