Among the many photographs from my mother’s side of the family are a few negatives, including two of glass. A quick Google search and I found this website. Apparently, there are two principal kinds of glass plate negatives: Collodion Wet Plate and Gelatine Dry Plate. I’m almost certain the negatives
Now and again I pull out one of the large plastic tubs which house the memorabilia I brought from my parent’s house. Much of the memorabilia is letters, documents and various bits of paper, written in Russian or German. There is not very much in English. If I ever have
Last year, I wrote this post about four ways to research your family history. This week I discovered the limitations of research while I was writing an essay for my study. The task was to write a short narrative on a person, place, time or event, using techniques based on
I have several genealogical charts of my father’s family. A couple of them comprise the entire family, one of them is only of my father’s direct family, and one of them includes the children of the females in the family. All of them contain valuable information; names, birth dates, dates
My paternal grandfather, Peter Julius Otto von Fircks, was born at Nurmhusen on 23 February 1876. At that time Nurmhusen, the Fircks family estate, was in Kurland, now Latvia. His name, date of birth and death, are recorded in the family tree composed by my cousin. My cousin was the
If, like me, you have ordered one or more DNA tests through organisations such as 23andme, Ancestry or My Heritage, have you thought about who can access your data? Should you be frightened of who can use the data to identify you? Did you even realise that organisations such as the police are,