Dan Billington, Ancestry Central's Blog (39)

What information can we find for one family from one page of a Census ?

Well how about 3 marriages, 2 agricultural labourers, a widow, a Coal merchant, a cordwainer, 4 siblings living apart, a widower, a nephew, a father in law, a mother in law, cousins, and several scholars ! Not to mention the uninhabited buildings.

A brief family study in a part of…

I have started to place just a few of the several hundred images of Heads stones I have online at Flckr. You can use these images for FREE providing they are for personal use and not commercial.

I am about to lose space, so if you think one of the people might be yours – get there quick:…

Saturday 7^th May 2011 saw the start of a two day exhibition organised by the East Yorkshire Family History Society to commemorate Kingston Upon Hull's worst night of the 1941 blitz. The exhibition was held at Carnegie Heritage Centre and with the help of volunteer groups such as the Heroes of Hull Web Site. The exhibition itself was an overwhelming success with the…

Just a few images of the images I have taken of the General Cemetery in Sheffield, Yorkshire and also the church yard at All Saints in Newton Heath,Manchester, Lancashire.

With about 700 images, and  over 1000 names still to upload, I am now looking at an alternative location as my Flckr account is about to reach its full extent. Ii is my hope that a new web page will…

In my quest to upload as many images of headstones as I can shake a stick at uploaded are another 11 headstones featuring 23 names from 4 counties.

Featuring the names Huyton, Dawson, Brown, Archer, Almond, Pickworth, Swift, Baily, Bailey, Garbutt, Knowlson and Thompson. From Ampleforth, Chorley and Kingston Upon Hull, featuring three counties; East Yorkshire, North…

These recent images capture the essence of a thriving City centre in Victorian Britain. Each one represents the life and livelihood of our past ancestors and the City’s history from William Gill the shoe maker who operated at 34 Bishop Lane to the now infamous Brown family of High Street. Slave abolitionist William Wilberforce walked these cobbled streets to and from…

The Toll of Time….and Council’s

Still on the theme of local cemeteries. Following a visit to Eastern Cemetery in Kingston, I was astonished to witness in such a well kept cemetery that an eagerness to protect the visitors, the stones themselves were being damaged.

It looks to me as though the sinking of some older graves, very likely due to some flooding and…

A selection of my photographs from a recent exploration of cemeteries in Hull. Dating back to the early 1800’s, there is certainly much evidence of death, decay and disease. Many of the surviving stones had in fact been relocated from previous locations as the City expanded.

One of the most interesting finds was evidence of the 1849 Cholera epidemic in the City and the…

Being of the surname Billington, my family, though in Yorkshire for over 100 years, is often asked about its Lancashire origins and in particular I am often asked by historians if I have any connections to the Hangmen of Bolton. In the south of England the question is quite different and I am asked of my connections to John Billington who travelled with the Pilgrim father’s…

This week, I will be spending some time researching the Cemeteries of Kingston upon Hull, in East Yorkshire. Between 1880 and 1910, the Cemeteries grew at a rate only equalled by the continued growth of the City. From a tiny medieval town surrounded by green fields, Henry VIII’s favourite stop over expanded to more than 10 times its original size.

Recent records exist of…