Brian’s Blog - Mostly Harmless... » Family

Family link via a strange route

Brian — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:05:07 +0000

I recently got an email from somebody I hadn’t heard from for ages. She had made contact 3 years ago or more about a common ancestor and we established that she was descended from one of my remote cousins. All well and good and it was nice to fill in a few gaps in my own tree as well as lending a hand with hers.

Anyhow, this time, she had discovered a very odd link to me with another member of her tree. The surname of this person was “EberSpacher” which, at least to my ear, is not a common name and certainly not one I have in my tree. The link she discovered was in an archive of a newspaper and it was posted as part of a will/probate search for relatives, the strange part? well, it turns out that before going into a nursing home on the IOW for the last few year of her life, this lady lived in the house that Sue and I have now!

When we took on this place, the building society used by the previous occupants contacted us and asked if we would like a pile of historical documents about the property, its previous owners and the original builders etc. Of course I grabbed the pile quickly and following the recent email was able to use it to confirm that the “Eberspacher” mentioned was in fact the sister of a lady who had married one of our house builders, and that I could also confirm that she had been left the house in a will as I have a copy of the probate document in the pile of stuff I was given.

I was able to fill in a load of holes for the emailer and I’m sure I have some more stuff for her somewhere (might even be a few photo’s of the people involved). She was over the moon with it all and I now have a lot more interest in the history of our house as well as completing a very odd circle of ownership via unknown relatives in the outer spiral arm of my family tree…..

Wrong Dad?

Brian — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:46:03 +0000

It was nice to get a Fathers’ Day card from Matt:

As this doesn’t apply to me, he must have sent it to the wrong Dad

faceblok…

Brian — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:57:45 +0000

A while ago somebody suggested I join facebook (fb) as a way of contacting other people interested in the genealogy of the Curd family.
Well I joined and have given it a try and, after a few weeks of nothing much more than the inane chatter I would normally hear from somebody on a mobile phone, I have decided to de-activate my account. Not as easy as you might think though; a careful read of the terms and conditions on the site and I find that I can’t fully close things, just put them into a kind of suspend animation!
I have done my best by removing all fb profiles, links, photos, posts, applications, friends and notifications but I’ve no doubt missed something!
I’m hoping that I shouldn’t see any more activity as I am fortunate in being able to set up and destroy email addresses as required. fb only has one of these temporary addresses for me now and even that will go in the next hour or so.
Bye-bye fb…

Personal Spam?

Brian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:45:45 +0000

Votes please; should I respond or not?

This mail arrived this morning and is the first personalised one of its type I have seen:

YANG LIM & ASSOCIATES
SOLICITOR AND ADVOCATES
NO. 101, JALAN PUDU RAYA,
TAMAN DESA RAYA
MALAYSIA
TEL: +60122473440
Email: barryanglim@XXXXXX.XXX
I am Yang Lim, an attorney at law. A deceased client of mine, Mr. Andrew Curd, that shares the same last name as yours, died as the result of a heart-related condition on March 12th 2005. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the tsunami disaster on the 26th December 2004 in Sumatra Indonesia.
I can be reached on barryanglim@XXXXXX.XXX for more information.My late Client has a deposit of Nineteen Million Dollars (US$19 Million Dollars) left behind.
Best regards,
Yang Lim
Attorney at Law

Perhaps I’ll be rich in 2009 after all! Somehow I suspect not…..

CURD Family get together 2

Brian — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:42:59 +0000

We now have a date for the family get together:

Sarratt Local History Society are planning an Open Day and Curd Family get together in the village of Sarratt on Saturday July 19th.

There will be a display devoted to the story of the family of John Curd who married Susannah Pymley in the village church 8th August 1767.

Anyone with an interest in, or connections with, the Curd family is invited to contact John Hopkins for further details at john @ curdfamily.com (there are a couple of obvious spaces in that address, so don’t just copy and paste it).

I’ll certainly be going and am looking forward to meeting a few of my “email family”..

Family Forum back up and running

Brian — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:47:17 +0000

After months of spam abuse I had to take down the Curd family forum . Seems phpBB is just too open to abuse and requires constant tweaking and attention to keep running.

I have now switched to another system and am hoping it won’t be such an “open target”, we’ll see..

Check it out at www.curdfamily.com/bbs.

CURD Family get together

Brian — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:30:20 +0000

There are plans underway to organise a CURD family get together for those interested tracing the family history.

This applies particularly to people, like me, who can trace their ancestry back to John CURD and Susannah PYMLEY in Hertfordshire UK.

It’s hoped to hold the event in September 2008 in Sarratt Herts – stay tuned for more info as I get it…

You may also like to visit my other website, curdfamily.com. Unfortunately I’ve had to temporarily shutdown the forum which was there (due to constant spamming) but I hope to reinstate it very soon.

Free Family Tree Software

Brian — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:10:45 +0000

This time of year always seems to encourage a sudden burst in genealogy activity – I have made three solid new contacts for my tree in the last couple of weeks and am looking forward to making a few steps further back on the CURD line and a completely new start on the GRANT tree on Sue’s side.

For anybody just starting out, the standard advice about talking to living relatives still applies but you may also find it useful to start building your tree using your PC. Interesting to see that the highly regarded “Family Tree Legends 5″ software is now available as a free download here. FTL has a feature lacking from many other solutions – it also allows proper storage of DNA info for individuals whereas most of the other packages insist on using the notes field.

FTL will of course allow import from and export to the standard GEDCOM files but interestingly it also imports directly from Family Tree Maker data.

My Curd DNA Test

Brian — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:22:02 +0000

I now have the results from my DNA test. It turns out I am part of Haplogroup R1b1 (which means little to me yet!) but here is the description from Wikipedi which doesn’t tell me a lot except that I seem to be in the most common male group in Europe.

Markers 1-12
Locus	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
DYS#	393	390	19*	391	385a	385b	426	388	439	389-1	392	389-2
Alleles	13	23	14	11	11	14	12	12	12	14	14	30

Markers 13-25
Locus	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25
DYS#	458	459a	459b	455	454	447	437	448	449	464a**	464b**	464c**	464d**
Alleles	17	9	10	11	11	25	15	18	31	15	15	16	17

*Also known as DYS 394

**On 5/19/2003, these values were adjusted
down by 1 point because of a change in Lab nomenclature.

There’s a lot to understand in this branch of Genealogy and it’s going to take me a while to get to grips with it all. The good news is that it’s already thrown up a high likelihood of a connection between my Hertfordshire Curds and the Sussex/Kent branch – this may be difficult to document though as the link is only really likely after about 25 or so generations!

What Katy Did!

Brian — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:26:55 +0000

My previous heads up about my niece, Katy Curd, and her downhill mountain biking deserves another mention.
In the recent WORLD Championships, held at Fort William last weekend, she managed a fantastic silver medal in only her second “full on” event.
There are loads of links to her success – just search for “Katy Curd” in Google or click here for a short cut which will do it for you.

Congratulations Katy! We are all very proud and excited!