Author Archives: rhbblog

Looking forward, looking back…

Posted on January 17, 2023 by rhbblog

Well, we’re halfway through January and it’s my first post of the new-ish year despite the resolution to write more regularly and the weekly alarm which I set but ignore! We have much to look forward to this year with … Continue reading →

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Season of Remembrance

Posted on November 7, 2022 by rhbblog

An anniversary post for this season of remembrance. John Edgar Hardy was born to my great-great-grandparents, John, a fishmonger, and Mary Ann, in 1883 in Halifax, one of several siblings. They lived at 5 Briar Court. (I say ‘several’ rather … Continue reading →

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Tracks and traces

Posted on November 1, 2022 by rhbblog

Just another inconsequential but somehow satisfying and serendipitous little find from my genealogy meanderings. You have been warned. I was doing some transcription work for a family history society and while checking records in the 1939 register, came across Arthur … Continue reading →

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On the Brink

Posted on September 27, 2022 by rhbblog

I was transcribing some school log information for a family history society and needed to check an address in Hebden Bridge. I hadn’t been sure if it was Brink or Bank but a quick search turned up Buttress Brink in … Continue reading →

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Little Discoveries, Bigger Picture…

Posted on September 20, 2022 by rhbblog

I dabble in genealogy and suddenly remembered tonight that Find My Past had offered free access to their newspaper archives over the long weekend. There wasn’t time left for any major research, so I contented myself with a slightly manic … Continue reading →

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Domestic disruption

Posted on September 15, 2022 by rhbblog

I’ve just decamped into our bedroom with a bag of electronics, a few bits of extraneous furniture, cardboard packing cases and bubble wrap hoping to get ahead, or slightly less behind, in the schedule of packing up rooms for the … Continue reading →

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Not bad…

Posted on September 14, 2022 by rhbblog

…for a lad from the back streets of Halifax who spent half his childhood (as did his sister) in a children’s home/orphanage, as I’ve touched on elsewhere. Their mum was a seamstress and in the Depression years work was hard … Continue reading →

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Remembering mum

Posted on June 21, 2022 by rhbblog

My lovely mum on what would have been her 95th birthday. I have a couple of treasured pictures taken of our family (in best bib and tucker in the garden at Maru, Northern Nigeria) by Gavin Carr, colleague of my … Continue reading →

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Connections and digressions

Posted on March 6, 2022 by rhbblog

I posted these two pictures in a Facebook Group, Calderdale Then and Now, as I had spotted someone else’s similar post about the bad winter of 1962-3. We had returned from Nigeria for good (or so my parents thought) in … Continue reading →

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March 1953 – with the Jenkins to Bassa

Posted on February 22, 2022 by rhbblog

This extract from the family album has perplexed me. Dad’s captions speak of ‘down the Miango road’ going to a village, Bassa. However, Bassa town, which I had assumed it meant, is in the other direction from Jos, and even … Continue reading →

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