The Secret History of Our Streets

My family used to do the hop picking from north kent too - the kids and the mums would spend the summer holidays there while the dads stayed working in the docks in Sheerness or Chatham.

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Hey both. I worked in an archive for a bit that was full of people tracing their family histories. Do bear in mind that:

  • Before the late Victorian era, most people didn’t have a standardised spelling of their name, either first name or surname, because most people weren’t literate. Try not to think that it was recorded incorrectly, and search for phonetic spellings of a name as much as possible

  • Online tools like Ancestry are fine if you’re looking at actual historical records (certificates, census results etc), but any index created by someone is not a great source. Enthusiastic amateurs make lots of mistakes and suppositions, and online databases aren’t a great way to store information about a lot of those resources anyway

I could write about how to do this for days and days… but it’s fucking tedious. If ever you’re searching and you’re stuck, drop me a line and I’ll try to help.

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