Last November, Harvey and I attended an event at Plymouth University in order to contribute to a new online archive called 'Their Finest Hour'. The University of Oxford project was devised in order to preserve stories and take photographs and videos of items which may have been passed down to ordinary members of the public by their families and which are related to the Second World War.

The website was launched on 6th June. Unfortunately, I had to contact the archive to correct the information we had supplied as the volunteers we saw on the day had misunderstood what we told them and some of the details were either incorrect or lacked context. I'm pleased to say that the revised information is now live on the website.

Our stories can be viewed at the following links:

21st Devon (Post Office) Battalion, Home Guard - Charles George Hibbitt
A brief outline of my paternal grandfather's time in the Home Guard.

A Ruined Homecoming - William Hellyer Geake and, wife, Phyllis
The story of my maternal grandfather's homecoming after being away for four years in the War.

RAF Technical Training during WW2 - Air Commodore Cyril Norman Ellen D.F.C.
Details of Harvey's maternal grandfather's contribution to the RAF's Technical Training Branch in which he was in charge of three schools related to Electrical & Wireless, Radio and Signals.


Their Finest Hour event held at Plymouth University on 23rd November 2023

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Gmail Filter
It's becoming a frequent occurrence that emails I send to potential relatives and DNA matches are not arriving. If you are a Gmail user, I've written a guide that will show you how to make sure none of your messages are sent to your Spam mailbox.

Gmail No-Spam Filtering Guide

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Illumination in The Rutland Psalter produced c. 1260 in England
I've found some interesting names in the Rutland Lay Subsidy Roll of 1296/7. I'll never be able to prove my connection back this far but this may offer circumstantial evidence for perhaps some of my family having been in the area for a long time.

Place, Name

Empingham, Richard Hobburd

Teigh, William Hubert

Teigh, Richard Hubert

Seaton, William Tubbe

Glaston, William Tubbe

Teigh, Henry de Neubold

Teigh, Richard de Neubold

Oakham, William de Neubold

Oakham, Richard de Neubold

Clipsham, John Le Neubrid

Tickencote, Richard Neubrid

Ketton, William de Neubotle x 2

Ketton, Juliana Neubotle

Ketton, Henry de Neubotle

Ketton, Marg' de Neubotle

Could Hobburd and Hubert be a variant of Hibbitt? Maybe stretching it a little, who knows?

My 6 x great-grandmother was Ann Tubbs who married John Hybit in Exton in 1732. Could either of the Tubbe men be my ancestor?

Mahala Newbold was my 3 x great-grandmother. She married Amos Hibbitt in 1830. Her grandfather, John Newbold, was located in Exton in the late 18th century. I have seen the spelling written as Neubold and Newbolt too. Could any of these people be my forbear?

Source: Names from Rutland Lay Subsidy 1296/7. Created by Douglas Galbi - http://www.galbithink.org/names/engb1800.htm

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Hibbitt, Hibbett (plus other variants) Family History Research Facebook Group
I've started a Closed Facebook Group called Hibbitt, Hibbett (plus other variants) Family History Research Group.

It's for those who have an interest in family history and who also have a Hibbitt / Hibbett (or other name variant - see below) family connection. It's a place to share research, photographs, videos and more with like-minded folk.

There are many variants of the surname including.....Hibbit, Hibbitt, Hibbet, Hibbett, Hibbits, Hibbets, Hibbitts, Hibbetts, Hybot, Hybut, Hybat, Hybit, Hybitt, Hybet, Hybett, Hybbet, Hybbett, Hybbitt, Hibbert, Ibbert, Ibbat, Ibbatt, Ibbet, Ibbett, Ibbit, Ibbot, Ibbott, Abbot, Abbott, Abbit, Abbitt.....and there may well be more.

PLEASE JOIN IF THIS INTERESTS YOU.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hibbitt/about/

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AncestryDNA Sale
Ancestry are currently having a sale on their AncestryDNA product. At £49 plus P+P (an additional £20), it is their cheapest price yet. But hurry as the sale ends at midnight on Monday 28th November.

Cousins, please test!!

AncestryDNA is an autosomal DNA test which looks at a person's entire genome, helping to identify matches throughout the whole family tree on both paternal and maternal sides. Anyone can take an autosomal DNA test. This type of test is most useful for approximately six generations but can sometimes take you back a little further. Besides cousin matches, the AncestryDNA test also provides estimates about your genetic ethnicity.

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If anyone reading this knows the whereabouts of the flying log books, or any other items, for Cyril Norman ELLEN, we'd be enormously grateful if you would get in touch via my contact form.

Cyril Ellen joined the Royal Naval Air Service in 1915, initially as a Chief Petty Officer, and gained a Commission at the end of 1916. He was an observer during WW1, entering the Royal Air Force on the first list in April 1918. He gained his Wings in 1921 and remained in the RAF until retirement in 1946.

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The British Newspaper Archive is offering a month of access for £1 (usually £9.95). Subscribe before midnight on 20th July, choose the 1 month subscription and enter the promotion code SUMMERSALE.

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Regular followers of my blog will notice I haven't been posting very much in recent months. This is because I've been upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 Pro. First of all, I borrowed a Windows 7 PC to see just what software would and wouldn't work and after a few weeks of testing, I had my new PC built.

Leaving Outlook Express behind in favour of Mozilla Thunderbird was a culture-shock - I've heavily customised the program to look as close to OE as I could get.

I also hate the so-called ClearType (it should be called fuzzy-type) which Microsoft force on to their users and so I have removed this as far as possible. However, there isn't a way that I could find to get rid of it in Internet Explorer and so I've switched to Mozilla Firefox as my main browser.

I missed my XP start menu and so I installed the wonderful Classic Shell program - incidentally, a must-have for Windows 8 users in my opinion.

My web design program had to be updated too, as well as many more programs and some I've had to resign to the bin as they no longer work on Windows 7.

All this and then I finally had to look at my family tree software. Having tried Legacy, RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker 2014, Ancestral Quest and Family Historian, I hit a snag with every one of them. Some were too complicated for my liking but my main issue was after exporting a GEDCOM file to run through the program which generates my family web pages, I found facts listed in the wrong order and even children and wives in the wrong order too.

I eventually settled on resorting to my old and trusty Family Tree Maker 2006 program, but not before having to download a patch file first. I'm aware that reports can't be exported to PDF documents on a 64 bit machine. Although there is a work-around by using a third party program such as PDF995, this doesn't allow for single page outputs of charts. I shall probably have to export a GEDCOM and import it into FTM 2014 and produce the chart from there. I'm not so keen on the chart layouts in the 2014 program and it's more bother than before.

And so, in the name of progress, I feel Microsoft have put me through the ringer somewhat without me gaining anything, other than an operating system which will hopefully be supported for some time to come.

Having just checked in at Geneabloggers, I am reminded that my blog has now been running for 3 years. Having posted over 230 articles I wonder where I've found the time to do it. This is on top of all the research and updates to my tree and main website.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm Family History Bonkers and long may it continue!


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Ancestry.co.uk will donate £1 (up to a maximum of £10,000) to the Royal British Legion for each view of this video on YouTube until 20 November. Please share the video with your friends and family.