Failure is the Key to Success

Using the data from marriage certificates that arrived yesterday, I have managed to push back another generation on three lines of my family tree. I have posted the information on my family tree blog.

Tags:marriage certificate

I had an email when I got back from holiday that hopefully will allow my brick wall to crumble.

I have written about it on my family tree blog – My Brick Wall is crumbling.

Tags:family tree,Henry Hedges

It’s been a long time coming and at the end of last week I finally got around to revamping my family tree website. It used to be static pages that I hand-coded and hadn’t been updated for months. I have now converted it to a WordPress blog (just like this one), which means I can add entries there when I’m researching one branch or other of the family tree.

In addition to re-launching this site, I had to add code on all my sites this morning when I found a Russian site that had basically taken and translated every post on my blog into Russian and was presenting it complete with all my (hotlinked) images and style sheet. I have now added code in my sites’ .htaccess file preventing hotlinking of images and my stylesheets from other sites. I checked David Airey’s blog post How to stop image hotlinking and bandwidth theft before adding the code.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?ianhedges.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?ijhedges.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?ijhedges.co.uk/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?cre8Buzz.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .(gif|jpg|png|css)$ - [F]

I’ve allowed cre8Buzz, as I hotlink my profile images from my gallery.

Tags:.htaccess file,family tree,preventing hotlinking

Lyall rang from New Zealand this morning to wish us Merry Christmas. While we were talking, he mentioned that there was someone on Genesreunited who had listed my greatgrandmother with the correct location and dates. I contacted them this morning and have had an email back and access to her tree. She is my second cousin on a branch of the family that everyone had lost contact with.

So at the moment I’m all of a twitter having just added several new members of the family.

All in all a great Christmas present.

Tags:family tree,genesreunited

My brother and his wife had their second son late yesterday, so now I have two nephews. Timing being everything, it was a different birthday present for her.

I was looking at the passenger lists on FindMyPast and found that they had put the next decade 1930-1939 online.

I first searched for my father and found both him (aged 1.5) and my grandmother on MV Apapa travelling 1st class to Lagos 28th April 1937

I also found my grandfather travelling every 2 years to Lagos, Nigeria.

• 13th August 1930 on MV Apapa age 33, proof reader residing at 24 Lewis Road, Sheatham SW16
• 6th April 1932 on MV Accra age 34, printer residing at 243 Giston Lane, Aston W4
• 4th April 1934 on MV Accra age 37, printer residing at Long Marston, Tring. He is travelling this time with Lillian age 26. This must be their honeymoon as they were married on the 1st April.
• 3rd June 1936 on MV Apapa age 17 (hmm that can’t be right), printer residing at Queen’s Head, Long Marston, Tring, Herts.
• 18th May 1938 on MV Apapa age 41, printer residing at Queen’s Head, Long Marston, Tring, Herts.

Unfortunately, only the outbound passenger lists are available, so I don’t have details of the return trips. This means I don’t know how long he was away at a time.

I haven’t been able to find an outbound trip to Sierra Leone where he died in 1939. I’m guessing he may have travelled back from Lagos, Nigeria to Freetown, Sierra Leone some time during 1939.