Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 October 2011
Monday October 31st, 2011 | Geoff
If you are reading this you will already know that October saw the introduction of our new Geoffs Genealogy website. I think it is a great step forward from the old site, which served us well for quite a few years. Not only is the design more attractive, but the tree is much more user-friendly and the search facility is a great aid to enable visitors to find what they are looking for on the site. The other big plus, from my point of view, is the fact that this site has a content management system, which should make it much easier for me to add to the content, or change the content that is already there.
Now all I need to do is to find some time to learn how to use the content management system, and to add to the site content. I’m well aware that a section on our reunion last June is well overdue. and I also have some other ideas for additional content. I hope to be able to do something about these things soon.
October has been a month for sorting out the garden jobs, and so little time for treeing! I’ve also been busy preparing the next edition of the Shropshire Family History Society Journal, which is due out in December. That’s almost completed now.
Also during October Helen and I sent out all the copies of the Bankes Pedigree trees that were requested by attendees at the Bankes Reunion in June. Hopefully we have not missed anybody, but if you asked us for a pdf file of your section of the pedigree and you have not yet received it please let me know because either we have missed you, or it has gone astray in cyberspace. In either case, we shall do our best to correct the situation.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time recently scanning our collection of family photos, so as to save them as digital images. This has been a very big job. We had a lot of slides – photos which were taken in the late 1960s to 1980s, and which feature quite a number of family members who are no longer alive – my mother, aunts, uncles, grandmothers etc. I see it as important to preserve these pictures for myself and my siblings, and also for posterity, so I have gone through several hundred of these slides, selecting those that look interesting enough and of good enough quality to keep, and scanning them. That is the stage I’ve reached at the moment. I now need to further review these images, and make a final selection from them. Then I want to add titles, save them on dvd, and distribute copies among my relatives.
I don’t know how long it will take me to complete the job, but am sure the effort will prove worthwhile.
Although I’ve not done any new research during October, there have been one new development on the treeing front.
A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a lady who is the wife of a Reynell descendant. In case you are scratching your head, wondering where you have seen that name, I should tell you that I’ve mentioned Harold Reynell before in this blog, in the entry dated 30th August. Thanks to Mary I am now in possession of a lot more information about this most interesting family, the members of which were resident in the late nineteenth century in Kobe, Japan. In fact, I now know that Eugenie Bankes Davies (1856 – 1907) moved to Kobe shortly after her marriage to Harold Essex Reynell (1851-1927) in 1881, and lived there for the rest of her life, albeit making a large number of return trips to her native Carmarthenshire. She died in Kobe, and was buried there.
Although the family was living in Japan, they do still feature on occasions in the British censuses. Thus, in 1911 Arthur Wilfred Reynell (b 1897) shows up as a pupil at Marlborough College, and in 1891 two of Eugenie’s other children – Eric and Harold Reynell) were enumerated as young boys in the household of their maternal grandmother, Mary Ann Davies (nee Rees) (1819 – 1897). Evidence that members of the Reynell family were frequent travellers can be seen on the internet, in the form of various passenger lists relating to journies to UK ports.
The arrival of all this information was completely unexpected, proving yet again that in family history you never know where the next piece of information will come from!
Geoff, I have been contacted by Mary after the gathering of the Bankes descendants. She has asked to pass my details on to you, but I thought I would contact you myself via your website. I am the grandson of Amy Bankes Sleigh, but my story is quite complicated as I was illegitimate and adopted at 7 months old.
If you would like to meet up at any time please contact me, I live relatively near to London in Milton Keynes. I have carried out quite a considerable amount of research on both sides of my family line.
Hello
I am interested in the Reynell Family as Eugenie Marion Reynell m Reginald Gregory Charman Haines, my relation through my grandmother Dorothy Lilian Haines. I believe they were married in 1940 in London and had 3 or 4 children and possibly more
I am in the process of trying to complete the Haines FT so any additional information about this family would be welcome
Thanks in anticipation