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Today I give you an autumnal pudding-ish recipe from The Good Huswifes Jewell of 1596. At first sight this seems delicious, but then you spot those four sparrow brains. Image courtesy of The Internet Archive archive.org To make a tarte that is a courage to a man or a woman. TAke twoo Quinces, and twoo or three Burre rootes, and a potaton, and pare your Potaton, and scrape your rootes and put them into a quart of wine, and let them boyle till they bee tender, & put in an ounce

A short post. For those of you who research Suffolk Records, Ancestry's recent release of four Suffolk BMD datasets will be very welcome, not least because it means that if, like me, you don't live in Suffolk, you should be able to avoid the long journey to Suffolk Archives in Ipswich. Before this release the most extensive collection of Suffolk Parish Register records available online were the datasets to be found on FindMyPast. Those were created from data collected by the

***Updated 28 Dec 2025*** If you have ever found yourself looking for Death Duty Register entries, you will know the routine: search the 'Index To Death Duty Registers 1796-1903' dataset on FindMyPast by surname and year to find the entry you want, record the surname, year, and folio number because you will need them to find the actual Death Duty Register entry, on The National Archives website search Discovery under IR 26 for the year and browse the results of this search to

Can you undertake genealogical research in late 19th century Jerusalem, from a desk at home in Britain? This is the story of an unusually productive attempt to do just that. www.tree-sleuths.co.uk Why? The later 19th century was a difficult time for Jews in Eastern European countries like Romania and Russia, with widespread pogroms and the introduction of increasingly hostile laws effectively depriving them of their livelihoods and forcing them to move elsewhere. It had long

Where it all started A few months ago, while I was exploring my mother's ancestors, I discovered that one of them was a rating in the Royal Navy in 1760. This blog post is about what I discovered as I tried to find out a little more about him. As you will learn, this research took an unexpected turn. This all began when I looked at the Marriage Register for Stoke Damerel (just outside Plymouth), Devon, for September 1760. There it recorded the marriage of Nicholas Phillips,

I was inspired to write this blog post because of the amount of time I had spent struggling to understand what makes Irish family history research a different world from English research. I hope that it will help you spend less time stumbling around! This post is not intended to be a substitute for studying books and websites in order to learn more about the place and its records. Consider it to be a starting point instead. History Irish history can be a polarising subject si

Friday, 20 November 2020, was the 75th anniversary of the start of the International Tribunal in Nuremberg, usually called the Nuremberg Trials. These were so important to the future of Europe that I want to tell the story of one man. Birth Just over 27 years before this, in 1918, a boy was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His parents were Irish and Romanian by birth. His father’s family had come from rural Ireland in Queen’s County (now County Laois), migrating over generations to