Ancestry PI

03/15/2026

It’s all intriguing 🧐

03/14/2026

Wow. 😮. Love it. 🥰

03/10/2026

Keeps us on our toes!

03/10/2026

Will stockings for men ever make a comeback?! 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️🧐😳😆

03/03/2026

Anyone have ancestors here?

We are excited to announce the release of our latest publication, *Crime and Punishment*. This volume presents newspaper accounts of crimes in Pike County from 1872 to 1963. Whenever possible, we have followed each case through to its trial.

If you are interested, you can purchase a copy of the book for $30. Please contact us to order your copy.

03/02/2026

Wow, not much meat.

This chart shows the average weekly diet of a working-class family in Oxfordshire in 1912.

It appeared in How the Labourer Lives: A Study of the Rural Labour Problem by B. Seebohm Rowntree and May Kendall, published in 1917.

03/02/2026

Worth remembering.

🕵️‍♀️Genealogy Tip Tuesday: Pay attention to witnesses, neighbors, or bondsmen in records. They often turn out to be relatives — and can lead you to new branches of the family tree. 🌿

03/02/2026

Got a supposed witch in your tree? 🧙. Perhaps her herbal remedy upset someone. Or she may have nagged too much! 😬

'YE OLD DUCKING CHAIR: FORDWICH, ENGLAND. 1900'

Ducking stools were not used as instruments of punishment, but were often used as a test of witchcraft, rooted in deeply flawed beliefs about purity and the supernatural.

The practice was based on the idea that water, seen as a pure and God given element, would reject those who were allied with evil forces.

The accused, most often a woman, would be strapped into a wooden chair or bound with ropes and then fully submerged in a river, or pond.

After a period she was pulled back out to see whether she was still alive.

If she drowned, her death was taken as proof that she was not a witch, as she supposedly lacked supernatural powers to protect herself. If she survived, this was interpreted as evidence that she had been aided by dark forces, and she would then be condemned as a witch and executed, often by burning.

The last recorded uses of similar ducking devices for punishment,occurred around eighty years earlier. These included Mrs Gamble in Plymouth in 1808, Jenny Pipes, described at the time as “a notorious woman”, in 1809, and Sarah Leeke in 1817, both cases recorded in Leominster.

03/02/2026

Do you have German migrants in your family tree? Here's where you can trace their records 🇩🇪

03/01/2026

Imagine a time with so few cars on the roads.

Gas station in Washington DC. (1920)

03/01/2026

First communion c 1895

02/24/2026

1890 census definitely top of my list.