The great RSS cull of 2013

Google recently announced that its Google Reader service will cease at the end of June. This is sad as it's a useful service for delivering RSS feeds, but also potentially good as we might see some innovation from other companies in RSS feed management and delivery.

I use Flipboard on my iPad to read all the blogs I follow, however it doesn't have any kind of feed management tools at the moment so I'm hedging my bets and also trialling Feedly. The upshot of all this is that I'm using it as an opportunity to review the blogs I'm subscribed to and cull those that are no longer active or no longer relevant to me - and if you use RSS feeds I bet you'll end up doing the same thing over the next few months too.

As you may have noticed I don't blog a lot - this is not my primary web presence for either genealogy (see http://wing-ops.org.uk/ and http://one-place-studies.org/) or me generally, and I don't blog just for the sake of it. I'll still be posting to alert you to updates on the Wing-OPS website, or other random genealogical bits and bobs as the mood takes me, but there's no regular schedule. So if I don't make it through your culling process I won't be offended - in fact I won't even know! But rest assured I'll be happy that you are maximising your genealogy time by using great tools like RSS to get the information you want or need.

If you spot a great new tool that you're planning to use to manage your genealogical RSS feeds going forward, do let me know in the comments.

Wing As It Was - another copy on Ebay

If any of my readers were bidding against Heather for the copy of Wing As It Was that was up on Ebay recently, you get a second chance. Someone else (and this seller is in Wing itself!) is now selling their copy. On average I see these come up for sale maybe once every two years or so.

Small website update

Angela was perusing the Hertfordshire Marriage Index and found an entry for the marriage of two Wing people in 1698 - this has been added to the Marriage Strays page on the website. Thanks Angela! Don't forget, if you find any Wing strays on your travels please let me know, it's these types of clues which are hard to find but may prove crucial to our genealogy research.

Wing As It Was

Wing As It Was (and Wing As It Was vol 2) is a small book of postcards and photos of, well, Wing as it was! The illustrations are predominantly from the late 1800s and early 1900s. I own both these books and have indexed the surnames included for both volume 1 and volume 2 on the website.

Both books are now out of print but a copy of the first volume is currently up on Ebay should you fancy it. I'm not associated with the seller in any way.

HOWES one-name study

I've just updated the links page with a link to the HOWES one-name study page. This looks like a comprehensive study with a great website, but could do with some more information about the Howes from Wing, so if you're researching the Wing branch get in touch with Paul at the Howes Family website, and me of course at the Wing website!

1911 infirmities

Happy 2013, everyone! I hope 2012 was a successful year for you with more to come in 2013.

When the 1911 census was initially released the information in the infirmity column was redacted (suppressed). In 2012, when the 1911 information was officially allowed to be released, this infirmity column became available. I've now got copies of all 387 household schedules for Wing and was keen to see what if anything was lurking in this column.

Below is a list of all Wing's infirmities. Note that some of these are unofficial - only "totally deaf", "deaf and dumb" "totally blind", "lunatic", "imbecile" or "feeble-minded" were supposed to be entered here along with age afflicted, but several of Wing's heads of household added extra information (crossed out by the census enumerator, of course, but never-the-less accessible). As always, we give a round of thanks to those that didn't follow instructions and gave us more snippets about their lives than we might expect!


Mary PAGE, age 85 - totally deaf was written but then crossed out. Mary's son D (David) Page filled out her schedule on her behalf, so I do have visions of 85-year-old Mary giving him what-for on discovering he had dared to claim she was deaf!

Sophia LATHWELL (nee THORNE), age 52 - feeble-minded. This wasn't mentioned in the 1901 census so perhaps this was degenerative, or perhaps her husband wasn't prepared to put this on record in 1901 but the head of household she was visiting in 1911 had no such compunctions.

Arthur FOUNTAINE, age 31 - fits since 16 years.

Daniel WHITE, age 69, and  daughter Sarah WHITE, age 41 - there appears to be some congenital defect at work here as Daniel is noted as deaf at 20, while Sarah was deaf at 16.

Emily STAPLES, age 60 - deaf and dumb from birth

Mary FINCHAM, age 71 - deaf 20 years. Mary wasn't a local pe se, she was the Suffolk-born mother of Essex-born James who was a domestic chauffeur. I can't imagine anyone other than the Rothschilds had vehicles to chauffeur at this point in time.

George LOVELL, age 60 - rheumatism. Thanks for sharing, George! He was a pensioned mechanical engineer, so I would think he found his complaint pretty frustrating.

Emma Jane TUTT, age 40 - totally blind at 30 yrs old. Emma's an import to Wing as well, her father George is a London & North-Western Railway pensioner from Sussex.

Benjamin PEASE jnr, age 28 - lame since 6. He works from home as a boot repairer.


Yes, I will be transcribing the 1911 census for Wing in full at some stage (the enumerator summary book is already on the website), however it's not a priority as this information is widely available from the major online genealogy websites. I'd rather focus on bringing you records that are more unusual - and in particular finishing the items on that Moving Target 2012 list which I shall now have to rename the 2013 list!

Guilty conscience

Haven't blogged for a bit. *hangs head in shame*

Forgot the Winging It blogiversary AGAIN this year (it was 3 Nov). *shuffles feet*

Don't even mention that Moving Target 2012 list over there on the right that was supposed to be keeping me focused this year.

And it's the beginning of the month as well, which means an update is due for one of my other websites, the One Place Studies website.

I have been knitting up a storm though. I imagine that my Nana and Grandma and a long line of female ancestors are nodding with approval and wanting to fondle all those pretty yarns we have to knit with these days.

But in the back of my mind I know that the end of the year is approaching, and I need to come up with a genealogy research plan for my Christmas holidays before it's too late. I really should actually use that Find My Past international subscription that I picked up super-cheap before it runs out! The only genealogy thing I've done lately is try to work out how to print out from Family Historian a COLES family tree showing just the boys. My brother's giving me a nephew in 2013!