This year I resolved to be more rigorous about family data and to cite sources properly. That resolve was combined with the necessity of rounding up scans and downloaded images which were scattered among three computers and two photo management software applications (Aperture and iPhoto). Yes, I know that these applications can work together, but I decided to consolidate my image files (personal photos as well as genealogy images) and manage them in Aperture on my main home computer. 

The process is a lot like physical de-cluttering – first you pull everything into one place, then put like with like to find duplicates. And oh my, did I find duplicates! The hard part of this process is resisting the urge to focus on an item and start analyzing what it tells you. That will be my reward when the clutter is gone. For now, I think I have rounded up all the strays into Aperture.

Along the way, I am developing a system of tags and categories, so that the collection will be useful in various ways. For example, I can look at all UK census images at once, or all census images for a specific family, or all 1881 images. Rediscovering images I had forgotten about is very exciting!

A few months after her older boys were placed there in 1905, Charlotte asked Father Hudson’s to take little Freddy, now two and a half. Her sister, Jane Talbot, couldn’t care for him any more and Charlotte had secured a position in Surrey as housekeeper to a priest. She offered to send half of her wages for Freddy’s keep. Father Hudson’s refused at first, but eventually they agreed to take him.

On a cold December day in 1906, she boarded the train at Euston Station to deliver her little boy to the Birmingham orphanage. Her letters reflect her desperate resignation to having her four boys and one daughter many miles away from where she now had to earn a living. 

Soon after this, she needed somewhere for her oldest daughter, Lillian, as well. Once again, Charlotte declined the offer of a Protestant home, to ensure her daughter would be raised a Catholic. Lilly was placed in a convent home in Oxford, many miles away from her siblings, in early 1907.

Charlotte wasn’t doing well at this point. She was very depressed without Freddy and even took him back temporarily, but had to pay others to look after him so she could work. Her health declined so much that she feared she would lose her job.

Finally, by late December 1909, Charlotte was back in Birmingham with no job. Seriously ill, she was in the Aston Workhouse infirmary, where her husband had died just 4 years earlier. Young Freddy was put into yet another orphanage, not where his brothers were this time. With her family scattered and all of her resources exhausted, we can only imagine her desolation in the grim confines of the Aston Workhouse, among more than 1000 other inmates.

But Charlotte recovered. She got another position, this time as a cook. And within two years of her desperate illness, she began a new life, with a new husband, William Marshall. By 1914, most of her family was reunited in Birmingham. All six children survived to create their own stories. Charlotte herself lived to see some of her grandchildren.

I feel truly privileged to be descended from Charlotte and to tell you these parts of her story. I am grateful to Father Hudson’s and the Sisters of Mercy for their generous responses to my request for information about Charlotte and her family.

Within 2 months of her husband’s death, Charlotte was desperate, desperate enough to ask the local Catholic orphanage, Father Hudson’s, to take in her three oldest boys. Her parish priest wrote on her application: “Mother seems consumptive. Good deserving case. Protestants have offered to take children, but Mother refuses.” 

Her faith was important to her — she wanted them cared for by people who shared her religious beliefs. 

While she waited for Father Hudson’s decision, she was granted charitable relief of 5 shillings and 5 loaves a week. In those days, the poverty line (by some estimates) was a family income of 20 shillings a week.

Charlotte’s sister Jane Talbot was willing to take baby Freddy at first, and already had one of the two girls, but she lived in Surrey, more than 100 miles away. 

Father Hudson’s agreed to take the older boys but requested payment as soon as Charlotte found work. She applied for little Dorothy to be accepted there, too, but Dorothy was sent to a Sisters of Mercy orphanage nearby and rarely saw her brothers again until years later. 

Charlotte moved to Surrey to live with her sister while she looked for work, but managed to visit her boys from time to time. She wrote to Father Hudson’s after a visit: “I am very much grieved over little George having sores and ringworm on his head.” She begged for word that her son was getting better.

Father Hudson’s wrote back briefly to say the boys were doing well.

Charlotte’s story continues tomorrow.

Born in 1873, Charlotte grew up in a back-to-back house, which was a common type of cramped housing for working families built around a dismal shared courtyard containing an outhouse, a water pump and little else. This was Charlotte’s world as a young child.

By age 11, she was orphaned, living at a training school for servants run by the Sisters of Mercy. It was a home for Catholic girls who would otherwise be in the workhouse. 

By 1895, things started to look up for Charlotte, when she married Edward Gradwell, a handsome young brass worker. Children soon followed, first Lilly, then Will, Teddy, Dorothy, George, and the last, Freddy, my grandfather. 

Freddy was barely a year old when his father died of one of the most common diseases of the urban poor, tuberculosis. He died in the Aston Workhouse infirmary, aged 36, leaving Charlotte with 6 children under 10 and no means of support. It was 1905.

Charlotte’s story continues tomorrow.

Since then, I followed up webinars and other presentations, including one at RootsTech 2012, to make sure I had enough information to confirm that it was worth it, to figure out which test to choose, and to select a vendor. I was fortunate to have a conversation at a dinner just after RootsTech 2012 with a project leader for FamilyTreeDNA. He filled in some gaps for me about the importance of group projects for furthering connections and sharing understanding that is possible with DNA information.

Then I took the plunge, sending for my testing kit from FamilyTreeDNA. In a future post, I’ll discuss the tests I selected and more about group projects.

Two things in particular stand out from his presentation. One, that no matter how tempting it is to just dive into a set of records and browse where you think you might find a gem, it always pays to log your intended research in advance, with call numbers or film numbers, objectives, and other relevant information. This brings method into the activity and makes it much easier to fully document finds later. The second important thing for Josh (and for all of us taking even hobby genealogy seriously!) is the commitment to create accurate citations and attach them to the images of the material cited. He showed a very easy way to do this and said he is intending to go back and add proper citations even to material he researched years ago before he started using this method. Thanks for the inspiration, Josh!

This year I added days for research, too, and I have a better idea of how to plan for it. Or at least how I should be planning for it. I finally started a robust research log, after checking out lots of templates other researchers have kindly shared. I used several parts of Thomas MacEntee’s log template on Google Docs to build a Bento library for sources I have found and entered into my genealogy software. MacEntee’s template provides for the robust citation information we all wish we had done all along. It will take me a while to complete entries for all existing sources.

Then I set up an Omnioutliner file as a kind of ongoing notebook for ideas and potential sources to research. In it, I’m noting films and books I’ve already consulted, but with much less detail than in the source library. This will go with me on my iPad, so I can refer to it and update it as my research progresses. What does your take-along research log look like?