I took Joe to the archives in Lincoln to climb a few branches higher up his family tree. It is all so very different from the old days at the castle when we had the huge pleasure of handling the original documents - the readers are very isolating compared with the way two people could look at the same parish register and decipher the handwriting together. Joe, with his dyslexia, found the microfisch virtually impossible to read so went off to look at Kelly's directories etc. At one point he was getting very frustrated and stroppy, but lunch at Stokes sorted that out (Just like his mother - ratty when hungry!)
However we have gone back another generation in three lines and filled in a gap. We are still short of a maiden name as East Halton has not deposited its post 1837 Marriages Register and the Bishop's Transcripts are muddled and incomplete. We'll try the Rector or Churchwardens someday soon. Still, not at all a bad day.
Mind you, I suddenly felt like something up the family tree instead of my usually youthful self when I noticed the appointment of a headmaster to a local school; he was middle-aged, grey-haired, and I used to teach him when he was a little boy!
