42 weeks in London!

We started our week, once again, chasing ancestors.  Paul learned that the observatory at Greenwich had some indexes to rope makers that had taken out fire insurance.  He is and has been for some time chasing clues to open the family line of John Major a 1760 rope maker in the Isle of Wight

To get to our destination, Monday, we first took the underground, then transferred to a rail train and then to a bus.  Since Paul had made an appointment with the one keeping the records, we were allowed to make our way into secure areas of the observatory.  She showed us nine file drawers with indexing of occupations that had taken out Sun Fire Insurance.  We did find John Major in the Rope Maker file.  We knew about one of his policies, since we had looked and looked and found it at the London Metropolitan Archives.  The index let us know that he had taken out another policy a few years later and possibly one or two of his kids.  We now have to make another trip to the LMA to find the original copy of this policy.

At Greenwich with Dr. Gloria Clifton

Index card to John Major's insurance

 It was very interesting to be at the Greenwich Navy sight since the Greenwich records that we are digitizing  at The National Archives are all about seamen that visited or resided at Greenwich.

View from observatory looking at Pensioner's building.

 

 

 Work at the Archives is different than it has been in the past and very slow moving.  We are now doing records of the Navy Pensions and they are all in book form, some being very large books.  We have been told that we must do them with a cradle, not a flat surface any more.  Since only two of the 5 camera set-ups were cradles, our supervisor found one more cradle and set it up for Paul to use.  It is a an old dinosaur apparatus and is very temperamental.  Notice the crank that is used to raise or lower the table.  The lighting set up only works when it wants to and that means Elder Smart can only work on digitizing when the lights decide to work.

Elder Smart with his dinosaur

Elder Smart & Henry Germain holding digitized book

Sister Smart is sharing another cradle with Elder Powell.  He works on it half of the time and she works on it the other half.  When we are not busy with the digitizing, we work upstairs in the London Family History Centre.

We just returned from our Stake conference where a new Stake Presidency was sustained.  We are grateful for our neighbors, the Goodlet family who gave us a ride to Conference.  We were going to have to be at the train station at 7:00 a.m. this morning. That would mean catching a bus pryor to arriving at the train station.  We would then have ridden the train to Staines where we could catch a shuttle bus with other ward members to Stake Conference.  Instead, due to our wonderful neighbors, we met them just outside our flat at 8:45 a.m. where they drove us to conference via the motorway and we arrived 1/2 hour early. Oh, the life of not having a car!!!

It has rained almost everyday for the past 3 weeks.  It is almost always overcast and gets dark so early that we are forgetting what a sunny day might be like.  It will get worse, as we get more into winter.  We can hardly wait.  This next week is supposed to get very cold with an "Arctic blast".  It is all ok, though, life is still good and we are very happy to be here in the Lord's service.  We do miss family and friends in the states.  Our fondest hopes are centered in knowing that you will all be there when we get home.  The way time is flying it will happen before we know it.  There is a lot of England that we will really miss when that time comes.

We know we are doing the Lord's work and we are so very happy to serve.  The Church is true!!!

Love,
Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Elder and Sister Smart, Paul and Annie

Sunset near Heathrow Airport

Christ Church College, Oxford,  One of Oldest Trees

 
 

 

Oxford City Original Wall