Sunday 24 February 2008

Fitzhenrys of Rock now on Ancestry

I've now put the Fitzhenrys of Rock family tree on ancestry. If anyone sees a link to any of their relatives, please let me know.

Saturday 23 February 2008

Cricketing FitzHenrys

I'm studying for the GL6 cricket umpiring exam and looked on the cricinfo.com archive for other cricketing Fitz-Henrys or Fitzhenrys.
I found Russel Charles Fitzhenry, who played one first class cricket match for Eastern Province, South Africa in the 1991-2 season.
I knew there was a Fitzhenry branch in South Africa, but how did they get there and where did they originally come from?
If you are a Fitzhenry or Fitz-Henry from South Africa (or even Russel Fitzhenry himself!) then please get in touch through this blog, and I'd be very pleased to put your family history here if you want to share it.

Sunday 10 February 2008

Family Records Centre, Angel, London

I was back at the FRC yesterday transcribing yet more Fitzhenry and Fitz-Henry births marriages and deaths from the indexes.
It's the first time I've been there since the old book indexes were filed away (? for ever) and now all that are available are the scanned indexes on fiche, or the transcribed indexes on computer (incomplete, so for completeness every index volume has to be checked). It's a much slower process to systematically go through each year now and feels somehow like the soul has gone out of the search. The scans are not of the best quality either, so the index numbers are sometimes almost illegible. The thrill pulling the original indexes from the 1830's from the shelves and seeing your ancestor's name hand scribed on vellum was one of the things that made the connection to the past seem so real at the time. A new generation of family history researchers won't have that experience now.
Only one improvement over the old system - the fiches don't dirty your clothes like the big old leather bound indexes did, but that's small compensation.