Website updated - 1 July 2013

This update includes lots of Pennsylvania and Manchester updated records.  Charts 8 and 28 have also been updated.

Find my past included some new Lincolnshire parish records.  I have added some Lincolnshire burials.

Following an email regarding Lauretta Greathead also known as Lauretta Groskop.  A TV programme stated that Lauretta married Robert Groskop and was the grandmother of a previous Blue Peter presenter.  I have proved the link, but it would seem that Lauretta maybe the niece of Robert.  Maybe however she was adopted and on official records kept the name of Greathead.  Anyone know anything different!!!!

Website updated - 1 June 2013

Just updated the website.  You will notice a few changes.  I now have drop down boxes on the menu bar of the main pages.  I am not quite happy with how these look and will try to fix better for next month, but they do work.  Also on the narratives you will notice a blue square box which changes to orange when you put the curser on it.  Do click this box and you will discover a family pedigree, the names are hyperlinked. 

Hope you find these changes and the new data fun, maybe you have some more to add, love to hear from you

Greathead Shield mentioned in TV programme

Did you see the wonderful TV programme about the Tube yesterday.  The Greathead shield was mentioned

Website updated 1 May 2013

Lots of additional information, extra stories and sources added.  Can you tell me some amazing stories or break down a brickwall? 
I have spent much of the month identifying spouses, finding names where previously I just knew a marriage had taken place.  Still lots to identify
Updates this month are all listed on the recent updates page

Oldest lifeboat has a refit

The Shields Gazette on Saturday 20 April 2013 wrote:

THE last surviving lifeboat built in South Shields by Henry Greathead himself is to be examined by experts to see how she’s faring.

The Zetland, which is kept at a museum in Redcar, is the oldest lifeboat in the world, built more than 200 years ago.

Our own historic lifeboat, Tyne, built in 1833 by Edward Oliver at the Lawe, is the second oldest.

The Zetland, which is on the National Register of Historic Ships, was delivered to Redcar in October, 1802, just a few months, as a matter of interest, before Greathead lost his father, who had been controller of salt duties here in Shields.

She went on to take part in a number of rescues, saving more than 500 lives, until, in 1864, she was damaged while rescuing a crew of seven from the brig Brothers.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) took her out of service and she was replaced. Local 
feeling went on to prevent the boat being broken up and she was repaired.

She has been preserved as a museum exhibit at Redcar since 1907, where she continues to raise money for the RNLI through donations.

Now the Friends of Zetland Lifeboat want to carry on that conservation and she is being examined to see what work may be required. It includes exploring original timbers and fittings that have not been disturbed for more than two centuries.

The lifeboat was commissioned from Greathead with the assistance of the then Marquis of Zetland, and there you have another Shields connection that I think I’m right in saying survived until not so many years ago.

To find it, you have to go back into the history of the Burdon family who settled here in the 17th century and were owners of the old Lay Farm.

Nicholas Burdon was prominent in local life as a magistrate and churchwarden of St Hilda’s.

His great-grandaughter went on to marry Lord Dundas, for whose family the baronetcy was created.

Now I may be wrong, but I am sure that in my early days here at the Gazette – oh, all those years ago! – a feature of the paper, from time to time, was an advertisement for staff placed by the Zetland estate, as if the old associations hadn’t quite been forgotten.

Meanwhile, the museum at Redcar, where you can see the lifeboat, will open for the season on May 1. Admission is free.