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The SDFHS Blog

The Greenwood Tree – June 2020

Posted on 21st May 2020

Emigration to the New World proved to be the most popular theme for The Greenwood Tree in memory as members sent in a record number of contributions for the June edition Editor Paul Radford previews the special edition which has four extra pages and which will be mailed to members at the end of May and which SDFHS members can already view or download from the Members Area of the Society’s website Donna Heys with ancestral graves Quantity and quality do not always go hand... more

From Shaftesbury to Auckland New Zealand Part 1

Posted on 13th May 2020

Mrs Ngaire Greger has recently joined the Society from her home in New Zealand, and here she shares part one of a story about one of her Great Grandfathers Part two is to follow On 21 September 1863 the ship Annie Wilson arrived in Auckland, New Zealand On board were two young brothers One was John Bennett Brickell aged 16, and the other was Robert Bennett Brickell aged 15 They had come from Shaftesbury, Dorset, England My Grandmother said that Robert had been educated for the Bank... more

A Day Out at the Seaside

Posted on 1st May 2020

Following on from an earlier blog about unidentified photographs I can share the story of this lovely family group The photograph was taken in Boscombe on 17 September 1889 Some years ago I inherited a box of old family photographs that had belonged to my great-grandmother Alice Mary SCARD, she married (in 1894) George John PITFIELD, this photo was amongst them Needless to say none was identified - so frustrating! I tried for years to try to find out who the people in the photos were, I had... more

A Tale of Two Postcards

Posted on 15th April 2020

On 8 February I was helping the Society's Fairs Co-ordinator, Anne Warr, on the SDFHS stand at the Family History Show in Bristol and during a brief lull in visitors to our table, I went to check out a stall with postcards for sale I made a bee-line for the Cumbrian ones and bought half a dozen including this interesting postcard showing a tram in Carlisle The message on it and the stamp on the back show that it was posted in 1902 Coincidently that was the year that the... more

All change for our website

Posted on 3rd April 2020

We hope you like our new look website And did you know we have a new Website Manager We welcome Chris Hall Chris lives in Texas and he tells us: My day job is Chief Technology Officer of a small software company We build websites, web-based enterprise software, mobile apps, etc Many of the sites we build run on the WordPress platform As the Society site is built on WordPress, this will be very familiar to me I have authored many plug-ins as we tailor WordPress for specific client... more