My interest in family history started when I decided to learn how to type, in the post-GCSE panic that said I would have to get a job in Admin. Mavis Beacon was simply unproductive, and searching for something more useful to tap away at, I came across the fading Colchester family history (carbon printed by my Grandfather). So, while I was typing out the reams and reams of information into Microsoft works, I started to pay a small bit of attention to what was appearing on the screen. I saved all this to disk and promptly forgot all about it until a few years later when my uncle Giles started his own campaign to digitise the family history, and I was able to hand over (typos and all) the transcripts.
A productive Student lifestyle meant I took full advantage of the internet connection at college, and found my parents families posed exactly opposite problems: The Colchester surname is rare, and records minimal, while the Brown surname is common as muck, with endless numbers of William Brown to confuse everyone.
In case you haven't guessed, the two main family trees I am directly interested in are:
BROWN and COLCHESTER. The COLCHESTER tree has had generations of interest, meaning it now goes back to 1503 and spans several continents. The BROWN tree is pretty much virgin territory, and all the information on this site is either from living memory or online resources.
Gravestone Transcriptions
I have been, incidentally, been copying down text from a few gravestone in Finchingfield and Sible Hedingham. If you are interested in any particular record or family name, I am happy to take a photo or have hunt for a particular name, if you ask nicely. I have only copied these while walking through the churchyard, I have not ventured into Church Records yet!
Miscellaneous Genealogical links:
These are a random selection of links from my own bookmarks. I will get round to describing them eventually, i promise!
