Catherine Hunt

Today I received Catherine Hunt's death certificate, and although every death is sad and leaves a sense of loss, hers has touched me deeply.

She was only 40, which even for back then, was not "old". The cause of death was a that she collapsed from an ante-partum haemorrhage. Childbirth is then on a separate line below BUT as yet I have no birth certificate for a child born that day so am led to believe that the baby died with her.

I am attempting to find out if she was buried in the East London Cemetery favoured by our Canning Town/Plaistow ancestors, and if so, whether a baby was interred with her.

She had given birth to 11 children between 1883 through 1899, with what looks like twin girls in 1892 but I have more looking into to see if that is so, or if Tilly and Lilly may be the same person and simply a transcript has been mis-written at some point.

Digging some more on Charles and Kate Hunt

Today, I spent some time digging some more and have sent for the death certificate of Catherine Hunt, my great-great-grandmother and have finally found that she died at only 40. It will be interesting to find out what caused her death at quite a young age, and see if there is yet another connection in our family's bad cardio-vascular genes.

As for Charles, my great-great-grandfather, I believe I have found his birth certificate, so am getting a copy of it, to see if it is the correct Charles Hunt and if it ties in with everything else I have on him.

I really wish that we could travel back in time, I'd love to do so and just be an observer around my forebears as they went about their lives.

My Ancestry is back!

I am a fairly happy camper. Hubby got a 50% offer, so I jumped on it and am back on ancestry for another 6 months. YAY! Unfortunately, there seem to be some glitches in their system right now, the "hints" I am sent by email end up on pages that say the content is no longer available, when I click through, and some of my trees have info muddled ... like siblings of a person put down a level (on the tree) to appear like their children. It did this once before a year or so ago, it's annoying and time consuming putting everything back to rights.

I am thinking of getting a paper lineage wall chart and putting in my direct lines that I have so far, in order to try to keep my info easily accessible.

I do wish that I were back in England and able to explore a couple of places that feature heavily in my ancestors lives. Sadly, Canning Town/Plaistow area was devastated during the war by the Blitz and rebuilt in the decades since, so bears very little resemblance to the place my Poyser and Hunt family members lived and worked in.

Blore in Staffordshire appears relatively unspoiled, still somewhat in the "boonies" and it would be nice to explore the churches numerous ancestral family members were baptized, married and buried at, and try to locate the places they lived at.

Likewise, the Hadhams, in Essex, where other branches of the Halestrap family still live. Some of my ancestors are buried in the churchyard there, and their history is well known. It would be lovely to meet some distant distant cousins and find out more.

I'm hoping 2019 will give me more discoveries and fill in some gaps. My elusive John Lewis, for instance. I would love to find a direct male descendant who could have a DNA test done and gain me even more info.

I keep plodding on