Hi everyone!
It's time to get to know another one of our wonderful WikiTreers. This week's member is Gill Whitehouse.
Gill became a Wiki Genealogist in June 2021. She is a Project Coordinator in the England Project as well as a Mentor and Ranger.
When and how did you get interested in genealogy?
My mother came to live with us for the last 13 years of her life. She had already done a lot of research on paper along with some cousins, so that was a good base to start from. I hadn't really been interested in it before then, but she brought all her notes and photos when she came to live here, so we were able to go through them together. Now I have them all to fall back on if needs be. Unfortunately her memory wasn't so good anymore, so some of them took a bit of untangling.
What are some of your interests outside of genealogy?
The countryside and animals, horses (we've only got one horse now) and we have two dogs adopted from a shelter. We used to have chickens and goats, but they are long gone. I was a keen photographer and gardener but WikiTree (and my back) has put paid to that! I live in a rural area in France that has quite a bit of history, so that's an interest too. One fascinating part of renovating our house (built about 1900) here was finding the names of the first owners written in pencil on the beams that we uncovered. We have their wedding photo that a neighbour gave us, so I should really do something with that!
What is your genealogical research focus?
Of course I started with my own family, but I enjoy researching and untangling knotty problems, so there's always something to do, and variety is the spice of life. It's just as much fun turning up some interesting details for someone else's family. I tend to flit from subject to subject.
Are you interested in certain surnames or locations?
Yorkshire (names Eland, Brown, Reeves), Wiltshire (Bendy, Pike and Hancock) and Leicestershire (Wale, Shenton and Snelson), where most of my family came from. The Whitehouse family also come from Staffordshire, but the combination of the surname and the location, West Bromwich, doesn't make research easy in that area as there are hundreds of them.
Do you have a favorite ancestor?
Can I have two? My father's side of the family produced a lot of Wesleyan Ministers, and they are great as there's so much information to be found about them. My 6x Great grandfather Nathaniel Shenton b. 1760, though not a Minister, was responsible for the building of a Wesleyan chapel in his village. The tradition carried on down to my paternal great grandfather, who baptised my father. The downside of them is that they moved around a lot, so the children were born all over the place!
The other is my maternal great grandmother, when my mother died I found a small bundle of letters from her, and it was lovely to read them, seeing how she lived and how tough her life was. She emigrated to Australia as a widow with 3 young children after my great grandfather was killed in WW1. My grandfather stayed in England which is why I wasn't born Australian! Her letters revealed that she had remarried (for the third or possibly fourth time) and her final married name had been previously unknown. Though I'd never met her, they brought her that bit closer. Like me she was a country girl with chickens and cows, though I suspect they were more as a means of survival.
What is your toughest brick wall currently?
My toughest brick wall is one of my maternal great grandfathers born c1832 (Cannon). I can find no definitive baptism records for him, and even if my line of research is correct, his father was probably illegitimate, so it all comes to a full stop there. Hopefully as more Berkshire records are put online, something may turn up.
(Interview continues in comments)
