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Ted Udall

Dorset’s Poldark?

Posted on 11th December 2020

The Captain Poldark of Winston Graham’s novels and the television series is well-known to many He was not though the only such military officer to have exciting adventures at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and afterwards Dorset too had such a hero Naval General Service Medal 1847 Photo courtesy of Hugh Pitfield - see below Joseph Edward Chilcott PITFIELD was baptised in 1788 in Buckland Ripers, the eldest son son of Joseph Pitfield and Mary SLADE,... more

From Slavery to the Workhouse

Posted on 2nd May 2017

I am sure many of us have discovered that one or more of our early family members went into the workhouse Sitting at our computers in our centrally heated homes we have tried to imagine what it might have been like with, perhaps, images coming to mind of Oliver Twist asking for more, or the heavily pregnant Fanny Robin, in Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, painfully making her way to the workhouse to meet her fate We are likely to have gleaned that this was to be avoided at all... more

Family History Day & AGM

Posted on 21st September 2014

Each year the SDFHS Family History Day, which includes our AGM, is organised by one of our ten local groups and this year it was the turn of the South Dorset Group who hosted the event at St Aldhelm's Church Centre in Weymouth The venue was excellent, very easy to find and with good facilities, and all the hard work done by the Group in preparation paid off, resulting in a very well-organised and interesting day In addition to the talks, there were several stalls (including our own SDFHS... more

Skills Workshop on Documents

Posted on 20th January 2014

Dorothy Bower describes Ted Udall's 'Skills Workshop on Documents' On Saturday last (18 January), along with 14 other members, I attended the Skills Workshop, on reading old documents, held at the SDFHS Family History Centre in Sherborne Ted Udall, the SDFHS Secretary and an experienced family historian, initially took us through the various types of documents and the working of the scribes, the tools used, the formation of the characters and the formats for transcribing and translating ... more

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