Family Histories and Family Mysteries (Part One)

I can’t remember the exact thing that made me decide to go into the library one dinnertime and start on this quest to trace my ancestors.  It could have been just an impulse, although the idea had possibly been floating around in my subconscious for a while.  Whichever it was I struck lucky because the library that I walked into – Colne - had a very good family history section, a very helpful reference librarian and plenty of useful records. 
The reference section was up stairs and I remember going over to the librarian – Christine, and telling her I was interested in finding out about my grandad’s family.  I knew that he had been born in Colne in 1892, and I also knew what his parents were called.  She asked me for the details and laughed saying “I’m glad you didn’t say the family name was Hartley – that would have made them more difficult to find amongst all the Hartleys”   (I should say that Colne had connections with several famous Hartleys.  There was William P Hartley who started the jam-making business, and Wallace Hartley who was the bandmaster on RMS Titanic)
The library had the 1891 census for the local area indexed and each household was entered on a card and filed alphabetically in sets of drawers, so it was an easy task to locate my family and then find the corresponding microfiche and look at the census entry  - with the help of Christine.  She suggested some other information to check and I arranged to go back at another time when I would have plenty of time to look.  That is when I found a lot of the information I mentioned in my post Family Treasures.
The second thing that Christine mentioned was that the college ran a family history course each year.  It was held in the library, and it would be starting in only a couple of weeks.  So my second task was enrolling on that course.
After my first visit to the library I spoke to my uncle and that is when I was given the briefcase of books and papers.  I also asked my dad for details of his grandparents – & he suggested we went to find his grandfather’s grave.  We had scattered my grandad’s ashes there some years previously,  So there we were on a damp drizzly evening wandering round a small overgrown chapel burial ground looking for one particular grave.  My great grandfather had been buried with his parents – and their names and dates were on the small headstone.
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I also knew that grandad’s family had come from Great Harwood,  both of my grandmothers were from Yorkshire. Now I had plenty of clues to try to start piecing together and build up my family tree.
The first evening at the college course was spent explaining what we would be doing for the next few weeks – working through all the various records that were available and how to use them.  I should mention that very little was on the internet at that time and our searching was on the local census and parish records held in the library, plus visits to the local LDS church (Latter Day Saints – the Mormon church) where more records were temporarily being stored, and to Blackburn library where the St Catherine’s House index (the general register of births marriages and deaths) and parish records for the diocese of Blackburn were held. (I found that Burnley library had a good selection of parish records which I searched through several times)  Later in the course we did look at the records held on the internet – the 1881 census and IGI (International Genealogical Index) were on the LDS  site, and the 1901 census was also just released.  It was stressed that the best way to research was to check everything that you were told.  We were given blank tree templates and told to fill in as much as we knew -  then we were let loose on the records.
Since the records were mostly specific to Colne there wasn’t a lot that I could find out about my family on the census records that we were able to search – I had already found that grandad’s family had moved to Colne sometime in the 1880s.  However the microfiches of the IGI were better as that covered the whole of Lancashire and Yorkshire.  On that first evening  I found my paternal great grandfather’s christening recorded at Great Harwood and his parent's marriage in 1869.  I was amazed to find my great grandfather and several generations back all included on a family tree linked to this christening record,   surely it couldn't be this easy? 



To be continued………………