We decided to turn my father’s account of his exploits into a book
Lowestoft’s Loss
I refer to Jonathan Scott’s ‘Around Britain’ article on Suffolk in the March issue of the magazine.
While it is pleasing to see Mr Scott acknowledge that the removal of the Lowestoft archives to The Hold in Ipswich was “controversial”, I fear that he has understated the case when it comes to the level of public opposition in this part of the county.
Suffolk County Council moved the archives in April 2021 in the face of a 7,300-name petition; concerns from Suffolk town councils at Halesworth, Beccles and Lowestoft; and vociferous criticism from the MP for Waveney, Peter Aldous.
We now know that the costing for the archives move was already in the council’s business plans submitted to the then Heritage Lottery Fund in 2017, hence the need to plough ahead despite the dissent from local communities.
Lowestoft now has what the council describes as an “Archives
Hub”, which in reality is an empty husk containing one local loan archive collection, photocopies, microfilms and fiche.
The decision to move the records to Ipswich away from their place of origin was described by Sir Tony Robinson in 2018 as a “grave disservice to the strong sense of localism which makes this part of our island so special”.
When the lottery funding for The Hold ceases later this year it will be interesting to see how it fares. It is estimated that it will likely cost £1.2 million a year to run, and it will be the longsuffering taxpayers of Suffolk who will be subsidising it.
One of the buzz phrases used by the National Lottery Heritage Fund is that they are “engaging the public with their own local heritage”. In the case of the Lowestoft archives they are simply moving it out of reach. Bob Collis, by email
EDITOR REPLIES: We have previously covered the campaign to keep the collections in Lowestoft, and I know that people feel strongly about it. It will be interesting to see if The Hold increases engagement with the archives as planned.
Dear Diary
Madeleine Janes’ letter in the March issue about her Polish father’s heroic exploits during the Second World War reminded me of my own father’s account of the war. He kept a diary throughout his life, even when serving in the Navy during the war when he wasn’t supposed to. In his eighties, he typed them up on his computer. He had spent most of
his service on an LST (landing ship tank), and been at the invasions of Sicily and Normandy.
Come his 91st birthday we were pondering on what present to give him when we hit on an idea. My wife and I had just selfpublished a local-history book using Lulu ( lulu.com), so decided to turn my father’s account of his wartime exploits into a book in similar fashion. So, on his birthday we gave him a draft copy and said that we would print as many copies as he wanted, once he’d approved it. He was rather overwhelmed at first but then thoroughly warmed to the idea, working enthusiastically with us, tweaking and proofreading the text, and supplying more photos.
Within a few weeks we’d ordered some 35 copies to be distributed around the family, which he proudly did. As the year went on, he twice ordered another 10 copies to give to friends. He even donated a copy to our lovely French hosts when we attended the 70th anniversary of D-Day event held in Normandy the following year. It was something that my father really appreciated when we did it, and we now have a lasting memory of him on our bookshelves.
Alan Weeks, Wincle
EDITOR REPLIES: What a wonderful gift Alan – and a great way to celebrate your father’s life.
When OCR Just Isn’t Good Enough
In Ruth A Symes’ ‘Focus On’ article on newspapers in the February edition, the brief comment right at the end that optical character recognition (OCR) struggles with older newspapers hardly approaches the problems in finding your ancestors. British Newspaper Archive ( britishnewspaper archive.co.uk) is abysmal for much of its transcription. The free ‘extract text’ tool that anyone can use in Google Keep ( google. com/keep) does a better job of a downloaded image. Sadly, that doesn’t help in searching. I can’t imagine the wealth of information hidden because BNA is so intent on new releases rather than updating its software.
This is a marriage I only found because the father’s surname had been correctly transcribed: “GRDBH*REID*August 22, the Weslsymn Msthodist 1 Choreh.
Brizton UiU. Rev R. Crawford Johnson, the Her. James Grub!’, Belfast, Jecie, daughter of the late Joseph Retd, LirerpooL INo cards.)”
Jim Barton, by email
EDITOR REPLIES: It’s very interesting that you have found Google Keep extracts text more reliably than BNA’s own OCR software. I will dig further into this.
A Solution To The Polish Puzzle
I was interested to read the letter from Madeleine Janes in the March issue looking for help tracing the family of Mendel Popinski. The Polish State Archives has been digitising its records for years and millions of scans are available online at no charge ( szukajwarchiwach. gov.pl/en/strona_glowna). This includes 20th-century records. Polish privacy laws only allow access to birth records over 100 years old and marriages/ deaths over 80 years old. More recent records, if they survive, are located at the civil record
offices for each town ( urzad stanu cywilnego). Registration books are transferred to the Polish State Archives branches once every record in the book satisfies the 100/80-year rule. So a book covering 1916–1930 births will not be available until 2031.
It is unlikely that Mendel was born in Brzeziny. Most Popinski family lived in a small town called Ujazd that was in Brzeziny District (Ujazd is 16 miles south-southeast of Brzeziny). Mendel might have said he was from Brzeziny, but he was likely simply referring to the larger district town near where he was from. JRI-Poland ( jri-poland.org), which I cofounded in 1995, has data for the years 1826–1905 which includes almost 150 records for Popinski family members from Ujazd but none for Brzeziny.
The Polish State Archives has placeholders and scans available for the town of Ujazd at tinyurl. com/polish-state-arch-ujazd.
Note these will only be scans, not searchable databases of the records. However, JRI-Poland will eventually have full extracts of all of these records.
Madeleine should contact JRI-Poland directly for more assistance. She should also check the JewishGen Family Finder ( jewishgen.org/jgff) where she will find two other researchers listed as being interested in the Popinski family from Ujazd. Michael Tobias, by email
EDITOR REPLIES: Thank you Michael, I have sent all your information on to Madeleine.
Generation Mix-Up
On reading Alan Crosby’s column in the February issue about his hints from “Find My Ancestry”, I wonder if one of mine trumps his marriage to his mother? The hint told me that they had found my daughter Ada Martin née Cooper, born in Markfield, Leicestershire, 1868. I cannot say my reaction on reading that gem! Trudy Martin, Ada Martin’s great granddaughter
Counting The Dead
I have just read Alan’s article on the hints that come flooding in from genealogical websites.
It just so happens that the same day, I received one from Ancestry that I was intrigued to look at: a 1940 US census entry for Mary Doris Hilliard dated nine years after she had died!
I think that one takes the biscuit for me, so far.
Roger Parker, by email
EDITOR REPLIES: Thank you to everyone who sent in their false hints. Clearly the gremlins are hard at work!