Finding Threadneedle

2022 was the first full year of Black Sheep Genealogy. I made it! Now I’m trying to remember what I spent the whole year doing. Well, I spent at least one day staring at this 1852 map of Bradford, an industrial city in the heart of West Yorkshire. One my clients’ ancestors, immigrants from Ireland, had taken up residence on Threadneedle Street. And I wanted to know where that was, exactly. I wanted to read about the neighborhood if I could, see who else lived there, what church the Catholics there would have attended—all the stuff that is necessary to reconstruct people’s lives.

But I couldn’t find it!

Eventually I found a different map that isolated the street …

… which allowed me to pick it out on the earlier map, where it had not been labeled. I highlighted it below in green.

This is a relatively small thing, finding Threadneedle Street, but it’s the sort of thing I love to do. It helps me tell your family’s story.

And that’s what I spent 2022 doing—telling the stories of Irish families in England and Irish families in America, German immigrants and Italians, Virginia colonists, Oklahoma pioneers, and participants in the California Gold Rush. I researched slaveholders and the ancestors of slaves, people charged with mayhem, as well as the victims of cold-blooded murder. I detailed the dying moments of an English soldier in France during the first world war and the court-martial of an American soldier during the second. I followed a client’s grandfather up San Juan Hill and wondered whether another client’s ancestor, a prisoner at Andersonville, might not have suffered from post-traumatic stress.

Using traditional genealogical techniques, I discovered that a client’s grandfather was not their biological relative and, for another client, that their grandparents were first cousins. That’s the thing with genealogy: when you ask questions, you sometimes receive unexpected answers.

I also spent a big chunk of my time doing pro-bono work. As I wrote back in February, not everyone has access to their own history. I’ve done my best to even the scales by providing services for those who can’t otherwise afford it, and I’ve encountered so many interesting stories and urgent questions. As of this writing, I’ve received 130 applications and have responded to, researched, or begun research on more than a dozen, which exceeds my original promise of one every other month.

It’s been the best part of 2022 and I’m looking forward to seeing what 2023 brings.

Thanks for being here and helping make all this possible.

If you’re interested in learning more about your family, check out Black Sheep Genealogy’s services and then send us an email. We can’t wait to hear from you.