Anniversary

[Richard]

Some from last year:

https://www.smarterhobby.com/genealogy/ ... -software/

[cbe]

I have Family Tree Maker

[Richard]

If I share a common ancestor with someone in my family tree who is four generations distant, i.e. father, grandfather, great grandfather, great great grand father, then I am a third cousin.
What I am unsure about is the once, twice, third removed bit.
Can anyone explain this in simple terms please?

[whiffler]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin

Has a useful table to get you started.

[Richard]

Thanks whiffler,

That makes it quite easy to understand.

Richard

[ColinL]

This is useful. Find your direct line ancestor on one side and the other persons direct line on the other and the where they meet on the grid is the description of the person

http://www.genealogyintime.com/articles ... page1.html

[Richard]

Thanks ColinL,

I don't find the chart as easy to understand though.

At last I have a photo of my great, great, grandfather Hezekiah's gravestone.
He died in 1874, which I suspect was just before family portraits became commercially available.

What is the earliest photo anyone has of family members?

[ColinL]

Chart. An example. I discovered that my gran had a brother whom I was never told about. He had children and the daughter Margaret, was researching the family at the same time. What is the relationship between me and the children of my great uncle? It is necessary to find the closest direct line ancestor (ie not going via aunts, cousins etc). Using the top line I go back to my great grandfather.

Using the side column I need to find the closest direct line linking us and that brings us to her grandfather. Going down from me to her we see we are first cousins, once removed. At least that is how I work it. As this is a simple example, Margaret was my dad's cousin. I am once removed from that direct relationship. That seems to work

[ColinL]

Photos.
The earliest photo I have was taken in 1902- 03 and was the Barnardo's admission record of two brothers of my gran. The next was taken around 1910 . It is interesting because it shows 5 generations of my male line and thus spans just under a century. Readers of the Sussex Family historian regularly send in photos taken around 30-40 years earlier.

[Richard]

A formal family photograph session, in Victorian times was a serious affair and why would it be otherwise?
Also the long exposure times needed, in the early days of photography, resulted in most 'sitters' appearing to be quite serious and unsmiling.
Or perhaps Victorian and Edwardian culture looked down on smiling and also smiling in front of a camera was not originally an instinctive response.
I don't believe that many family photographs would appear before the 1870's, also it would have been expensive and so only relatively wealthy families could afford such 'luxuries'.

On the other hand records of documentary admission evidence of charitable institutions, such as 'Barnado's, are interesting as Dr Thomas Barnardo, founded the charity in 1866, he pioneered a scheme to move neglected children to new countryside homes.
The earliest photographic evidence seems to have started in 1872.
In his first experiment with the "boarding out" initiative in 1887, Dr Barnardo sent 320 boys, mainly from the slums of London's East End, to live with rural villagers across the south and east of England.
Many of the children had experienced abuse and neglect, with archive medical records showing that rickets, ringworm and dental problems were widespread.
Records suggest that the fostered children showed marked improvement in health away from the pollution, poverty and overcrowding of the slums. Many went to school and and then moved on to find jobs. Within two years, the number of children in foster care had more than doubled - and by Dr Barnardo's death in 1905, some 4,000 children were in foster care. The charity's archives in east London contain thousands of photos of the children.