A quick English research tip and my PC's last days.

Arthur William Matthews
Colorized by MyHeritage

This year's tackling of the Hobbs branch of my tree is my first real go at English research, so I am just now reaping the benefit of .pdfs being made available online in a matter of days for civil birth and death certificates. I am trying hard to stick to just my Hobbs branch, but I couldn't resist ordering a birth certificate for my great-grandfather, Arthur William Matthews.

When I saw "Frome Union" as the Superintendent Registrar's District, I was curious. I was familiar with the town of Frome, but what was Frome Union? The top result of a Google search was for a site called workhouse.org and indicated that Frome Union was connected to the workhouses. I knew my great-grandfather grew up in poverty, and his father's occupation was listed as "disabled coal miner" in his baptismal register entry, but it didn't indicate that he was born in a workhouse. There was obviously more research to do, but it was still a sad circumstance to contemplate, given the conditions in any workhouse I've read about.

A day or so after I received Arthur's birth certificate, I finally had a chance to open a book I'd recently ordered, Ancestral Trails by Mark Herber. Many refer to this work as a "Bible" of English genealogy and it gave me an answer to this question in the first chapter. In the early years of civil registration, registrars' districts followed the borders of the poor law unions; groups of parishes responsible for poor relief in their area. So Frome Union is just a geographical area and does not have any connection, in this case, to a workhouse. Just another example of why we can't assume things in genealogy, and how important it is to research the laws, customs, and all the background we can in the areas in which our ancestors lived.

I've been reading some background material for research into one of my Swedish lines as well (please remind me not to tackle two new countries in the same year again) and I'm working on a post about that but I'm also having technical difficulties. My desktop computer, currently my only computer, is showing its age lately. I'd really like to be settled in a new place before I make decisions about a desktop PC, monitors and general setup, so now that it's obvious that this can no longer wait, I've ordered a laptop. My data is all backed up, so I just have to hope my desktop makes it until the laptop gets here. It's scheduled to ship on May 6th. My fingers and toes are crossed, but if not, I do have plenty of reading to keep me busy!