tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59319018305848891712012-02-16T11:00:11.048ZThe Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.comBlogger171100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-57858872366553281932009-02-27T18:40:00.015Z2009-03-17T20:22:27.828Z

Thanks to questions from members of the House - almost all from America, though one appears to be from Scotland - I have had to put the planned post this month on hold to deal with the questions. For the most part, they have come from people who have contacted me through a genealogy forum about the Preston family. I would encourage you to check it and perhaps to answer questions posters may

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-10999958313102810272009-01-28T16:15:00.010Z2009-02-16T17:53:35.181Z

Well, Christmas is over, the New Year has come and gone and we can begin trying to move on to more work in the website. Well, I say "we" but the truth is still that it is just poor old me, though there are rather more people who have become involved over the last few weeks and by the look of things may well be more to come. Our new members have all joined the Family Journal side of the site

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-90057654767720842662008-12-03T15:47:00.007Z2009-01-28T16:15:12.118Z

So far there is one poor, overworked, fraught and hassled man putting records on-line. Me. It keeps me more than busy - it keeps me overworked.I have several sheets of information to add to the records at the moment, and could pile up the dry, dusty numbers into the Family Records until I had a complete record of every single member of the Preston family we have ever found in all the records of

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-46326989165429788352008-11-23T14:52:00.009Z2008-12-03T15:46:58.420Z

For the past month or so, I have been involved in working out, digging through, compiling and sorting a very small set of dusty old records about the family of the Viscounts Gormanston, as those who have been reading the Journal will already know. Since posting the last two entries and trying to tell the story of one particular time in the early history of this one part of our old and widespread

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-76262234693809395042008-10-24T19:16:00.022+01:002008-11-05T16:24:12.866Z

Before dealing with Adam Preston and his son Roger, lets look at the times. In the time of Adam's grandfather Phillip, King Henry III ruled England after the death of his father King John (Lackland). John had been forced to sign Magna Carta and young Henry, only nine years old when his father died, spent his entire reign trying to get rid of it! In 1244, though, he took a break from dealing with

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-68133285879792684772008-10-11T16:52:00.026+01:002008-10-24T00:11:54.522+01:00

Thanks to the need for more details in the records section, I found myself needing to collect a set of genealogy for part of the family - I chose the Viscounts Gormanston and Barons Drumhaire - to use as an example for adding records. Like most in House Preston, that means dredging through centuries of history to find details, even though I desperately want them to be incomplete.I don't intend to

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-43152820392347584232008-09-22T12:54:00.014+01:002008-10-23T16:25:52.284+01:00

As mentioned earlier, the time has come where I hope you will be ready and able to add family records to the wiki section of the site. Naturally, as soon as I mentioned it I got questions from people who had read the Journal, checked the Family Records and found themselves confused!There are times I despair of myself - because I haven't completed the "Help" section of Family Records to explain

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-7973039670292707372008-09-01T17:00:00.011+01:002008-10-22T12:54:17.667+01:00

The point has now been reached where we need to hope that you, dear reader, are about ready to contribute to the site. The point of all this work I've been doing is, after all, to encourage the House Preston families out there in the wide world to get together on-line so that we can all share our family information.The site mash-up (as sites like this are delightfully called) was designed and put

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-17521648305376523602008-08-30T12:46:00.012+01:002008-10-01T16:57:58.107+01:00

For the last few weeks, here in the UK, there has been a strange annual event that takes place every year - teachers such as myself start to sit down and plan all the changes they will be putting into classes over the next year.Its one of the odd things in life that people who don't work as teachers get the impression these changes and the planning that goes with them just sort of "happens" and

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-16876621540173089372008-07-13T17:26:00.018+01:002008-10-01T16:57:14.940+01:00

I've been spending so much time working out how to record family details I've had very little for the Journal. In fact, I've spent more time making them easy to store and search than doing the records themselves! After a lot of work, I've sorted out a method and made notes to remind me while I got down to the hardest bit.Slogging through the "Help Pages" of the wiki site I've been finding out how

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-481854539235858302008-06-24T14:27:00.019+01:002008-10-01T16:56:34.144+01:00

Yes, I admit it - hands up, give in and agree... the Family Records are not that big as yet. That's the point of only adding a link last posting - we have to start somewhere and this is it for the records. They are in a wiki space so you can add to them; how good they end up depends on you more than me!I also admit its mean not to have given an email address to get in touch. Only people who had

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-28652043126577671462008-06-10T15:13:00.024+01:002008-10-01T16:55:59.332+01:00

Last time I set this site up, I made mistakes; I wasn't ambitious enough. I thought a simple blog to help people make their own sites and blogswould be good enough. It wasn't, and I should have known it wouldn't be. This time, I hope to avoid that mistake and provide more for us all.Back then, the main page was just for the regular and unchanging stuff. I thought people would link their own pages

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-38372239390195625692008-05-24T19:22:00.011+01:002008-10-01T16:55:07.080+01:00

I've been contacted by a nice person from the UK National Archives about changes - which may be welcome, since there are reports of problems using the site. The Archive is maintained on our behalf, with all we could need to know about our country, history and families - if you can find what you need!As someone who is teaching genealogy to new enthusiasts, I am often asked about the Archives and

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-3083282967371111272008-05-17T16:44:00.003+01:002008-10-01T16:54:26.351+01:00

Last month, I looked at site design in House Preston: Doing Design but didn't mention what I would use to build pages and link sites together. Its about time I did, so I'll do that this month. All this was done some time ago - but the blog only went active in March. In fact, all this was done before Xmas 2007.Design softwareIts not some arcane mystery, if you stick to simple principles. Design is

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-8337032396111351732008-04-26T17:26:00.013+01:002008-10-01T16:53:20.563+01:00

As well as writing up the design plan for the blog, April has been busy with what we are here for - genealogy!I'd love to say - especially for Vera, who sent me a pile of information to wade through - that its all been about our family. But it hasn't; it has been about the keen and eager folk who join the genealogy course I teach for Oldham Council.Teaching genealogyGenealogy isn't something you

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-43611320653657805842008-04-19T18:00:00.010+01:002008-10-01T16:52:30.045+01:00

There's no point discussing design methods without explaining the plan - and notice that there is a plan! Never start a design without one.For me, it was easy: readers told me what they wanted. Let's make no bones about this - you may think your ideas are good but you will never do better than listen to users. I had a short list of what people wanted.To be "prettier"To be able to add stuffIt

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931901830584889171.post-33989054057732094772008-03-31T17:00:00.019+01:002008-10-01T16:48:49.656+01:00

Site changes should roll out pretty quickly now. It is just a matter of collecting the parts together on the linking site.That might sound strange, so let me explain.Redesign timeThe House of Preston is not one site but several, with common design and purpose - for members of the Preston family to share genealogy details, family records and so on.When Blogger started Beta Testing for new designs

The Magpiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625828603458375420noreply@blogger.com0