Dear all,
After that great big build up from Tim - I am going to disappoint you all
!!
Just got back from UK, and the best research I did was meet Tim and John..
we had a very convivial lunch (my husband luckily had John's charming wife
to talk to). It was terrific to meet them and I will send the pictures as
soon as I can.
In case anyone is planning a visit - The Borthwick:
is housed (at the moment) in temporary accommodation. That means
it is in the medieval equivalent of a large warehouse. They have 6
microfilm readers, no
computers (that I could see), no space to work, and nobody to help you.
It is open to family researchers
for 6 hours a day (a three hour block in the morning and another in the
afternoon).
The doors are firmly closed and they throw you out on the street from 12.30
to 2.30 ish.....
I have to assume they are short staffed. They do say to make appointments
before
you go, however I didn't realise quite how limited the facilities were and I
mistakenly
thought 24 hrs notice would be enough.
Because it is closing in a
few weeks (to move to a large lottery funded building at the end of summer)
professionals, and students etc..h ave booked en masse
the available time. Obviously this puts pressure on what are already
minimal resources.
Hopefully the new place will have free parking. The current place is right
in the city.
They have quite a large library which looked fascinating, some of the books
in there
have lists of names which looked promising. Is there a computerised
search
facility for the library?? No idea. Nobody in the library to ask. In the
microfilm area
.. they appear to have a lot of stuff on York parishes, but not a lot on
other places..,
unless they are hidden away somewhere else. They have a card index on the
various
villages in Yorkshire, and the holdings they have for that village, i.e.
maps etc.. I think the
temporary facilities means that they only have space for a certain amount of
resources
to be on hand.
Because most of the parish stuff available seemed to be
York, I concentrated on one of my
line who married into the Catley family from York (rather than my Catleys,
who are Leeds etc)
.. and found some rewarding stuff.. so during my
precious hours I worked like a navvy, and made some progress in that
direction.
I should point out as a background to this (to our
English readers) that staying in UK on the aussie dollar is constant pain.
(When I planned
my trip the aussie $ was going up against the pound , but the minute I
stepped on the
plane it sank like a stone! !) Even so, we found excellent accommodation
in a village
just outside York - if anyone would like the details let me know.
On the bright side, there is a place attached to the side of the York Art
Gallery , York archives
(the size of a shoebox ) with excellent helpful staff. I walked in there
and within 15 minutes a
wonderful woman had made me a photocopy of an ancestor's apprentice record
from 1803.
They seem to have records of the city, businesses, all that sort of stuff.
Looks like I will have to make another visit next year..!!
kay
p.s. all those of you who have never been to the Yorkshire dales, have no
idea what you
are missing. It is simply stunning, and you should book your trips
immediately !!.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Cattley" <timjhcat(a)tiscali.co.uk>
To: <CATLEY-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Thursday, 13 May 2004 9:40
Subject: [CAT...] Cat*ley meeting!
Just to keep you all abreast of the situation, Kay is over here in
the UK,
visiting family and then doing some real genealogical research into her
Yorkshire roots, no armchair in front of the computer stuff this but raw
Archive work that is not on any electronic data base. Just like old times!
In between she hopes to link up with John Catley who has Lincolnshire
roots plus
myself with Yorkshire (Catlay) roots and I think that I am
correct in saying that such a meeting will be unique in that here we have
Cat*leys from three different Trees all meeting together, yet we all come
from "Northern Cat*leys" who have been far less represented on Rootsweb than
the Southern ones
If only technology had moved on a pace whereby we could all provide DNA
samples and
find out if all us Cat*leys have common genes or not, it would
help make research so much more specific!
No doubt we will have mug shots available soon to prove that the 3-way
meeting took
place!
On a serious note, Kay will engage in some pretty deep digging and I hope
that she
will not only manage to find the specific information that she is
seeking for her own Tree but at the same time may be able to unlock info
concerning a Catley Tree that emigrated to the USA (Marge Cattley in
Pittsburg) and at the same time unearth links concerning three known Cattley
lines who are still resident in the West Yorkshire area whos ancestors
probably also come from the Leeds area.
We will wait her report with interest when she gets back to Aussie.
Regards to all ............... Tim
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