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

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.

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.

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.

I was able to find him in the 1881 census aged 8 with the rest of the family. I had trouble finding an 18 year old Charles in the 1891 census, but I did find a 20 year old Charles Moulden as a private in the 5th Lancers in barracks. I wonder if he inflated his age to sign up. The 5th Lancers did serve in India, so this looked to match what Lyall had told me.

A couple of days ago, I was searching the army death returns indexes on FindMyPast and found the following entry for Charles Moulden:

• Moulden, Charles, 21 Meerut 1892 p129

After a bit more searching it appears that the 5th Lancers were in Meerut, India in 1892, so it looks like this may be him. I’ll have to do some more research, but at least I have some facts that match what was thought.

The Findmypast site still only has the passenger lists up to 1929 at the moment, but once the 1930′s are up I will have to look for Lillian and my father as well as my grandfather.

The Outbound Passenger Lists at Findmypast showed 4 entries during the 1920′s of H Hedges travelling from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria.

I bought some vouchers and looked at the images and this is what I have found:

11th October 1922. Travelled on ship Elmina of the African Steam Ship Co. under master David Evans from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria. He travelled 1st Class. His address in the United Kingdom was 68 Walton Street, London. He was age 25 and his occupation was a Proof Reader.

18th June 1924. Travelled on ship Zaria of the British African S.N. Co. under master A. Beith from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria. He travelled 1st Class. His address in the United Kingdom was 68 Walton Street, London. He was age 27 and his occupation was a reader.

14th July 1926. Travelled on ship Zaria of the British African S.N. Co. under master A. Beith from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria. He travelled 1st Class. His address in the United Kingdom was 68 Walton Street, London. He was age 29 and his occupation was a reader.

8th August 1928. Travelled on ship Appam of the Elder Dempster Line under master A. Beith from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria. He travelled 1st Class. His address in the United Kingdom was 41 Rosavelle Road Fulham, London. He was age 31 and his occupation was a Proof Reader.

I know that Henry worked for Crown Agents and was Superintendant of Government Press 3 in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria in 1935, so this would seem to all tie in.

Each trip has an age for Henry and a date. By combining all the dates and ages that I have for him, I can narrow his date of birth down to between 12th October 1896 and 1st April 1897, so this matches my previous est 1897.

Checking the Births, Marriages, Deaths Indexes, there are 2 births of Henry Hedges registered in the Oct-Nov-Dec 1896, Jan-Feb-Mar 1897 and Apr-May-Jun 1897. One registered in St Saviour in Oct-Nov-Dec 1896 has a father John, the other registered in Jan-Feb-Mar in Marylebone 1897 has a father Henry. My grandfather’s father was also Henry, so I think it’s
starting to look very positive.

I have added a couple of new pages on my family tree website for Northern Provinces News and Crown Agents so that I can collect the information online in one place.

FindmyPast has updated their Outbound Passenger Lists to include up to 1929 and a quick search looks like I have found him making 4 trips from Liverpool to Lagos, Nigeria between 1922 and 1928. It time to buy some more credit and check the records.