Hanna Appleyard (née Nan Morris) is the granddaughter of Gladys Blacknell. Hanna has been very active in researching her family history especially along the Freer line.
So, the long awaited 1921 census has finally been published online. At £3.50 for each record it isn’t cheap but as a devoted genealogist I have been saving my pennies in anticipation for a while. My first purchase was the record for my great-grandfather, Frederick Blacknell.
A curious report involving a member of the Freer clan appeared in the local newspaper in 1895. The article describes an incident in Wrexham where a Thomas Daley tried to pick the pocket of a Mrs Annie Freer.
Another search of Welsh Newspapers Online has revealed that in summer 1884 the local paper devoted a good few pages to the wedding of Herbert Lloyd Watkin Williams-Wynn, heir to the Wynnstay Estate and his cousin Louise Williams-Wynn.
One always likes to think that one’s ancestors were talented so I was pleased to find a number of accounts in the Welsh Newspapers Online website of various Freers winning school prizes.
Here’s another find from the Welsh Newspaper archive – this sad and puzzling record appeared in The Llangollen Advertiser, Denbighshire, Merionethshire and North Wales Journal, 22 September 1871.
Whilst the coronavirus pandemic has left few corners of our lives untouched, for many people it has also provided a great opportunity to progress activities that would otherwise have been neglected. In my case it has offered a chance to spend some quality time on further researching my family history, in particular using the Welsh Newspapers Online website to see what more I can discover about the Freers of Ruabon.
One of the family history mysteries that has always been a source of fascination to me is how my great-grandmother, Clara Freer, who was born and brought up in Ruabon, Denbighshire, came to meet and marry my great-grandfather, Frederick Blacknell, who was born and brought up in Calverton, Nottinghamshire. Today, with the easy movement of people such a meeting would be perfectly normal but back in the second half of the nineteenth century didn’t everyone stay, more or less, in their home village?
I’m Paul’s second cousin and we share Frederick Blacknell and Clara Freer as our great-grandparents. I took up family history research earlier this year and have been amazed at what there is out there to find.