Census Sensibility

Yesterday I submitted my final assignment for the Postgraduate Certificate in Genealogy, Palaeography and Heraldry with the University of Strathclyde. It's been an interesting 9 months, not without struggle, but I am pleased to be done and (although I am waiting on a final mark) I am very proud of what I have achieved. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the end of 2015 and since July of last year have been dealing with quite severe symptoms of this disease. When I began the PG Cert I did consider whether or not it was a wise decision, given what I was going through and what was likely to come but I decided to give it a go. The support I received from the staff at the University was nothing short of amazing. They were completely understanding, flexible and gave me great advice all along the way. I had a couple of bouts of being in hospital (including one where I got a lumbar puncture which resulted in me not being able to sit or stand for more than 10 minutes at a time f

Have Swedish family history and not sure how to get started? I share how to get started in this guest blog post for MyCanvas ! Learn common Swedish genealogy words, and tricks to untangling Swedish family names.

Some months ago I posted about the mystery in my family of my grandfather who discovered he was adopted when he was in his 60s. As a genealogist, I had been researching his birth family to no avail for a number of years. I finally had a breakthrough last year when I found evidence of his (alleged) birth father's subsequent marriage, children and so on. After being in touch with my (alleged) great-grandfather's descendant, Paul, for some time, he finally did an Ancestry DNA test and we've been waiting for the results to come through. It's been quite a nervous wait - what if I was wrong? I was in a business meeting the other day and got onto the topic of DNA testing and genealogy with the client. I decided to show them my research and also my DNA test results (I am always  happy to talk about genealogy, especially if there's a chance I can give someone else the bug). Logging into Ancestry DNA I saw there was a new match and that this match was listed as being a p