Susan Tobin Bailey

Welcome to New Members

Firstly, I would like to welcome all new members to my site. It's always good to hear from members, whether you have a query about your own family history or to add anything you know about my own family tree.

It's also been nice to hear from those people who used to go to the Flying G Ranch and to hear their snippets of happy times spent there. I am still hoping that someone out there may have some photos that I could add to this page as it's in need of some updating. If you have any, then please share

I have added a link to the links page that members interested in the Flying G Ranch might enjoy.

Lost photos - Is one of your ancestors here?

I have added a new page to my site: CDV's Cabinet Cards and Photos. Is there a member of your family on this page? Take a look now and let me know what you think of the new page. I hope to be able to link some of these photos to their decendents. It's always nice to find a photo that you didn't know existed of a member of your family. To be able to put a face to a name is very exciting so I hope I will be able to report here that one or more of my photos has at last found its family.

Family Tree Pages Make Over

I promised some time ago to redo the family tree area of my site to make it more readable and easier to understand. Due to my personal circumstances I have been unable to do this but hope to start work on this very soon.

New links

Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund

My first new link is to the Pancreatic Cancer Research web site. Pancreatic cancer is a very aggressive cancer and is very hard to diagnose. Please take a look at this site and read about it. Only three per cent of people who are diagnosed with this cancer survive for five years. The average life expectancy once diagnosed is six months. My husband was lucky, he lived ten months after diagnosis! More public awareness is needed, more funding is needed and then hopefully more research will be done into this cancer.

I have also put a link to where you can purchase Pancreatic Cancer Christmas Cards. Please take a look. Thank you.

Flying G Ranch, Burley, New Forest

As mentioned above I have added a link to a short film about the Flying G Ranch.

The blog today is a tribute to my husband, Rob, who passed away on 16th July 2010 after a long illness. He was a wonderful man and we had some fantastic times together. He is missed very much by all his family. I was always so proud of Rob, both before his illness and during it. He fought bravely without any complaint, accepting the inevitable. I will always love him and he will always be with me in my heart and soul.

Robert Bailey 1949 - 2010

Hi

I have decided it's time for a complete overhaul of my website. This website will now be mainly for my Family Tree and the other portions of it moved to other sites.

I am going to be working hard to give my family tree a completely new look that I hope will make it easier to read and understand. All of this of course will take time and due to other commitments I can only work on it as and when possible.

My photographs and digital art will now be on a separate website www.stourart.webs.com and my writing and books will be on my new site www.susanbailey.webs.com You might also like to take a look at my writing blog on www.susansbailey.wordpress.com

If you are a registered member of this site and are more interested in my art or writing then perhaps you would like to register on one of my other sites or register on all of them if you would like.  The new sites are a little sparse at present until I can get some time to update them fully but please bear with me.

If you are new to my site then perhaps you would like to register. As a member you will receive information whenever I update the site.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for taking the time to read this

Susan

Whilst on holiday last week at  Challacombe Holiday Park in Devon, I had the pleasure of seeing and listening to the wonderful voice of Stephanie Coombes.

Stephanie has a beautiful voice comparable to that of Katherine Jenkins and equally as good. I am sure that hers is a voice we will hear much more of in the future. I certainly hope so, as she deserves to be heard by a much wider audience.

Her rendition of Nessun Dorma brought tears to my eyes and I was sorry when her performance ended as I could have listened to her all night.

She is a beautiful and talented young lady with a pure and lovely voice, and if you hear of her performing in your area then I recommend you go to see her, as you will definitely not be disappointed.

If you wish to read more about her, here is a link to her website:

http://www.stephaniecoombes.co.uk/

I have to admit that I'm not perfect at grammar and punctuation but I do hate to read the words your and you're written incorrectly. I don't know why, but it really grates within me whenever I see a sentence such as:

'Your wrong to write that'.

or

'You're book is here'.

It's not so much that people don't know how to write these words correctly that makes me seethe within, but the fact that many of them just don't care if it's written incorrectly!

End of Moan of the Day.

I wonder how many other people, like me, have decided to try to research their family tree, only to find it takes over their lives? When I began I never realised just how addictive it would become. I have spent so much time on this recently that everything else has gone by the wayside. Oh, the excitement when I find a snippet of information after days of searching all the online sites. 

What is it that interests us so much about knowing who our ancestors were? People sometimes wonder why we do it. What do we have when we've found a line of names connected to us? Don?t we just have a list of names that mean nothing to us? 

I'm very new to this as I only started researching a couple of months or so ago, but I've come to realise that we can find out much more than just the names of our ancestors. 

Just from following a particular person through the censuses we can find out where they were and the job they were doing every ten years. We can see if they've had any more children or if any of their children have left home. 

I could see from the censuses that my grandfather left home when he was 12 to go and work on a farm together with one of his brothers. A later census shows that his brother had returned back home but my grandfather didn't. 

Following another family through the censuses I could watch as they had more children and then when the wife was widowed and went to live with some of her relations. 

I find it fascinating to find out these little things about the people I'm connected to and to research into the towns and villages where they lived to find out what their lives must have been like at the time they were living. 

Family research is much more than finding just names, it's about finding the whole history surrounding your family and if you begin, I'm sure, like me, you'll become addicted too.