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It's Coming!

As family historians Sunday 21 March is probably a date we all have circled on our calendars.  This is because we know how important it is to provide information in order to be counted for the Office of National Statistics (ONS).  Maybe secretly we are hoping that the information we provide today will be as useful for our descendants as previous census material has been for us.

Taxing Times

Now just a rapidly fading memory, the car tax disk made its first appearance on 1 January 1921. For nearly 100 years replacing the tax disk was one of the annual motoring rituals.

Imagine a highly virulent virus, of unknown origin, which was killing thousands of people young and old.  And, the only way to stop it sweeping though communities and save inhabitants was to develop a vaccine and inoculate the population.  The government would no doubt need to establish a vaccination policy and in fact make it compulsory.

"You're saying it's a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that" (Kellyanne Conway, 22 Jan 2017). But it isn't just presidential inaugurations which give rise to "Alternative Facts", we may find our own family research produces more than one picture of the story.

If you know anything about the Second World War on the home front, you will know about the blackout. You have probably heard the catchphrase "Put that light out!", but what if you didn't?

What became of those ancestors who just disappear from the records? Perhaps they died in a foreign field. Thousands died in the Crimea campaign of 1854-56 the considerable majority from illness rather than action. Could your lost ancestor be one of them?

What links a thought experiment created to illustrate a concept in quantum physics and the 1939 index? You have possibly heard of Schrodinger's Cat, but what about Schrodinger's Mother-in-Law?

I have watched the development of the website over many months and marvelled at the vast collection of archival material which we have assembled for the use of the family historians who will visit it. The commitment and ingenuity of many volunteers have combined to deliver a resource which I hope will become essential to thousands of researchers tracing Ancestors hailing from Manchester and further afield.