I try to build in some spare time to an archive/record office visit for just browsing – you never know what you might find.
In the early days of researching my family tree, long, long before the Internet, I was told that my great great grandfather had been a lay preacher at Snow Hill Congregational Church, Wolverhampton. Wolverhampton Archives have the minute books of the church for the appropriate period, and one day I decided to use up my spare research time looking through them.
It didn’t take me long to find out that great great grandad hadn’t been a lay preacher there at all. But his brother (whose existence I was until then ignorant of) had been a deacon of the church – and as part of the church’s Jubilee celebrations, studio photographs had been taken of the deacons and included in the minute book.
So within half an hour I had discovered a ‘new’ member of the family, found out a lot about his life, family and religious views, and purchased a copy of his photograph. I’d also discovered just how interesting church minute books can be in recording everyday life and as a commentary on how things of national (and international) importance were regarded in a small community.
But this item from the BBC news site, about the will of a Second World War soldier found in a lost property office, must be the strangest place of all: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19333299
